Justice Equity Diversity Inclusion Toolbox
for the Pediatric Scientific Workforce
Strategic Recommendations to Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
Principles in the Pediatric Scientific Workforce
Domain: Knowledge
Focus: Key Terms and Definitions
Ableism:
Prejudiced thoughts and discriminatory actions based on differences in physical, mental, and/or emotional ability that contribute to a system of oppression; usually of able-bodied/minded persons against people with illness, disabilities, or less developed skills.1
Accessibility:
The extent to which a facility is readily approachable and usable by individuals with physical disabilities, such as self-opening doors, elevators for upper levels, or raised lettering on signs.1
Ally:
A person of one social identity group who stands up in support of members of another group; typically, a member of a dominant group standing beside member(s) of a targeted group, e.g., a male arguing for equal pay for women.2 An ally acknowledges oppression and actively commits to reducing their own complicity, investing in strengthening their own knowledge and awareness of the oppression.3
Anti-Racist:
A person who identifies and challenges the values, structures, and behaviors that perpetuate systemic racism. 1
Bias:
Prejudice; an inclination or preference, especially one that interferes with impartial judgment.2
Bigot:
A person obstinately devoted to their own opinions and prejudices who is intolerant toward other diverse social groups. Another definition is an individual with an unreasonable or irrational attachment to negative stereotypes and prejudices.3
Categorization:
The natural cognitive process of grouping and labeling people, things, etc. based on their similarities. Categorization becomes problematic when the groupings become oversimplified and rigid, e.g., stereotypes.2
Cognitive Dissonance:
The mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time; performs an action that is contradictory to one or more beliefs, ideas, or values; or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values.2
Color Blind:
The belief in treating everyone “equally” by treating everyone the same; based on the presumption that differences are by definition bad or problematic, and therefore best ignored, e.g., “I don’t see race, gender, etc.”.2 Hence, color blind refers to the belief that everyone should be treated “equally,” without respect to societal, economic, historical, racial, or other differences. Thus, no differences are seen or acknowledged, and everyone is considered the same.3
Covert Racism:
Expresses racist ideas, attitudes, or beliefs in subtle, hidden, or secret forms. Often unchallenged, this type of racism doesn’t appear to be racist because it is indirect behavior.1
Culture:
A social domain that emphasizes the practices, discourses, and material expressions, which, over time, express the continuities and discontinuities of social meaning of an experience held in common.2 Thus, culture refers to the pattern of daily life learned consciously and unconsciously by a group of people. These patterns can be seen in language, governing practices, arts, customs, holiday celebrations, food, religion, and other aspects.3
Cultural Appropriation:
The nonconsensual misappropriation of cultural elements for commodification or profit purposes—including symbols, art, language, customs, and so forth—often without understanding, acknowledgment, or respect for the element’s value in the original culture.3
Discrimination:
The unequal treatment of members of various groups based on race, gender, social class, sexual orientation, physical ability, religion, national origin, age, physical/mental abilities, and other categories that may result in differences in provision of goods, services, or opportunities.1Thus, discrimination refers to actions, based on conscious or unconscious prejudice, which favor one group over others in the provision of goods, services, or opportunities.1
Disparity:
A significant difference between groups; typically used to describe the condition of being unequal.2
Diversity:
The range of human differences, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, social class, physical ability or attributes, religious or ethical value system, national origin, and political beliefs.2
Dominant Culture:
The cultural values, beliefs, and practices that are assumed to be the most common and influential within a given society.2
Equality:
Equality is the condition under which every individual is treated in the same way, and is granted same rights and responsibilities, regardless of their individual differences.1
Equity:
Equity ensures that individuals are provided the resources they need to have access to the same opportunities, as the general population. While equity represents impartiality, i.e., the distribution is made in such a way to even opportunities for all the people. Conversely equality indicates uniformity, where everything is evenly distributed among people.1
Ethnicity:
A social construct that divides people into smaller social groups based on characteristics such as shared sense of group membership, cultural heritage, values, behavioral patterns, language, political and economic interests, history, and ancestral geographical base. 1
Explicit Bias:
Conscious attitudes and beliefs about a person or group. Often, these biases and their expression arise as the direct result of a perceived threat. When people feel threatened, they are more likely to draw group boundaries to distinguish themselves from others.2
Fundamental Attribution Error:
A common cognitive action in which one attributes his/her own success and positive actions to his/her own innate characteristics (“I’m a good person”) and failure to external influences (“I lost it in the sun”), while attributing others’ success to external influences (“he had help”) and failure to others’ innate characteristics (‘they’re bad people”). This operates on the group level as well, with the in-group giving itself favorable attributions, while giving the out-group unfavorable attributions, as way of maintaining a feeling of superiority. A “double standard.”2
Gender:
Gender is the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that society considers “appropriate” for men and women. It is separate from “sex”, which is the biological classification of male or female based on physiological and biological features. A person’s gender may not necessarily correspond to their birth assigned sex or be limited to the gender binary (woman/man). 1
Gender Identity:
Refers to all people’s internal, deeply felt sense of being a man, woman, both, in between, or outside of the gender binary, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth. Because Gender identity is internal and personally defined, it is not visible to others, which differentiates it from gender expression. 1
