Glossary 

The language of equity is always evolving. In this glossary, I explain my current understanding of many of the terms I use in my work: 

2SLGBTQIA+: This long acronym is the current respectful term for people who experience heterosexism for their sexual orientation or gender identity. There are many variations in the initials included and in what order. In this case, 2S stands for Two-spirit, L for lesbian, G for gay, T for transgender, Q for queer and questioning, I for intersex, A for androgynous and asexual, and the plus is added to include other terms as well.  

In the late 1970s, when the Gay Rights Movement emerged, lesbian women and gay men named themselves, rejecting the medical term “homosexual.”  In the early 1980s, the first acronym had appeared, GLBT (Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgendered). Later in the 1980s, it became LGBT. My understanding from oral community history is that this was done to honour the lesbians who stepped up to care for gay men and take over many community leadership functions during the HIV/AIDS crisis. During the 1990s and into the 2000s, the other letters were gradually added in various orders. The 2019 National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls placed 2S to the beginning (2SGLTBQQIA+) to indicate that Two-spirited people preceded the others on the lands of North America.

Those who prefer to avoid the verbal length and awkwardness of speaking the whole acronym often opt for “Queer,” a word that was offensive until it was recovered as a term of pride during the 1990s, likely helped along by the US television series Queer as Folk, which ran from 2000 to 2005. I use “queer” when the setting is informal and I know there is little chance of anyone present finding it offensive, but I tend to be old fashioned. Younger people use “queer” seemingly without hesitation. 

Able-bodied: See People with Disabilities/Able-bodied.

Ableism: A social/political/economic/ideological system that allows physically, socially, perceptually, mentally and emotionally able people to exclude, marginalize and exploit people with disabilities. 

Aboriginal: See Indigenous, Aboriginal, Native, First Nation, Inuit, Métis

African-Nova Scotian: See Black/African-Nova Scotian/People of Colour/BIPOC/Racialized People/Visible Minorities/New Canadians. 

Affirmative action: A policy or action designed to level the field for those who are disadvantaged by structural/historical oppression. Affirmative action is not, as a common myth would claim, “reverse discrimination.” When the goal of equity is accomplished, the affirmative action is no longer valid. 

Ageism: Ageism is a social/economic/political/ideological system where some have privileges or experience discrimination because of their age. It can work against a person for being too young or too old, and sometimes a person can be too young in one situation and too old in another at the same time. 

Ally: A member of a dominant group who works to end the form of oppression which gives them privilege. For example, a white person who works to end racism or a man who works to end sexism. 

Allyship: A fairly recent noun to describe the actions of allies. I do not use it because it sounds static to me, an end to be achieved rather than an ongoing process. I prefer “becoming an ally” or “solidarity.” I suspect it was coined to fill the gap left by “solidarity,” when that word went out of use as part of the neoliberal attack on unions.

Androgynous: See 2SLGBTQIA+

Anglophone/Francophone: Anglophones speak English as their primary language; francophones speak French as their primary language. In Canada, the struggles between these two groups, dating from the English conquest of New France in the eighteenth century, is a major feature of the Canadian political landscape. People from other countries sometimes do not understand this, and some English dictionaries from  countries other than Canada do not even contain the words. 

Anti-oppression (Anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-heterosexism, etc.):An approach to work, communication, policy and education in a diverse setting that takes wealth, power and historical, structural oppression into account.

Anti-semitism: A social/political/ideological system that allows people of other religions, particularly Christians and Muslims, to exclude, marginalize, exploit, exile and kill Jews. A form of ethnocentrism, sometimes included in the term racism.

Assimilation: When a conquered people melt into the dominant society, becoming indistinguishable, they have been assimilated. 

Asexual: See 2SLGBTQIA+

Backlash: When those working toward equity try to push an organization or other established system beyond token change, those in leadership must choose between moving toward structural change or trying to go back to the status quo. Return to the way things were is called backlash, and has certain typical features, such as scapegoating, mis-naming the problem, shooting the messenger and enhancing token measures to create the appearance of change.

