Critical thinking about Race

Question 1

Is aware of their privilege in comparison to that of the marginalized group and supports, respects and advocates for the rights of the marginalized group. They play an active role in dismantling the system that affords them that privilege through educating members of their own privileged group, consciously seeking to take up less space and engaging in restitutive acts.

Answer 1

Allyship

Question 2

Refers to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards black people or people of African descent around the world, which include an irrational fear, antagonism, contempt and aversion.

Answer 2

Afrophobia

Question 3

A certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.

Answer 3

Anti-Semitism

Question 4

The belief that ‘human nature’, an individual’s personality, or some specific quality (such as race, intelligence, creativity, homosexuality, masculinity, femininity, or a male propensity to aggression) is an innate and natural ‘essence’ (rather than a product of circumstances, upbringing, and culture).

Answer 4

Biological essentialism

Question 5

Refers to long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labour, relationships and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations.

Answer 5

Coloniality

Question 6

The extension of a nation’s power over territory beyond its borders by the establishment of settler colonies in which indigenous populations are directly ruled or displaced.

Answer 6

Colonisation

Question 7

A form of prejudice or discrimination based on skin tone among members of the same race in which people are treated differently based on their lighter skin tone or shade, because of the social status, privilege, and opportunity that is associated with a lighter skin colour.

Answer 7

Colourism

Question 8

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.

Answer 8

Critical race theory

Question 9

The adoption or use of elements of one culture by members of another culture. It could involve taking or borrowing elements from a marginalized culture, religion or people. These traditions or symbols are usually taken as accessories and hardly provide traditional and historical context to them, thus trivialising religious or cultural symbolism and practices.

Answer 9

Cultural appropriation

Question 10

Refers to representations, messages and stories conveying the idea that behaviours and values associated with white people or “whiteness” are automatically “better” or more “normal” than those associated with other racially defined groups.

Answer 10

Cultural racism

Question 11

The meaningful and active resistance to the forces of colonialism and colonial institutions that maintain the oppression and exploitation of minds, bodies, and lands of people of colour.

Answer 11

Decolonisation

Question 12

The philosophy and social movement that argues it is possible to improve the human race and society by encouraging reproduction by people or populations with “desirable” traits and discouraging reproduction by people with “undesirable” qualities.

Answer 12

Eugenics

Question 13

Negative associations that people unknowingly hold. They are expressed automatically, without conscious awareness.

Answer 13

Implicit bias

Question 14

Feelings of inadequacy that persist despite clear signs of success.

Answer 14

Imposter (impostor) syndrome

Question 15

The beliefs, attitudes, and actions of individuals that support or perpetuate racism.

Answer 15

Individual racism

Question 16

The dominant ethos; the deep-rooted sets of norms, assumptions and values that spread through most of the environments in institutions on a daily basis (Steyn, 2000).

Answer 16

Institutional culture

Question 17

The internalisation of conscious or unconscious attitudes regarding inferiority by the targets of systemic oppression. Although target groups cannot oppress themselves in the way they have been oppressed, they can practice internalized hate against themselves or their own oppressed communities.

Answer 17

Internalized oppression

Question 18

The theory coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) that the overlap of various social identities, such as race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, disability and class, contributes to the specific type of systemic oppression and discrimination experienced by an individual.

Answer 18

Intersectionality

Question 19

Occurs when people, particularly black people, are disregarded because of others’ prejudice and discrimination and when their presumptions about black people are filled with a variety of social and personal stereotypes.

Answer 19

Invisibility

Question 20

Brief everyday slights, insults, humiliations and degrading messages sent to people who are marginalised. They are often subtle, ambiguous and unrecognized. An example of this is excessive complementing of the achievements of a black womxn as if this is not the norm.

Answer 20

Micro-aggressions

Question 21

Moves away from old fashioned, explicit racism in the form of laws that separate and violate people of colour, but includes institutional structural power dynamics. It uses non-race related reasons to continue to exclude and is therefore a new form of racism.

Answer 21

Modern racism

Question 22

The process of making distinctions between groups based on socially constructed differences (i.e. race, gender, nationality, physical ability, ancestry, culture, religion and sexuality). This includes any viewpoint or action by which an individual or group becomes mentally classified in somebody’s mind as “not one of us”.

Answer 22

Othering

Question 23

“Race is a political system that governs people by sorting them into social groupings based on invented biological demarcations. Race is not only interpreted according to invented rules, but, more important, race itself is an invented political grouping. Race is not a biological category that is politically charged. It is a political category that has been disguised as a biological one”. (Dorothy Roberts, Fatal Invention, 2011:4)

Answer 23

Race

Question 24

Any attitude, action or inaction, which subordinates a person or group because of their race, colour or ethnicity.

Answer 24

Racism

Question 25

The process in which the mechanisms of projection or displacement are utilized in focusing feelings of aggression, hostility, frustration, etc., upon another individual or group when the amount of blame is actually unwarranted.

Answer 25

Scape-goating

Question 26

Efforts to influence particular attitudes and social behaviours on a large scale, whether by governments, media or private groups in order to produce desired characteristics in a target population.

Answer 26

Social engineering

Question 27

Occurs when established laws, customs, and practices systematically reflect and produce inequities. It is the ways in which history, culture, ideology, public policies and behaviours interact to maintain a hierarchy – based on race, age, religion, class, sexuality, and other group identities.

Answer 27

Structural oppression

Question 28

Refers to symbols, whether they be statues, road signs or names of buildings that uphold and perpetuate systems of domination.

Answer 28

Symbolic oppression

Question 29

Institutional and social (rather than personal) set of unearned benefits granted to white people. This includes having greater access to power, services, opportunities, and resources and therefore, giving white people greater social capital and mobility even if on an individual basis they might face economic or other hardships.

Answer 29

White privilege

Question 30

Understanding the role and power of white supremacy in creating and reinforcing racial subordination and maintaining a normalized white privilege is central to the Critical Race Theory imperative to reveal and oppose racial inequality (Crenshaw et al. 1995; Harris 1995).

Answer 30

White supremacy

Question 31

Refers to glossing over or covering up something that is immoral, illegal, or bad (e.g. a history book that does not refer to the country’s violent past).

Answer 31

White-washing

Question 32

A Jewish nationalist movement (since 1945 the dominant one), formally established by Theodor Herzl in 1897 in response mainly to growing anti-Semitism in Europe. It supported the re-establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and encouraged migration into the Jewish ‘Promised Land’. After the Holocaust, the movement focused on the creation of a secular Jewish state, attaining its goal in 1948 with the creation of the state of Israel.

Answer 32

Zionism