Racial equity glossary

This racial equity glossary is a part of the Racial Equity Data Road Map (Road Map). The explanations of these key terms below are important to be grounded in from the beginning.

Foundational terms/phrases

• Centering the margins is to shift the starting point from a majority group's perspective, which is the usual approach, to that of the marginalized group(s).
• Contextualizing data means providing a narrative that describes the data and the root causes of inequities in the context of historical and current systems of oppression (e.g. racism, sexism). This must be done by engaging community partners and collaborators in understanding and interpreting the data, and/or looking at quantitative data on individual and community experience.
• Cultural Broker is someone who functions as a “cultural bridge” between diverse communities and mainstream service systems. A cultural broker understands how a diverse community’s culture differs from the mainstream service system’s culture, explains nuances and values of one culture to the other, and often celebrates different view, values, and beliefs.
• Data for racial equity work will vary based on the question the program wants to answer or the issue it wants to address. Common individual-level demographic variables that are helpful in understanding how racism impacts health outcomes include, but are not limited to, race and ethnicity, language, nativity, and zip code.
• Data sovereignty is the right of Indigenous Peoples and Nations to govern data about their peoples, land, and resources¹.
• Groundwater approach refers to the applied practice of the groundwater metaphor, which is designed to help practitioners internalize the reality that we live in a racially structured society, and that that is what causes racial inequity. The metaphor is based on three observations: 1) racial inequity looks the same across systems, 2) socio-economic difference does not explain the racial inequity; and 3) inequities are caused by systems, regardless of people’s culture or behavior.
• Health disparities are differences between the health of populations in measures of who gets disease, who has disease, who dies from disease, and other adverse health conditions.
• Health equity is the opportunity for everyone to attain their full health potential. No one is disadvantaged from achieving this potential because of their social position (e.g., class, socioeconomic status) or socially assigned circumstance (e.g., race, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, geography).
• Health inequities are differences in health status and mortality rates across population groups that are systemic, avoidable, unfair, and unjust. These differences are rooted social and economic injustice, and are attributable to social, economic and environmental conditions in which people live, work, and play.
• Implicit bias, also known as unconscious or hidden bias, is a negative association that people unknowingly hold. It is often expressed automatically, without conscious awareness².
• Institutional racism is the discriminatory treatment, unfair policies and practices, and inequitable opportunities and impacts within organizations and institutions, based on race.
• Internalized racism is the set of private beliefs, prejudices, and ideas that individuals have about the superiority of Whites and the inferiority of people of color. Among people of color, it manifests as internalized racial oppression. Among Whites, it manifests as internalized racial superiority.
• Interpersonal racism is the expression of racism between individuals. These are interactions occurring between individuals that often take place in the form of harassing, racial slurs, or telling of racial jokes.
• People of color is a term that is used to reference the way that groups have been racialized in the United States to privilege certain groups as ‘white’ based on the countries where their families immigrated from. People of color is a term that has been used in many different ways across time. In this text, it is being used as a way to express the dichotomies that exists based on designation of a person as white or non-white. It is not to be used to broadly classify all non-white populations, or dismiss the varied history of discriminatory and violent policies against specific non-white groups.
• Racial equity means acknowledging and accounting for past and current inequities, and providing all people, particularly those most impacted by racial inequities, the infrastructure needed to thrive. People, including people of color, are owners, planners, and decision-makers in the systems that govern their lives. Everyone benefits from a more just, equitable system.
• Centering racial equity means explicitly considering race, ethnicity, and racism in analyzing issues, looking for solutions and defining success³.
• Racial equity work includes activities or programs that create and reinforce policies, attitudes, and actions for equitable power, access, opportunities, treatment and outcomes for all people, regardless of race. The goal is to eliminate inequities between people of different races and ethnicities, and to increase the success for all groups ^{4, 5}.
• Social determinants of health (SDoH) are the community-wide social, economic, and physical conditions we experience where we are born, work, live, play, and age. These conditions are shaped by a wider set of forces, including power, policies, institutions, resources, and systems beyond an individual's control. These conditions determine an uneven distribution of opportunities for good health, leading to differences in health behaviors and outcomes between communities that are avoidable and unjust. Historical, institutional, and interpersonal racism have contributed substantially to these inequities, such as through policies like redlining, which can lead to poorer health outcomes. These factors are amenable to change through policies and programs designed to repair harms and facilitate improved health outcomes.
• Structural racism is racial bias across institutions and society over time. It is the cumulative and compounded effects of an array of factors such as public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms that work in various, often reinforcing, ways to perpetuate racial inequity.

1. Carroll SR, Rodriguez-Lonebear D, Akee R, Lucchesi A, Richards JR. Indigenous Data in the Covid-19 Pandemic: Straddling Erasure, Terrorism, and Sovereignty. Published June 11, 2020.

2. State of the Science Implicit Bias Review 2013, Cheryl Staats, Kirwan Institute, The Ohio State University.

3. GrantCraft, Grantmaking with a Racial Equity Lens (PDF)

4.  Boston Public Health Commission, Racial Justice and Health Equity Initiative Professional Development Series Glossary.

5. Government Alliance on Race and Equity