Bigotry: Persistent belief in a supremacist worldview (white supremacy, male supremacy, etc.) or hatred of an oppressed group.

BCE/CE: Before the Common (or Christian) Era and the Common (or Christian) Era. A way of dividing time using the traditional year of the birth of Jesus as year 1 CE. Years in the Common Era are counted forward; that is, 1920 CE comes before 1950 CE. Years before the Common Era are counted backward; that is, 1920 BCE comes after 1950 BCE. 

BIPOC: See Black/African-Nova Scotian/People of Colour/BIPOC/Racialized People/Visible Minorities/New Canadians. 

Bisexual: See 2SLGBTQIA+ 

Black/African-Nova Scotian/People of Colour/BIPOC/Racialized People/Visible Minorities/New Canadians: The language of racism is very complicated. Sometimes racism is used to refer only to systemic oppression based on colour; sometimes other forms of oppression based on ethnicity, language or religious tradition are included as forms of racism. 

Sometimes the term is applied to individuals as well as structures and systems, as in “That person is racist.” For purposes of clarity in this book, I use racism to refer only to colour-based structural oppression. When I mean ethnic, language or religious oppression, or specifically Anti-semitism or Islamophobia, I say so. I do not refer to individuals as “racist,” “sexist” or the name of any other oppression except in questions designed to promote discussion in workshops. When individuals are spoken about, it is more appropriate to use words like “bigoted” or “prejudiced.”

The words for groups who suffer from racism are complex as well. Some have roots in insulting terms invented by white people; others have developed out of the pride and liberation struggles of the people they name. Sometimes a name which is used with pride in one generation becomes an insulting term in another, and a new word emerges. Sometimes one sub-group develops a term of pride and other sub-groups are not comfortable with it. For example, in Halifax “Black” is still the most common respectful general word used by Black people and their supporters and has been since the 1960s. African-Nova Scotian refers to the community that came from a particular history of settlement in our province. “Coloured” is now an offensive term but was a term of pride for a previous generation. For that reason two important African-Nova Scotian organizations had it as part of their name—the Home for Coloured Children and the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. 

When I am speaking to someone I know, I try to to use whatever term they prefer. In this book I use  “Black” or “African-Nova Scotian” if I am speaking about a member of that community. 

In other cases, I try whenever possible to use the terms claimed by communities themselves—“Roma” rather than “Gypsy,” “Innu” rather than “Montagnais,” “Anishnabe rather than “Ojibwa,”and so on. When I do use a word with racist roots, it is because I do not know any better. I hope any person or community I offend will forgive and inform me. 

In my experience, “people of colour” is generally considered a respectful term and some use it to make stronger connections among all who suffer from colour-based racism. Others object to it for exactly the same reason, it erases the differences in experience among specific communities that experience racism. 

BIPOC is a recent acronym for Black, Indigenous and people of colour. It has the same advantages and problems as “people of colour.” On one hand, it points to a common experience of racism; on the other, it erases the differences among them.

“Visible minority” is used as a neutral or legal term, but most racialized people I know object to it because it is a phrase that is clearly from a white perspective; that is, those who are different from white people and therefore visible to us.

“Racialized people” is a fairly recent term used to refer to all people who are targets of racism. Its strength is that it underlines the fact that the concept of race is a social/political/ideological invention forced onto racialized people; there is no such thing as race. This is my preferred term in this book.

The term “New Canadian” means someone whose family immigrated to Canada in their own or their parents’ generation, no matter the colour of their skin. I tend to use it for people who suffer from colour-based racism in North America because of their Asian, Latin American, African, Southern European or Middle Eastern origins. 

