ESTABLISHING A SHARED UNDERSTANDING OF DEI: DEFINITIONS

DIVERSITY is defined as the broad spectrum of experiences, cultures, and physical attributes within a community, including, but not limited to, race or ancestry, national origin, religion, age, ability, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and perspective.

EQUITY is the absence of barriers, biases, and obstacles that impede equal access, fair treatment, and opportunity for contribution by all members of a community.

INCLUSION is a culture comprising a framework that allows an individual to effectively engage and thrive in a community. The framework includes social policies and processes that provide access to opportunities and information, the capacity to influence accepted institutional norms and behaviors, the security in the organization to fully express inherent skills and talent, and the ability to exercise one’s own informal or formal power.

ANTI-RACISM is an active, intentional, and dynamic set of actions that dismantle and disrupt racism, which is the combination of policies, practices, attitudes, cultures, and systems that affect individuals, institutions, and structures unequally and that confer power and privilege to certain groups over others, defined according to the social constructions of race and ethnicity.²