Age, Ageism:
Referring to a person's age in a context in which age
is not relevant reinforces U.S. society's emphasis on
youth as the optimum stage of life. In the work force,
"older workers" become another group to be
demeaned or protected. In the media, women are often
designated as "grandmothers" when their maternal
and grand-maternal status is irrelevant.
Affirmative Action: Referring to a
federal government policy developed (after the Civil
Rights Act of 1965) to remedy the effects of long term
discrimination for minorities and women, through established
“goals” especially in employment and education.
The policy’s intent is to ensure equal opportunities
by making additional efforts to hire/promote and admit,
with respect to race/ethnic origin, gender, military
veterans, and disability.
Ally: An Ally is a person who is a
member of the dominant or majority group who works to
end oppression in his or her private and professional
life through support of, and as an advocate for, an
oppressed population.
American Indian and Alaska Native:
A person having origins in any of the original peoples
of North and South America (including Central America),
and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment.
It includes people who classify themselves as described
below.
- American Indian: Includes people who indicate their
race as “American Indian,” entered the
name of an Indian tribe in the U.S. Census, or report
such entries as Canadian Indian, French-American Indian,
or Spanish-American Indian. Currently there are over
560 federally-recognized tribes.
- Alaska Native: Includes written responses of Eskimos,
Aleuts, and Alaska Indians, as well as entries such
as Arctic Slope, Inupiat, Yupik, Alutiiq, Egegik,
and Pribilovian. The Alaska tribes are the Alaskan
Athabaskan, Tlingit, and Haida.
Asian: A person having origins in
any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast
Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example,
Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan,
the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam. It includes
“Asian Indian,” “Chinese,” “Filipino,”
“Korean,” “Japanese,” “Vietnamese,”
and “Other Asian.”
- Asian Indian: Includes people who indicate their
race as “Asian Indian” or identify themselves
as Bengalese, Bharat, Dravidian, East Indian, or Goanese.
- Chinese: Includes people who indicate their race
as “Chinese” or who identify themselves
as Cantonese, or Chinese American.
- Filipino: Includes people who indicate their race
as “Filipino” or as Philipino, Philipine,
or Filipino American.
- Japanese: Includes people who indicate their race
as “Japanese” or as Nipponese or Japanese
American.
- Korean: Includes people who indicate their race
as “Korean” or Korean American.
- Vietnamese: Includes people who indicate their
race as “Vietnamese” or Vietnamese American.
- Cambodian: Includes people who indicate their race
as Cambodian or Cambodia.
- Hmong: Includes people who indicate their race
as Hmong, Laohmong, or Mong.
- Laotian: Includes people who indicate their race
as Laotian, Laos, or Lao.
- Thai: Includes people who indicate their race as
Thai, Thailand, or Siamese.
- Other Asian: Includes people who indicate their
race as Bangladeshi, Burmese, Indonesian, Pakistani,
or Sri Lankan
Assimilation: The process whereby a
group gradually adopts the characteristics, customs
and attitudes of the prevailing culture.
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Bias: An inclination
of preference, especially one that interferes with impartial
judgment.
Bicultural: A person who is bicultural
has the ability to function effectively and appropriately
and can select appropriate behaviors, values and attitudes
within either culture.
Bigotry: Prejudice carried to the extreme
of overt hatred, often carried to the point of violence.
Black or African American: A person
having origins in any of the black racial groups of
Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as
“Black or African American,” or as African
American, Afro American, Kenyan, Nigerian, or Haitian.
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Change Agents: Change
agents are individuals within an organization, at any
level. They are educated about managing diversity, and
committed to facilitating change by modeling appropriate
behaviors. They also take every opportunity to ensure
that systems, policies and practices are flexible enough
to work for everyone, modifying them as appropriate.
Change agents include top leadership, management and
employees at every level. Because managing diversity
represents a major change in the management of human
resources, without multi-level change agents implementation
will stall. It requires support from leaders with vision,
credibility and authority -- champions. A managing diversity
champion actively supports the organization's commitment
to managing diversity and is seen by others as a valued
member of the current culture and thus has credibility
as the organization moves to the new vision.
Civil Rights: Personal rights guaranteed
and protected by the Constitution, i.e., freedom of
speech, press, freedom from discrimination.
Classism: Any attitude or institutional
practice which subordinates people due to income, occupation,
education and/or their economic condition.
Cross-cultural: The interaction, communication,
or other processes between people or entities from two
or more different cultures.
Cultural Competence: The ability to
function effectively in a society of culture variation.
Cultural Conditioning: The unconscious
process by which we are socialized to adopt the way
of thinking of our own group.
Cultural Diversity: Developing organizational
processes that are inclusionary rather than exclusionary
for cultural conformity.