Capitalists/workers: When I use the words capitalists and workers, I am making a classic Marxist distinction between the owners of the means of production and those who sell their labour to the owners. The situation in Canada is very confusing. Many people in Canada own a little piece of capital—a rental unit, a piece of land, shares in a company—and some professional workers are much more comfortable and hold much more power than some owners of the means of production, such as farmers, fishers and woodlot owners. The situation becomes a little clearer when you consider the fact that the means of production apparently owned by farmers, fishers, and woodlot owners are in fact largely owned by the banks. In spite of the confusing line between capitalist and worker in Canada, I think the distinction is an important one to use in understanding the underlying power structures that shape our lives. 

CE: See BCE/CE 

Class: As explained above, under “Capitalists/workers,” class lines in Canada are very confusing. Our society is stratified and increasingly unequal. People at different class levels have extremely unequal levels of access to resources, voice in the political system and even control over their own lives. However, drawing the lines is not easy. Class is not simply a matter of income, but of wealth, power and influence. Power and influence come with wealth, but also from culture, colour, class, gender, birth, education, and social and political position. When I use class in this book, I am referring to our different levels of access to wealth and power in Canadian society; I do not try to be precise about defining what the classes are. For those interested in a detailed discussion of class in Canada, a good resource is Tipping Point for Advanced Capitalism: Class, Class Consciousness and Activism in the Knowledge Economy by D. W. Livingstone. 

Classism: The emotional and cultural impact of belonging to a class on the individuals within it, especially the negative effects, like people experiencing poverty internalizing the myths about being lazy or worthless, or people from very wealthy families growing up in boarding schools and summer camps.

Competition/cooperation: Competition is part of a worldview where every person is a detached individual who gets ahead of or falls behind others according to merit, luck, ability or ruthlessness. Competition is almost a religion in North America, something that is seen as an absolute good. Cooperation, on the other hand, is part of a worldview that sees everyone and everything as connected, where no individual can get ahead or fall behind without everyone moving forward or falling back. 

There is a spectrum of cooperative ways of doing things. On one end, negotiation can be a way for two parties to agree on something they want, while agreeing to give up other things. On the other end are collective methods of organization such as consensus decision making, non-hierarchical organizations and communities that share all wealth in common. 

There is a type of friendly rivalry that does not count as competition in the way I am using the word. For example, a group of children in a berry patch decide to see who can pick the most berries in half an hour, or an educational workshop includes a game that pits small groups against each other. The difference between friendly rivalry and competition is that competition results in one person or group being counted as superior to another or obtaining more rewards than another. Friendly rivalry on the other hand results in more benefits for everyone. All of the children can eat more berries because of their picking race. All participants in the workshop learn more because of the rivalry included in the educational game. 

Connection: See Separation/connection 

Conquest: Conquest involves one group of people using power over another in order to control what they have—their resources, land, skills, knowledge, labour or reproductive ability. The power used can be economic, political, social, military, or ideological. 

Cooperation: See Competition/cooperation 

Cultural Competency: The skills required to live, work and communicate well in a diverse group of people.

Deaf/Hearing: Deaf people who identify with their own highly developed culture and language call themselves “Deaf,” with a capital “D.” The privileged group responsible for their oppression are “Hearing.” When the reference is simply to someone who can or cannot or can hear, they are called “deaf ,” “hearing” or “hard of hearing” for people whose hearing is limited.

Diagonal oppressions: The horizontal form of oppression is class. Cutting across classes are the diagonal oppressions of race, gender, age, ability, sexual orientation and so on. They affect everyone who is a member of a certain group, but more or less according to their class. See “The Language of Oppression” in Part One.

Disabled: See people with disabilities.

Discriminatory harassment: Persistent, ongoing communication, in any form, of negative attitudes, beliefs or actions towards an individual or group which might reasonably be known to be unwelcome, with the intention of disparaging a person or group. Forms include: name-calling, jokes or slurs, graffiti, insults, threats, discourteous treatment, and written or physical abuse. It may be either subtle or blunt (Hamilton 1995).

