Words Matter Video Series

Learn more about anti-racist terms

Conversations on equity, racial justice, and white supremacy can be challenging. Even more so, when we don’t have a shared understanding of the language needed for those difficult conversations. The videos and content below establish a foundational comprehension from which meaningful conversation, education, and reflection can develop and advance.

  • White Privilege

    White privilege refers to the unquestioned and unearned set of advantages, entitlements, benefits and choices that people have simply because they are white. Click below to watch the video, read more and reflect.

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  • Structural Racism

    Structural Racism is a system that gives white people advantages over Black, Indigenous, and People of Color – like better access to education, wealth and health care. Click below to watch the video, read more and reflect.

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  • Microaggressions

    Microaggressions are things we say or do – even if we don’t mean to – that send negative and hurtful messages to people because of race, gender, class or other factors. Click below to watch the video, read more and reflect.

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  • Black Lives Matter

    Black Lives Matter is a movement to bring justice, healing, and freedom to Black people across the globe by addressing systemic racism and violence against Black people. Click below to watch the video, read more and reflect.

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  • Race and Racism

    Race is a powerful idea. It has been created over time to support beliefs that view some groups of people as superior and some as inferior. Click below to watch the video, read more and reflect.

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  • Implicit Bias

    We use the term “implicit bias” to describe when we have attitudes toward people, or associate stereotypes with them, without our conscious knowledge. Click below to watch the video, read more and reflect.

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  • Intersectionality

    Intersectionality refers to the way race, gender, class, sexuality, and other parts of who we are overlap and intersect with one another. Click below to watch the video, read more and reflect.

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  • Colonization

    Colonization is an action or process where one group uses violent force to take control of land, Indigenous peoples, and resources. Click below to watch the video, read more and reflect.

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  • Ally

    Being an ally means that you recognize the rights and privileges you have that others don’t, and you take action to address those injustices. Click below to watch the video, read more and reflect.

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  • Undocumented

    An undocumented immigrant is a person with a continued residence in the United States without official immigration authorization. Click below to watch the video, read more and reflect.

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  • Racial Equity

    Racial equity is what would be achieved if race — a physical and social quality — wasn’t a factor in access to things like health care, education, wealth and other opportunities. Click below to watch the video, read more and reflect.

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  • Anti-Racist

    To be anti-racist first requires us to recognize that racism is real and embedded so deeply in our society that it impacts almost everything we do and experience in both obvious and unseen ways. Click below to watch the video, read more and reflect.

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  • BIPOC

    BIPOC stands for Black, Indigenous, people of color. It is meant to include all people of color in the work for liberation, while acknowledging that not all people of color face the same levels of injustice. Click below to watch the video, read more and reflect.

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  • White Supremacy

    White supremacy is when white culture has been deemed more valuable than other cultures. Click below to watch the video, read more and reflect.

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  • Anti-Blackness

    Anti-Blackness refers to structural racism and oppression that marginalizes Black people and can include violence, discrimination, dehumanizing policy, police brutality, segregation, mass incarceration, devaluing Black lives and more. Click below to watch the video, read more and reflect.

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  • Cultural Appropriation

    Cultural appropriation is when someone intentionally or unintentionally takes and exploits part of a culture that is not their own. Click below to watch the video, read more and reflect.

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