Identity:
Conception, qualities, beliefs, and expressions that constitute a person (self-identity) or group (particular social category or social group).2
Implicit Association Test (IAT):
This measures attitudes and beliefs that people may be unwilling or unable to report, e.g., you may believe that women and men should be equally associated with science, but your automatic associations could show that you (like many others) associate men with science more than you associate women with science.2
Implicit Bias:
A form of bias that occurs automatically and unintentionally, that nevertheless affects judgments, decisions, and behaviors (also known as nonconscious or unconscious bias).2
Inclusion:
Authentically bringing traditionally excluded individuals and/or groups into processes, activities, and decision/policy making in a way that shares power.1 Hence, inclusion refers to involvement and empowerment, where the inherent worth and dignity of all people is recognized. An inclusive organization promotes and sustains a sense of belonging; it values and practices respect for the talents, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of living of its members.2
Institutional Racism:
Institutional racism refers specifically to the ways in which institutional policies and practices create different outcomes for different racial groups. The institutional policies may never mention any racial group, but their effect is to create advantages for Whites and oppression and disadvantage for people from groups classified as people of color.1
Intersectionality:
The idea that various biological, social, and cultural categories–including gender, race, class, ethnicity, and social categories–interact and contribute towards systematic social inequality. This concept recognizes that individuals: 1) belong to more than one social category simultaneously and 2) may experience either privileges or disadvantages on that basis depending on circumstances and relationships. Exposing [one’s] multiple identities can help clarify the ways in which a person can simultaneously experience privilege and oppression. For example, a Black woman in America does not experience gender inequalities in exactly the same way as a White woman, nor is her racial oppression identical to that experienced by a Black man. Each intersection produces a qualitatively distinct life. 1
Intergroup Conflict:
Tension and conflict which exist between social groups, and which may be enacted by individual members of these groups.2
Majority Subsidy:
A “majority subsidy” is created when diversity and inclusion are “owned” primarily by a small number of persons from “underrepresented in medicine” groups, and, thus, diversity efforts are marginalized. When this occurs, diversity and inclusion will no longer be treated as a critical aspect of an institution’s mission. For example, would we ever allow clinical excellence, professionalism, and scientific discovery to be championed by only a few? 3
Marginalized:
The process by which minority groups/cultures are excluded, ignored, or relegated to the outer edge of a group/society/community. A tactic used to devalue those that vary from the norm of the mainstream, sometimes to the point of denigrating them as deviant and regressive. 1
Microaggression:
A subtle but offensive comment or action directed at a minority or other nondominant group that is often unintentional or unconsciously reinforces a stereotype, e.g., “No, where are you really from?” or “You don’t act like a Black person.”2
Minority Tax/Cultural Tax:
An array of additional duties, expectations, and challenges that accompany a person being an exception within a predominantly White institutional environment. Minority faculty are often asked to serve as mentors to minority trainees and to contribute to diversity initiatives. Although these extra responsibilities are both important and necessary for the expansion of diversity, they are intensive and often detract from the time spent on traditional promotion-granting activities. These contributions to diversity and inclusion are exceptionally taxing because they are rarely regarded on an equal plane as scholarly or clinical productivity.3
Multicultural:
Of or pertaining to more than one culture.2
Multicultural Competency:
The process of embracing diversity and learning about people from other cultural backgrounds. The key element to becoming more culturally competent is respect for the ways that others live in and organize the world and an openness to learn from them.3
Multiethnic:
An individual that comes from more than one ethnicity.2
Multiracial:
An individual that comes from more than one race.2
Oppression:
The systemic and pervasive nature of social inequality woven throughout social institutions as well as embedded within individual consciousness. Oppression fuses institutional and systemic discrimination, personal bias, bigotry, and social prejudice in a complex web of relationships and structures that saturate most aspects of life in our society. Oppression also signifies a hierarchical relationship in which dominant or privileged groups benefit, often in unconscious ways, from the disempowerment of subordinated or targeted groups.2
Patriarchy:
The actions and beliefs that prioritize masculinity. Patriarchy is practiced systemically in the ways and methods through which power is distributed in society (i.e., employment and positions of power given to men in government, policy, medicine). It also influences how we interact with one another interpersonally (i.e., gender expectations, sexual dynamics, space-taking).3
Person/People of Color:
A collective term for men and women of Asian, African, Latin, and Native American backgrounds as opposed to the collective “White” for those of European ancestry.2
Prejudice:
A pre-judgment or unjustifiable, and usually negative, attitude of one type of individual or group toward another group and its members. Such negative attitudes are typically based on unsupported generalizations (or stereotypes) that deny the right of individual members of certain groups to be recognized and treated as individuals with individual characteristics. 1
Privilege:
