Critical Race Studies Glossary

The rejection of the idea that any single characteristic or experience defines an entire racial or ethnic group, emphasizing diversity within groups.

The maintenance of racial inequality through ostensibly non-racial ideology, language, and institutional practices that avoid explicit racial references.

A qualitative method that uses the personal narratives of marginalized individuals to challenge dominant, majority-centered accounts of social reality.

A legal movement arguing that law is not neutral or objective but serves to legitimize and reinforce existing power structures and social hierarchies.

The process of dismantling colonial structures, institutions, and epistemologies, and restoring indigenous sovereignty, knowledge systems, and self-determination.

A legal doctrine recognizing that facially neutral policies or practices may be discriminatory if they disproportionately affect a protected group.

The disproportionate placement of environmental hazards such as toxic waste sites and polluting industries in communities predominantly inhabited by people of color.

Unconscious attitudes and stereotypes that influence judgment and behavior toward members of different social groups.

Policies, practices, and norms within institutions that systematically produce racial disparities in outcomes such as employment, education, and healthcare.

The theory that racial justice advances primarily when they align with the interests of the dominant group.

A framework for understanding how multiple social identities such as race, gender, class, and sexuality interact to shape experiences of oppression and privilege.

A scholarly movement examining legal and social issues particularly affecting Latino/a communities, including immigration, language rights, and intersections of race and ethnicity.

The dominant cultural story that reflects the perspectives and interests of the privileged group and is often accepted as objective or neutral.

Subtle, often unintentional verbal or behavioral slights that communicate negative messages to members of marginalized groups.

The theory that capitalist development has always been dependent upon racial exploitation and the production of racial difference.

The sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed through political struggle and institutional practice.

In Omi and Winant's theory, an effort that simultaneously interprets, represents, and organizes the distribution of resources along particular racial lines.

Derrick Bell's position that racism is a permanent and integral feature of American society, not an aberration to be overcome.

The discriminatory practice of denying financial services to residents of specific neighborhoods based on the racial composition of those areas.

A contractual agreement attached to property deeds that historically prohibited sale or occupancy by members of specific racial or ethnic groups.

A form of colonialism in which colonizers seek to permanently occupy and assert sovereignty over indigenous lands through displacement and erasure of indigenous peoples.

The scholarly consensus that racial categories are not fixed biological realities but historically contingent social and political constructs.

Racial inequality embedded in and reproduced by the normal operation of interconnected social, economic, and political systems.

Unearned systemic advantages conferred to individuals identified as white, often invisible to those who benefit from them.

Cheryl Harris's argument that whiteness operates as a form of legally protected property conferring rights, status, and material benefits.