Culture: The collective behavior patterns,
communication styles, beliefs, concepts, values, institutions,
standards, and other factors unique to a community that
are socially transmitted to individuals and to which
individuals are expected to conform.
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Discrimination: Illegal
treatment of a person or group (either intentional or
unintentional) based on race, color, national origin,
religion, sex, disability, or veteran's status. The
term also includes the failure to remedy the effects
of past discrimination.
Making decisions in a prejudicial manner that may exclude
or deny opportunity. Making distinctions based on racial,
ethnic, or distinguishing features such as usage, religious
identification or disability.
- Combination of prejudice (superiority/inferiority
belief system) and institutional power, the power
to impose that system on others
- Without power, we all have about the same ability
to be prejudiced
- Destructive "isms" (racism, sexism, ageism,
ethnocentrism, handicapism, homophobism, etc.)
- Use of institutional power to reinforce biased
belief systems and to disadvantage others.
Diverse Supplier: a U.S. citizen that
owns a business certified as small, minority, or woman-owned.
Diversity: Diversity is any collective
mixture characterized by similarities and differences.
It can refer to people, organizations, systems, etc.
As a consequence, diversity can be defined as, or limited
to, any dimension such as workforce diversity or functional
diversity.
Domestic Partner: Unmarried partners
who share living quarters. Typically used in connection
with legal and insurance matters related to gay and
lesbian couples.
Dynamics of Power: Referring to personal
relationships: the relationships of power between the
people in a group. By power is meant every opportunity/possibility
existing within a social relationship, which permits
one to carry out one's own will, even against resistance,
and regardless of the basis on which this opportunity
rests.
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Ethnic: Of or relating
to people grouped according to a common racial, national,
tribal, religious, linguistic, or cultural origin.
Ethnicity: A sense of being different
than other groups because of cultural tradition, ancestry,
national origin, history, or religion.
Ethnocentrism: The emotional attitude
that one’s own race, nation, or culture is superior
to all others.
Equal Opportunity: Referring to federal
government policies and practices especially in employment
that bar discrimination based on race, color, age, sex
(gender), religion, mental or physical handicap, or
national origin. At the UA these factors are: race,
color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability,
veteran’s status, sexual orientation and gender
identification.
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Gay: A common and acceptable
word for male homosexuals, but used for both genders.
Glass Ceiling: Barriers, either real
or perceived, that affect the promotion or hiring of
protected group members.
Harassment (Ethnic And Racial):
Words or conduct communicated with malice and with the
intent to intimidate or harass another person in a way
that is associated with that person’s race, ethnicity,
color, religion, ancestry, or national origin.
Harassment (Malicious): Intentional
intimidation associated with a person’s race,
color, religion, ancestry, national origin, or mental,
physical, or sensory handicap that causes physical injury
to another person; or by words or conduct that places
another person in reasonable fear of harm.
Harassment (Sexual) See Sexual Harassment.
Hazing: Verbal and physical testing,
often of newcomers, that may range from practical joking
and banter to ridicule, criticism, unnecessary obstacles
and demeaning assignments at work.
Heterosexism: Referring to the assumption
that all people are (or should be) heterosexual; belief
in superiority of heterosexuality and inferiority of
homosexuality.
Hispanic or Latin: People who identify
with the terms “Hispanic” or “Latino”
are those who classify themselves in one of the specific
Hispanic or Latino categories—"Mexican,"
"Puerto Rican," or "Cuban"—as
well as those who indicate that they are "other
Spanish, Hispanic, Chicano or Latino." Origin can
be viewed as the heritage, nationality group, lineage,
or country of birth of the person or the person's parents
or ancestors before their arrival in the United States.
People who identify their origin as Spanish, Hispanic,
or Latino may be of any race.
Homophobia: The irrational fear of
homosexuals, homosexuality, or any behavior, belief,
or attitude of self or others, which doesn’t conform
to rigid sex-role stereotypes. It is the fear that enforces
sexism and heterosexism. The extreme behavior of homophobia
is violence.
Homosexual: A person who is emotionally,
physically, and/or sexually attracted or committed to
members of the same sex.
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Inclusiveness: The
act of encouraging belonging.
Institution Racism: A variety of systems operating within
an organization that have attitudes, behaviors, and
practices that subordinate persons or groups because
of race or ethnic background.
Ism: Power plus prejudice.
Internalized Oppression: The process
by which a member of an oppressed group comes to oppression:
accept and live out the inaccurate myths and stereotypes
applied to the oppressed group.
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Lesbian: A common and
acceptable word for female homosexuals only.
