Institutional racism refers to the systemic operation of societal institutions in ways that favor certain groups over others, often resulting in unequal access to opportunities and resources based on race or ethnicity. This concept highlights how discrimination can occur unintentionally through established policies and practices, rather than solely through individual prejudiced attitudes. It encompasses both direct and indirect forms of discrimination, with the latter being the more pervasive and insidious type, as it may not be immediately recognizable. The term was popularized in 1967 by civil rights activists Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton to draw attention away from overt acts of racism and focus on how societal structures perpetuate racial inequalities

A term describing policies adopted since the 1960s that require “affirmative” (or positive) actions to be taken to ensure people of color and women have opportunities equal to those of white men in the areas of promotions, salary increases, school admissions, financial aid, scholarships and representation among vendors in government contracts. Although they have been effective in redressing injustice and discrimination that persisted in spite of civil rights laws and constitutional guarantees, the policies have been attacked because of perceived “reverse discrimination.”

On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court set the United States back decades, invalidating the policy that enabled institutes of higher learning to pursue diversity and equity through admissions: affirmative action. In the majority opinion for Students for Fair Admission (SFFA) v. Harvard and SFFA v. UNC, two cases brought by an organization founded by the architect of litigation that all but gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, the six-justice super-majority concluded that the Fourteenth Amendment, a bill enacted to rectify discrimination faced by African Americans, must be interpreted in a “colorblind” manner and thus affirmative action is prohibited. 

The Council for Democratizing Education defines anti-Blackness as being a two-part formation that both voids Blackness of value, while systematically marginalizing Black people and their issues. The first form of anti-Blackness is overt racism. Beneath this anti-Black racism is the covert structural and systemic racism which categorically predetermines the socioeconomic status of Blacks in this country. The structure is held in place by anti-Black policies, institutions, and ideologies.

The second form of anti-Blackness is the unethical disregard for anti-Black institutions and policies. This disregard is the product of class, race, and/or gender privilege certain individuals experience due to anti-Black institutions and policies. This form of anti-Blackness is protected by the first form of overt racism.

Antisemitism has deep historical roots and uses exploitation, marginalization, discrimination, and violence as its tools. Like all oppressions, the ideology contains elements of dehumanization and degradation via lies and stereotypes about Jews, as well as a mythology. The myth changes and adapts to different times and places, but fundamentally it says that Jews are to blame for society’s problems.

Antisemitism and Islamophobia are not only entangled, but deeply rooted in the same systems of white supremacy and Christian hegemony that have also driven ongoing genocide against indigenous people, and bigotry toward non-Christians from other parts of the world.

Colonialism is a power relationship in which an external nation state (colonizer, in this case Europe and the U.S.) directly controls the political and economic system of another nation state and/or people (in our platform we’ll be focused on Black people). It normally involves the presence of a military force to crush dissent and the migration of people from the colony to the nation state of the colonizer (in this case, stopping African migrants from moving to the U.S.). Colonialism can also occur within geographic boundaries of a colonizer nation state. For example, Black people exist as a domestic colony within the U.S.

1. The Critical Race Theory movement considers many of the same issues that conventional civil rights and ethnic studies take up, but places them in a broader perspective that includes economics, history, and even feelings and the unconscious. Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step by step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and principles of constitutional law.
2. CRT is not a noun, but a verb. It cannot be confined to a static and narrow definition but is considered to be an evolving and malleable practice. It critiques how the social construction of race and institutionalized racism perpetuate a racial caste system that relegates people of color to the bottom tiers. CRT also recognizes that race intersects with other identities, including sexuality, gender identity, and others. CRT recognizes that racism is not a bygone relic of the past. Instead, it acknowledges that the legacy of slavery, segregation, and the imposition of second-class citizenship on Black Americans and other people of color continue to permeate the social fabric of this nation.

1. The unequal treatment of members of various groups based on race, gender, social class, sexual orientation, physical ability, religion and other categories.
2. [In the United States] the law makes it illegal to discriminate against someone on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex. The law also makes it illegal to retaliate against a person because the person complained about discrimination, filed a charge of discrimination, or participated in an employment discrimination investigation or lawsuit. The law also requires that employers reasonably accommodate applicants’ and employees’ sincerely held religious practices, unless doing so would impose an undue hardship on the operation of the employer’s business.

The active resistance against colonial powers and a shifting of power towards acquisition of our own political, economic, educational, cultural, psychic independence and power. This process occurs politically and also applies to personal and societal psychic, cultural, political, agricultural, and educational deconstruction of colonial oppression.

Diversity includes all the ways in which people differ, and it encompasses all the different characteristics that make one individual or group different from another. It is all-inclusive and recognizes everyone and every group as part of the diversity that should be valued. A broad definition includes not only race, ethnicity, and gender—the groups that most often come to mind when the term “diversity” is used—but also age, national origin, religion, disability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, education, marital status, language, and physical appearance. It also involves different ideas, perspectives, and values.

It is important to note that many activists and thinkers critique diversity alone as a strategy. For instance, Baltimore Racial Justice Action states: “Diversity is silent on the subject of equity. In an anti-oppression context, therefore, the issue is not diversity, but rather equity. Often when people talk about diversity, they are thinking only of the “non-dominant” groups.”