Diversity: People with many differences living, working and communicating in positive way. Often used in a liberal sense, without recognizing historical structural inequality.

DNA: Deoxyribonucleic acid is an acid within the nucleus of a living cell. It contains the genetic code and carries inherited characteristics from generation to generation. 

Economic: This refers to anything having to do with money or wealth. Economic power is the use of money or wealth to get what a person or people want. See Money/income/wealth.

Elite: The small group of people at the top of the class system are the elite, who benefit from the labour, abilities, and resources of everyone else. In this book I also refer to them as “the wealthy,” “the ten percent” and “Davos Man.”

Employed/unemployed: Working class people in Canada are dependent on employment for their livelihood. This creates a great difference in class between those who currently have a job and those who do not. The employed are not the source of oppression of the unemployed, but the employed have many privileges that the unemployed lack. 

Employment equity: A specific form of affirmative action aimed at employment practices such as recruitment, training, hiring, remuneration, staff retention, etc. In Canada, employment equity legislation is aimed at four groups generally under-represented and under-paid in the workforce: Aboriginal people, people with disabilities, visible minorities and women.

Entity: “A thing with a distinct and independent existence” (Oxford English Dictionary). Not a being, because a being is a living thing, but it can mimic a being, in that it can take in and distribute information and act in its own self-interest. In this book, I use it to talk about the nature of institutions.

Equality/equity: See Hierarchy/equality/equity.

Ethnocentrism: An inability to see and accept that other ways of viewing reality and acting exist and have validity outside of the  norms and values of one’s own culture. It is often unconscious and stems from a lack of exposure to the inner workings and values of other cultural groups. Judging other cultures using the standards of one’s own culture. Seeing one’s own culture as better than other cultures (Agger-Gupta 1997).

In this book, I use ethnocentrism to refer to structural oppression based on ethnicity, religion or culture and racism when skin colour is also involved.

Exploitation: When a person or people control another person or people, they can make use of the controlled people’s assets, such as natural resources, labour and reproductive ability, for their own purposes. This is exploitation.

Feminist: There are many lively debates among feminists about exactly what a feminist is. I am part of these discussions and I have my opinions about what does and does not form part of a feminist ideology. However, for the purposes of this book, details are not necessary. I use the simplest possible definition: a feminist is a woman working against sexism. I make a distinction between liberal feminism, which seeks to make women equal to men within the capitalist, colonial system and progressive feminism, which sees sexism as an inextricable part of capitalist and colonial systems. Women, in this worldview, cannot reach equity with men without changing the structural basis of the world we live in.

First Nation: See Indigenous, Aboriginal, Native, First Nation, Inuit, Métis.

Francophone: See Anglophone/Francophone 

Gay: See 2SLGBTQIA+

Gender/sex: Sex refers to the physical characteristics of a person which make them male or female. Gender makes a person male or female through a collection of socially defined traits—appearance, attitudes, roles, preferences, work and so on. A patriarchal society has two rigid gender definitions and can be disrupted when a person of one sex displays the gender traits of the other sex. Other types of societies have more fluid definitions of gender. According to a Two-spirited friend, some First Nations cultures had five or seven genders, with Two-spirited people forming the middle group, half female and half male in their characteristics. They had sacred traditional roles in the society. See 2SLGBTQIA+

Gender Diverse/Gender Variant/Gender Queer/Non-binary: Terms for people whose identity is not defined by the strict male/female binary of Western culture. See 2SLGBTQIA+ and Heterosexism.

Healing: Physical healing involves getting rid of damaged tissue and contaminants from the body and building new tissue to replace what has been injured. Emotional healing involves getting rid of pain, fear, and anger through the appropriate expression of them to supportive listeners and building new, healthier patterns of living to replace the old self-protective ones. Spiritual healing includes physical and emotional healing, with the addition of throwing out all the beliefs and images forced upon a person for purposes of control and replacing them with life-loving beliefs and images coming from deep inside and deep in the roots of the individual’s culture. Since an individual person cannot be fully healthy in a sick society, all of these forms of healing eventually demand that the person become involved in a collective healing process, that is, in building a healthier society. 