Managing Diversity:
This is a comprehensive managerial process for developing
an environment that works for all employees. This process
takes into account the need to change organization systems
to sustain the organization’s ability to get from
all employees everything they have to offer. It means
approaching diversity at all three levels: Individual,
team or department and organizational. It deals with
the way managers do their jobs. It requires a fundamental
change in the culture and the way things are done. It
is a change in the corporate way of life.
Melting Pot: A place where immigrants
of different ethnicity or culture form an integrated
and homogenous society.
Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) —
a business that is at least 51 percent owned/operated/
controlled by:
- African American (ethnic origins in any of the
black racial groups of Africa)
- Hispanic American (ethnic origins in any of the
Spanish-speaking areas of Latin America or the following
regions: Mexico, Central America, South America, and
the Caribbean basin only)
- Asian-Pacific American (ethnic origins in Japan,
China, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the
Philippines, Samoa, Guam, the U.S. Trust Territories
of the Pacific, or the Northern Mariana Islands)
- Asian-Indian American (ethnic origins in India,
Pakistan, or Bangladesh)
- Native American (a person who is American Indian,
Eskimo, Aleutian, or native Hawaiian, and regarded
as such by the community of which she or he claims
to be a part)
Multicultural: The co-existence of
many distinct cultures within a given context, such
as community or nation.
Myth: An ill-founded belief, usually
based on limited experience, given uncritical acceptance
by members of a group, especially in support of existing
or traditional practices and institutions.
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Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific
Islander: A person having origins in any of
the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other
Pacific Islands. It includes people who indicate their
race as “Native Hawaiian,” “Guamanian
or Chamorro,” “Samoan,” and “Other
Pacific Islander.”
- Native Hawaiian: Includes people who indicate their
race as “Native Hawaiian” or who identify
themselves as “Part Hawaiian” or “Hawaiian.”
- Guamanian or Chamorro — Includes people who
indicate their race as Chamorro or Guamanian.
- Samoan: Includes people who indicate their race
as “Samoan” or who identified themselves
as American Samoan or Western Samoan.
- Other Pacific Islander: Includes people who indicate
their race as a Pacific Islander group such as Tahitian,
Northern Mariana Islander, Palauan, Fijian, or a cultural
group such as Melanesian, Micronesian, or Polynesian.
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Organizational Assessment:
Organizational assessment involves discovering where
the organization is today. This process examines systems,
policies and practices to ensure they are flexible enough
to support the future state environment. This phase
is at the heart of "managing diversity." It
involves data collection to assess the organizational
climate. It consists of surveys (Employee Opinion Surveys)
which are attitudinal in nature to get a sense of what
the work environment is like, cultural audits (which
look at the organization's roots that drive its systems),
assessments of written and unwritten organization policies
and procedures, and reviews of complaint and grievance
data. Change to support the effective management of
diversity must take place at a root level to be lasting.
Organizational Culture: Underlying
values, beliefs and principles that serve as a foundation
for the organization's management system, as well as
the set of management practices and behaviors that both
exemplify and reinforce those principles.
Oppression: The systemic mistreatment
of a group of people by society and/or by another group
of people who serve as agents in society. The mistreatment
is generally encouraged or enforced by society and its
culture.
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Persons of Color: People
of non-European ancestry. All persons self-identifying
by the general categories of Black or African-American;
Hispanic, Latino or Chicano; Asian or Pacific Islander;
American Indian or Alaskan Native.
Physical Abilities / Qualitites:
- Disabled (disAbled, disABLED). This is the most
currently appropriate term.
- Physically challenged -- this term reflects sensitivity
but may be too "politically correct."
- Vision impaired (limited vision)
- Blind (no vision)
- Hearing impaired (limited hearing)
- Deaf (no hearing)
- Hidden challenges (e.g., high blood pressure, heart
disease, diabetes, etc.)
- Little People
Pluralism: A system that holds within
it individuals or groups differing in a basic background
experiences and cultures. It allows for the development
of a common tradition, while preserving the right of
each group to maintain its cultural heritage.
Prejudice: Implies a preconceived idea,
judgment, or opinion, usually an unfavorable one marked
by hatred, and is directed toward a racial religious,
cultural, or ethnic group.
- Judgments about others that reinforce superiority/inferiority
belief systems.
- Exaggerate value/worth of a particular group while
diminishing worth for other group(s).
- Reinforced supported by stereotypes.
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Race: As a biological
concept, it defines groups of human beings based on
a set of genetically transmitted characteristics, i.e.,
physical characteristics, including color. The concept
of race as a socio-cultural concept is being replaced
by the more appropriate concept of ethnicity. The concept
of race as used socio-politically by the U.S. Census
Bureau reflects self-identification by people according
to the race or races with which they most closely identify.