Unearned social power (set of advantages, entitlements, and benefits) accorded by the formal and informal institutions of society to the members of a dominant group (e.g., White/Caucasian people with respect to people of color, men with respect to women, heterosexuals with respect to homosexuals, adults with respect to children, and rich people with respect to poor people). Privilege tends to be invisible to those who possess it, because its absence (lack of privilege) is what calls attention to it. In other words, men are less likely to notice/acknowledge a difference in advantage because they do not live the life of a woman; White people are less likely to notice/acknowledge racism because they do not live the life of a person of color; straight people are less likely to notice/acknowledge heterosexism because they do not live the life of a gay/lesbian/bisexual person. 1
Race:
A social construct that artificially divides people into distinct groups based on characteristics such as physical appearance (particularly skin color), cultural affiliation, cultural history, ethnic classification, and the social, economic, and political needs of a society at a given period of time. There are no distinctive genetic characteristics that truly distinguish between groups of people. Created by Europeans (Whites), race presumes human worth and social status for the purpose of establishing and maintaining privilege and power. Race is independent of ethnicity.1
Racism:
The term “racism” specifically refers to individual, cultural, institutional, and systemic ways by which differential consequences are created for different racial groups. Racism is often grounded in a presumed superiority of the White race over groups historically or currently defined as non-White (African, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, etc.). Racism can also be defined as “prejudice plus power.” The combination of prejudice and power enables the mechanisms by which racism leads to different consequences for different groups. 1
Racial Justice:
The proactive reinforcement of policies, practices, attitudes, and actions that produce equitable power, access, opportunities, treatment, impacts, and outcomes for all.1
Reverse Racism:
Perceived discrimination against a dominant group or political majority. Commonly used by opponents to affirmative action who believe that these policies are causing members of traditionally dominant groups to be discriminated against. 1
Safe Space:
A place where anyone can relax and be able to fully express, without fear of being made to feel uncomfortable, unwelcome, or unsafe on account of biological sex, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, cultural background, religious affiliation, age, or physical or mental ability. 1
Scientific Racism:
The use of scientific techniques, theories, and hypotheses to sanction the belief of racial superiority, inferiority, or racism. Examples include the Tuskegee Syphilis Trial, the stem cells of Henrietta Lacks, Indigenous Races of the Earth, etc. 1
Sex:
Biological classification of male or female based on genetic or physiological features, as opposed to gender.2
Sexism:
Prejudiced thoughts and discriminatory actions based on differences in sex/gender; usually by men against women.2
Sexual Orientation:
One’s natural preference in sexual partners; predilection for homosexuality, heterosexuality, or bisexuality.2
Social Identity:
This involves the ways in which one characterizes oneself, the affinities one has with other people, the ways one has learned to behave in stereotyped social settings, the things one values in oneself and in the world, and the norms that one recognizes or accepts governing everyday behavior.2
Social Justice:
A form of activism, based on the principles of equity and inclusion that encompasses a vision of society in which the distribution of resources is equitable, and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure. Social justice involves activists who have a sense of their own agency and a sense of social responsibility toward and with others and society as a whole.3
Stereotype:
Blanket beliefs and expectations about members of certain groups that present an oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude, or uncritical judgment. They go beyond necessary and useful categorizations and generalizations in that they are typically negative, are based on little information, and are highly generalized.2
Structural Racism:
The normalization and legitimization of an array of dynamics–historical, cultural, institutional, and interpersonal–that routinely advantage Whites while producing cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of color. Structural racism encompasses the entire system of White domination, diffused and infused in all aspects of society including its history, culture, politics, economics, and entire social fabric. Structural racism is more difficult to locate in a particular institution because it involves the reinforcing effects of multiple institutions and cultural norms, past and present, continually reproducing old and producing new forms of racism. Structural racism is the most profound and pervasive form of racism – all other forms of racism emerge from structural racism.1
Tokenism:
The presence of an individual in a group or institution without meaningful participation. For example, a superficial invitation for the participation of members of a certain socially oppressed group, who are expected to speak for the whole group, without giving the invited persons a real opportunity to speak for themselves.3
Underrepresented in Medicine:
The AAMC definition of underrepresented in medicine is: “Underrepresented in medicine means those racial and ethnic populations that are underrepresented in the medical profession relative to their numbers in the general population.”
White Privilege:
Refers to the unquestioned and unearned set of advantages, entitlements, benefits, and choices bestowed on people solely because they are White. Generally, White people who experience such privilege do so without being conscious of it. 1
White Supremacy:
White supremacy is a historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and
oppression of continents, nations, and peoples of color by White peoples and nations of the European continent; for the purpose of maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power, and privilege. 1
Xenophobia:
Hatred or fear of foreigners or strangers or of their politics or culture.3
Reference:
- University of Washington Department of Epidemiology Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee. Glossary of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Terms. 2019. [Accessed February 27, 2022].
- NIH Science of Diversity Glossary. https://diversity.nih.gov/find-read-learn/glossary. [Accessed February 27, 2022].
- Jazaeri O, Afifi RO. Glossary of terms and concepts relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion to reflect on, debate, and raise awareness of: A report from the Society for Vascular Surgery Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. Journal of Vascular Surgery. 2021;74(2):125S-31S.