Hearing: See Deaf/Hearing 

Heterosexism/homophobia: Heterosexism refers to the structures of society that favour one kind of loving—between one man and one woman in a monogamous marriage with children—over all others. Heterosexism oppresses 2SLGBTQIA+ people, single people, one-parent families, unmarried couples, childless couples and anyone else who does not fit the ideal nuclear family. Homophobia is an individual reaction of hatred, fear or discomfort toward 2SLGBTQIA+ people acted out through discrimination and sometimes violence. 

Heterosexual: See 2SLGBTQIA+, Heterosexism/Homophobia, Transgendered, Transexual and Two-Spirit. 

Hierarchy/equality/equity: Hierarchy is a social arrangement where some have more status, wealth and power than others. Equality and equity refer to a social structure based on everyone having equal value and equal access to power. Equality and equity require a different definition of power from that used in a hierarchy. Hierarchy depends on power-over; equality and equity depend on power-within and power-with. 

Sometimes in this book I use equality as a general term meaning that no one in the society has more access to wealth and power than anyone else. However, equality can also be used to mean equal treatment, which can become unequal when people are in different circumstances. For example, liberal educators often claim that they treat all students equally when all must meet the same course requirements to pass. This approach does not, however, allow for the inequalities that affect the students when they come through the door. One student may live in poverty and has not been able to afford to eat breakfast. Another may have a learning disability that affects their ability to read. Another may have a physical disability that makes getting to class a challenge. Equity, on the other hand, does not assume equal treatment, but rather structures that give each person what they need to thrive. An approach that aims for equality has a problem with affirmative action, which gives extra support to those facing structural/historical barriers until those barriers are overcome. An equity approach has no difficulty with this concept.

Homophobia: See Heterosexism/homophobia 

Human Rights: An international movement based on the belief that all individuals have a claim to the resources and benefits available to humankind and a certain quality of life, including life, liberty, security of person and property, education, health and well-being, privacy, nationality, citizenship and access to public services, employment, just and equal pay, trade union representation, freedom from slavery, torture, arbitrary arrest, exile or detention, equal protection before the law, the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, the right to consenting marriage, freedom of movement and residence, thought, conscience and religion, opinion and expression, assembly and association and freedom from discrimination. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations in 1948. Arising out of the experience of the Second World War, it was written by a Canadian, John Peter Humphrey, Director of the United Nations’s newly created Division of Human Rights, and championed by Eleanor Roosevelt. Canada has human rights legislation at the national and provincial levels designed to protect individuals’ human rights by finding remedies to specific cases of discrimination.

Ideological: This is the element of society that has to do with ideas—what people believe, value, and understand to be true and real, right and wrong, acceptable limits. Ideological power is the ability to shape what people think, believe and value.

Income: See Money/income/wealth. 

Indigenous, Aboriginal, Native, First Nation, Inuit, Métis: Indigenous peoples are the original people in each part of the world, the people who evolved on that particular land for thousands of years. In North American, the Indigenous peoples are those who were here before European settlement, for example, Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, Cree, Innu and many others. 

Just as with Black people, there is a long history of terminology used for Indigenous people over the decades. “Indian” is offensive, an external naming with a long negative history but, because the legislation that still controls every aspect of Indigenous life is the Indian Act of 1876, it remains in use as a legal term. First Nation peoples is a more respectful term for Indigenous peoples who have legal status under the Indian Act. . 

In the 1970s, “Native” was a respectful term inclusive of First Nation, non-status and Inuit people, but it is now considered, if not offensive, at least less respectful. It was replaced during the 1980s and 90s by “Aboriginal,” which is the word that appears in the Canadian Constitution of 1983 and other documents of the time, such as the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which reported in 1996. 