The latter socio-cultural and socio-political categories
include both racial and national-origin groups.
Racism: An assumption that there is
an inherent purity and superiority of certain races
and inferiority of others. It denotes any attitude,
behavior, or institutional structure that subordinates
persons or groups because of their race or ethnic background.
Such practices can be intentional or unintentional.
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Self-Esteem: How a
person feels about herself or himself; pride in oneself.
Self-esteem is linked to family traditions, language,
social customs, economic background, and other aspects
of one's cultural environment.
Sexism: A system of beliefs or attitudes,
which relegates women to limited roles and/or options
because of their sex.
Sexual Harassment: Unwelcome sexual
advances, request for sexual favors (quid pro quo) and
other verbal or physical conducts of a sexual nature
when:
- submission to such conduct is made either implicitly
a condition of employment;
- submission to or rejection of such conduct by an
individual is used as a basis for employment decisions
affecting such individual; or
- such conduct has the purpose of effect of unreasonably
interfacing with an individual’s work performance
or creating an intimidating, hostile working environment.
(This definition is according to Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidelines.)
Sexual Orientation
- Gay refers to men whose primary attraction is to
other men.
- Lesbian refers to women whose primary attraction
is to other women.
- Bisexual refers to men or women whose attraction
is to both sexes.
- Asexual refers to men or women who do not experience
sexual attractions.
- Transexual or transgender refers to men or women
whose physical characteristics place them in one gender
group yet emotionally they identify with another group.
Some Other Race: Includes all other
responses not included in the “White,” “Black
or African American,” “American Indian and
Alaska Native,” “Asian,” and the “Native
Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander” race categories
described above. Persons identified as multiracial,
mixed, interracial, or a Hispanic/Latino group (for
example, Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Cuban) in the “Some
other race” category are included in this category.
Stereotypes: The belief that all people
of a certain racial, ethnic, or cultural group are the
same and behave in the same way.
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Transferred Oppression:
Referring to the prejudicial action towards someone
in one’s own group.
Two or More Races: “Two or more
races” refers to combinations of two or more of
the following race categories:
- White
- Black or African American
- American Indian and Alaska Native
- Asian|
- Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander Some
other race
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Understanding Differences: Understanding
differences is the awareness and acceptance of differences
among and between people both on an interpersonal and
personal level. It encompasses myriad dimensions such
as race, sex, age, thinking style, religion, sexual
orientation, professional degrees, and functionality.
This can also refer to organizations and systems (for
example, field offices versus headquarters). The objective
is to enhance interpersonal or inter-functional relationships.
Values: Values are
our subjective reactions to the world around us. They
guide and mold our options and behavior. Values have
three important characteristics. First, values are developed
early in life and are very resistant to change. Values
develop out of our direct experiences with people who
are important to us, particularly our parents. Values
rise not out of what people tell us, but as a result
how they behave toward us and others. Second, values
define what is right and what is wrong. Notice that
values do not involve external, outside standards to
tell right or wrong; rather, wrong, good or bad are
intrinsic. Third, values themselves cannot be proved
correct or incorrect, valid or invalid, right or wrong.
If a statement can be proven true or false, then it
cannot be a value. Values tell what we should believe,
regardless of any evidence or lack thereof.
Valuing Differences: Refers to systemic,
organizational and personal development work (not a
program) that focuses on all employees, clients, customers,
and investors feeling valued (not just tolerated).
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White: A person having
origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the
Middle East, or North Africa. It includes people who
indicate their race as “White” or as Irish,
German, Italian, Lebanese, Near Easterner, Arab, or
Polish.
White Privilege: Referring to a social
relation.
- A right, advantage, or immunity granted to or enjoyed
by white persons beyond the common advantage of all
others; an exemption in many particular cases from
certain burdens or liabilities. A special advantage
or benefit of white persons; with reference to divine
dispensations, natural advantages, gifts of fortune,
genetic endowments, social relations, etc.
- A privileged position; the possession of an advantage
white persons enjoy over non–white persons.
- The special right or immunity attaching to white
persons as a social relation; prerogative. display
of white privilege, a social expression of a white
person or persons demanding to be treated as a member
or members of the socially privileged class.
- To invest white persons with a privilege or privileges;
to grant to white persons a particular right or immunity;
to benefit or favor specially white persons; to invest
white persons with special honorable distinctions.
To avail oneself of a privilege owing to one as a
white person.
- To authorize or license of white person or persons
what is forbidden or wrong for non–whites; to
justify, excuse.
- To give to white persons special freedom or immunity
from some liability or burden to which non–white
persons are subject; to exempt.
Woman Business Enterprise (WBE) —
a business that is at least 51 percent owned/operated/
controlled by a non-minority woman.
Citations
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