An especially virulent form of far-right populist ultra-nationalism that celebrates the nation or the race as an organic community transcending all other loyalties. It emphasizes a myth of national or racial rebirth after a period of decline or destruction. To this end, fascism calls for a “spiritual revolution” against signs of moral decay such as individualism and materialism and seeks to purge “alien” forces and groups that threaten the organic community. Fascism tends to celebrate masculinity, youth, mystical unity, and the regenerative power of violence. Often, but not always, it promotes racial superiority doctrines, ethnic persecution, imperialist expansion, and genocide. Fascism first crystallized in Europe in response to the Bolshevik Revolution and the devastation of World War I, and then began to show up in other parts of the world. If it is a post-WWII occurrence it should be called neofascist or neofascism unless it solely involves participants in older movements.

1. The creation of relationships, societies, communities, organizations, and collective spaces characterized by equity, fairness, and the implementation of systems for the allocation of goods, services, benefits, and rewards that support the full participation of each human and the promotion of their full humanness.
2. A state of being grounded in one’s evolving identity, free movement, free from bias, imposed expectations, control, and violence towards one’s place in the world, including the policing of it. Liberation is an ongoing process and practice of self-governance, accountability, responsibility, and transparency with oneself and within one’s community. It requires ongoing acknowledgement of oppression in all its forms and on all levels of society, reparations, meaningful reconciliation directed by those targeted by oppression, and transformational changes on personal, positional, institutional and systemic levels of society.

A social movement based on a belief in biologically determined racial hierarchies, often with the ultimate goal of establishing an all-White nation state. For example, White nationalist movements in the U.S. increased in response to the end of legal segregation. Core to contemporary White nationalist ideology is the “Great Replacement” conspiracy, which alleges that a global cabal of (usually Jewish) liberal elites are deliberately fostering non-White immigration in order to erode White demographic majorities and ultimately, to cause “White genocide”—the cultural and biological destruction of the White race. The White nationalist movement is at least implicitly violent, as its goals can only be realized through removals, extermination, and death. While the most expansive goals of White nationalism remain unrealized, it has directly and indirectly influenced policies ranging from immigration enforcement, to voter disenfranchisement/suppression, and state disinvestments that continue to marginalize and repress communities of color.

1. This is an interlocking and reciprocal relationship between the individual, institutional and structural levels which function as a system of racism. These various levels of racism operate together in a lockstep model and function together as a whole system. These levels are: 
   Individual (within interactions between people) 
   Institutional (within institutions and systems of power)
   Structural or societal (among institutions and across society)
   
2. In many ways “systemic racism” and “structural racism” are synonymous. If there is a difference between the terms, it can be said to exist in the fact that a structural racism analysis pays more attention to the historical, cultural, and social psychological aspects of our currently racialized society.

Racism = race prejudice + social and institutional power
Racism = a system of advantage based on race
Racism = a system of oppression based on race
Racism = a white supremacy system

Racism is different from racial prejudice, hatred, or discrimination. Racism involves one group having the power to carry out systematic discrimination through the institutional policies and practices of the society and by shaping the cultural beliefs and values that support those racist policies and practices.

A form of religious bigotry, with strong racial components, that scapegoats and demonizes Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim. Since the War on Terror era, Islamophobia has intensified as a central narrative and policy agenda for the Right in the U.S. and Europe, and often dove-tails with anti-immigrant xenophobia, Christian nationalism, and a broader conspiratorial worldview. Islamophobia frequently leads to Islamophobic violence. Islamophobia can be structural, institutional, interpersonal, and/or internalized. Note that although Islamophobia is in common usage, the -phobia suffix tends to suggest individual bigotry to the exclusion of systemic and structural forces. The form anti-Muslim is generally preferred.

1. The action of abolishing a system, practice, or institution. Abolition centers on getting rid of prison, jails, police, courts, and surveillance. Abolitionist practice is also about establishing a system that is rooted in dignity and care for all people. A system that does not rely on punishment as accountability.
2. Prison industrial complex (PIC) abolition is a political vision with the goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment. From where we are now, sometimes we can’t really imagine what abolition is going to look like. Abolition isn’t just about getting rid of buildings full of cages. It’s also about undoing the society we live in because the PIC both feeds on and maintains oppression and inequalities through punishment,  violence, and controls millions of people. Because the PIC is not an isolated system, abolition is a broad strategy. An abolitionist vision means that we must build models today that can represent how we want to live in the future. It means developing practical strategies for taking small steps that move us toward making our dreams real and that lead us all to believe that things really could be different. It means living this vision in our daily lives. Abolition is both a practical organizing tool and a long-term goal.

Activism can be identified as political activity that sets up short-term actions and statements on variety of causes and social problems. It moves from one issue to the next, once a sufficient expression of dissent has been voiced. It is based on an abstract opposition in principle rather than an attempt to obtain concrete concessions from the people in power, be they bosses, state officials, landlords, etc.. Activism is usually scattered politically, reactive and unfocused. 

Organizing, by contrast, will usually involve people from both outside and inside the base contending with a concrete social or economic problem. From the outside, it will involve some experienced organizers or militants, and from the inside, it will involve the people whose material conditions are affected by the issue. Organizing has clear long-term objectives aimed at extracting gains for the base from bosses, owners or authorities. Ideally it will also have feedback mechanisms to evaluate the efficacy of the means taken, as regards the results they brought about, and as these relate to long-term objectives. This then provides a self-correcting feedback loop in which participants can evaluate the actions they’ve taken so far to achieve their goal(s), and whether the efforts were worth it or whether they should be changed. Tactics can be gradually escalated toward a constant objective.