“Aboriginal” is still an exterior naming and, because the Latin article “ab” means “away from” or “not,” ironically, the name actually suggested “not original.” In 2014, The Association of Manitoba Chiefs and the Anishinabek people of Ontario carried out a campaign to replace the word “Aboriginal” with “Indigenous.” This was not only the choice of many Indigenous peoples, but emphasizes the connection with the land and aligns with the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The Inuit are the Indigenous people native to the far North of Canada, Alaska and Greenland and include the Inuvialut and Inupiat peoples. They are closely related to the Yupik of Alaska and eastern Russia.

The Métis are a people with a distinct culture descended from seventeenth-century French men involved in the fur trade and Indigenous women. The term is accepted legally for the Métis Nation of Western Canada, contested for others, such as the Acadian-Mi’kmaq/Maliseet descendants of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.

Internalized oppression: Unless oppressed people have a source of pride in themselves as people, or have done work to recover their pride, they can come to believe the negative things that are said about them by the dominant group and even act them out. This is called “internalized oppression.” Liberation struggles are very limited when the participants are not also freeing themselves from these negative beliefs about themselves. 

Intersectionality: This term was coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in a 1989 essay about anti-discrimination law, where she pointed out that feminist and anti-racist politics both fail to address the experiences of Black women because they each focus on a single factor. When an individual experiences more than one form of oppression, they cannot be separated and they compound one another’s effects. As I said in Part One, my mental image of intersectionality is a vast, tangled, ever-shifting web of structural oppressions with each of us living our lives at a unique point where its threads intersect.

Intersex: See 2SLGBTQIA+

Inuit: See Indigenous/Aboriginal/Native/First Nation/Inuit/Métis.

Justice: Justice, in Western culture, most often refers to crime and punishment, as in “the justice system.” I use it, instead, to talk about the goal of ending oppression, returning to cooperative, connected forms of societies, and healing our centuries of colonialism by making reparations.

Lesbian: See 2SLGBTQIA+

Leverage Point: A lever makes it possible to move objects many times your own weight. Most people have used a simple lever, such as a pry bar or long plank with a stone under it. Likewise, in a social justice strategy, a “leverage point” is an opportunity for a person or group with less power to move someone or something with more power. A certain piece of legislation, a good contact in places of power, fortunate timing can all be leverage points. 

Liberal/Neoliberal: Individually, every person has her or his own particular ideological system; that is, beliefs, values, world-view, and so on. Individual ideological systems can be grouped into collective ideological systems using certain key traits. One of these is the way of thought generally called “liberal.” 

Historically, liberal ideology comes from the time of the “liberal” revolutions—French and American—that overthrew monarchies and brought a merchant “middle” class to power. It was originally defined as an economic theory by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. The key principle was no government intervention in economic matters. Wealth, according to this theory, comes from “free” enterprise, “free” competition, and “free” trade. After 1870, liberalism was modified by thinkers who believed that it was appropriate for government to regulate economic matters to a certain degree and intervene in the social realm to prevent conflict. In the 1930s, this form of modified liberalism, as defined by John Maynard Keynes, inspired the “New Deal” of the Franklin Roosevelt government in the United States. Since about 1975, however, many powerful political and economic players have worked to return liberalism to its roots. Generally called “neo-liberalism” this philosophy promotes a “free” market with no state intervention, cutting of expenditures for social services, deregulation, privatization, and elimination of the concept of “the public good.” Because of the changes liberalism has gone through during its 250-year history, the term is now sometimes confusing, with different connotations in Europe and the United States. 

When I use the term in this book, I am referring to an ideological system defined primarily by its belief in individuality. Equality of individuals in this way of thinking is a given, something already achieved or achievable with some reform. Liberal systems put a great deal of emphasis on individual freedom and negotiated common solutions to common problems. However, because liberals see people and groups as basically equal, the negotiations often fail to recognize the unequal resources and power of different parties. Liberal societies are shaped by those who have power, money, and historical advantages, because it is assumed that they get their way through merit. Liberals are reluctant to recognize historical and structural inequalities. 

In a liberal democracy, decisions are made by majority vote. This system totally ignores the patterns of who votes and who does not; who can purchase the means of influence and who cannot; who has historical reasons to believe they will be heard in the process if they take an active part and those whose history has taught them not to bother because they will not be heard anyway; and other inequities in the process. Liberals believe in tolerance of all differences, views and opinions, with no judgment. In fact, liberals often deny differences all together. This makes liberals wonderful, kind, accepting friends and relatives, but it also means that the more powerful forces in a liberal society are free to increase their power without being judged or limited. 

Liberal ideology is the dominant one in Canada. To the right of liberal thought is the conservative minority, who believe in a God-given hierarchy that is the only “right” way to run a society. To the left is the progressive, or radical, minority who believe that equality is yet to be achieved and requires radical systemic change. Sometimes the conservative and radical minorities in Canada are more comfortable with each other than with the liberal majority, in spite of their opposed views—at least both groups have a sense of right and wrong that can be defined. Liberals are much harder, if not impossible, to pin down. The experience of social change workers in Canada is often one of “trying to nail jelly to the wall the wall.”

Liberation: When an oppressed or exploited group or individual moves to change their situation, they are participating in a process of liberation. Sometimes the goal is to reverse the exploiting roles, sometimes it is to change the whole system of exploitation into one of cooperation. Both are still called liberation in common English. When I use the word I mean only the struggle to change exploitation to cooperation. 

Marginalized/margins: Groups that have a history of oppression and exploitation are pushed further and further from the centres of power that control the shape and destiny of the society. These are the margins of society, and this is the process of marginalization. 

Matrilineal: A social system where children trace their ancestry and take their name from their mother. 

Métis: See Indigenous/Aboriginal/Native/First Nation/Métis.

Middle class: I usually put the term “middle class” in quotation marks because I am deliberately using the term inaccurately. According to Marx, the middle class is made up of those who own wealth such as land, factories or rental properties. In other words, the middle class is the capitalist class. However, many Canadians use the term vaguely. Most often we use it when referring to white-collar workers, people with a university degree, or people whose income is above the poverty level but below “rich.” In anti-poverty work, “middle class” has come to mean those who have an education and/or a job and are, at least for the time being, out of poverty. In this book, I am using the term in this way. For those who want a thorough, up to date discussion of class in Canada, a good resource is Tipping Point for Advanced Capitalism: Class, Class Consciousness and Activism in the Knowledge Economy by D. W. Livingstone.

Military: This refers to armies, police, or other armed forces. Military power is the use of armed forces. 

Misogyny: See Sexism/misogyny 

Money/income/wealth: Money or income is the amount of currency a person has or gains from employment or another means such as interest, inheritance or grants. Wealth is money invested in the means of production; that is, money invested in order to make more money, or capital.

Multinational or transnational corporation: A multinational or transnational corporation (often abbreviated to simply “multinational” or “transnational”) is a large company or group of companies operating in more than one country. They often have vast economic power, which they use to obtain political, military, and ideological power. In this century multinationals have achieved power beyond the control of any individual government. In fact, they control some governments and heavily influence others. They are the most powerful institutions in the world today.

Mysogyny: See Sexism/Mysogyny

Mythology: A collection of beliefs and stories about the past or about a group of people in the present. These beliefs and stories are a powerful part of ideology. 

Native: See Indigenous, Aboriginal, Native, First Nation, Inuit, Métis.

Neoliberal: See Liberal/Neoliberal

New Canadians: See Black/African-Nova Scotian/People of Colour/BIPOC/Racialized People/Visible Minorities/New Canadians. 

North: See South/North 

Oppression/oppressor/oppressed: Oppression occurs when and individual or group uses different forms of power to keep another individual or group in a powerless position in order to exploit them. The oppressor uses the power; the oppressed are exploited. 

Pagan: A person who follows one of the old earth-based forms of spirituality. The term comes from the Latin word for “countryside” and developed during the centuries when European cities and educated classes had become Christian, but the rural people still followed the old ways. 

Patriarchy: Put most simply, patriarchy is a system where males are dominant over women, children and people with non-binary gender identities. 

Patrilineal: A social system where children trace their ancestry and take their name from their father. 

People of Colour: See Black/African-Nova Scotian/People of Colour/BIPOC/Racialized People/Visible Minorities/New Canadians. 

People with disabilities/Able-bodied: The large and varied group known as people with disabilities includes people who suffer from completely different forms of oppression. Those who move with the aid of wheelchairs face very different types of discrimination from those who suffer chronic pain, those whose mental abilities are different from the majority, or those who are Deaf. Disabilities can be physical, intellectual or perceptual (for example, learning disabilities). The different disability-based oppressions should not usually be thrown together, when advocating for services, for example. Any joint action among the various groups must be organized carefully, as a coalition rather than one group with completely common interests. However, for purposes of analyzing the underlying patterns of oppression, I have put all the different forms of disability-based oppression together, because I feel that they all have a common base—a society which has war-making at its heart and therefore places a highly value on physical ability. Friends who experience this form of oppression have taught me that it is important to say, “people with disabilities” rather than “disabled people.” The latter suggests that people with disabilities are not complete as people. 

Political: In Nova Scotia, when people use the term “political,” they are usually referring to a connection with a political party. I use the word much more broadly, including any activity that gives a person or group more or less voice in the process of making decisions that affect the society we live in. 

Politically correct: In the 1970s, this was a self-deprecating term used by people involved in social change. By the 1990s, the term had a negative connotation of “holier than thou.” It has become a backlash term, intended to reduce struggles for justice and equity to a matter of enforced false politeness.

Popular education: Also called “Action/Reflection Learning” and “Conscientization,” this is a practice of adult education based on a socialist understanding of class and oppression. It is directed at people who are marginalized from the resources and benefits of society. It’s aim is to help people question the worldview that they learn from the oppressor, replacing it with analysis and action for social change based on the experience of the oppressed. 

Unlike most other forms of adult education, the action component is integral. Learning in popular education is depicted as a cycle or spiral including experience, reflection, analysis and action. The spiral is illustrated in on the first page of Appendix One: Notes on Educating Allies. Developed in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Pacific Islands and Asia, popular education came to North America primarily through voluntary international development and solidarity organizations. The main theorist associated with this school is Paulo Freire (1972) (1973) (1974). Some resources for popular education are listed in Appendix One.

Power: I use the word power in three ways: power-over (the ability to force others to do what you want, including oppress or exploit them); power-within (the strength that comes from healing and connecting with one’s authentic identity) and power-with (cooperative power, based on consensus).

Prejudice: See Racism/prejudice 

Private ownership: Private ownership refers to an individual or company made up of individual investors owning and controlling the means of production, that is, land, factories, and so on. The objects a person owns and uses in everyday life—clothes, a bicycle, a house, a car, a piano, and the like—are not included in private ownership. These are one’s personal property. 

Queer: See 2SLGBTQIA+

Racialized people: See Black/African-Nova Scotian/People of Colour/BIPOC/Racialized People/Visible Minorities/New Canadians. 

Racism/prejudice: Racism is structural oppression based on skin colour. The term can be used to include oppression based on language or religion, but I have used other terms for these—language-based oppression, religious oppression Anti-semitism and Islamophobia. Racism is a social/political/economic system that privileges white people. The form practised by individuals is racial prejudice, bias, bigotry or discrimination. 

Reverse discrimination: Coming from a liberal worldview, this is the belief that if you take steps to moderate a structural oppression, you are discriminating against the dominant group, an accusation often leveled against affirmative action and employment equity measures. From a structural perspective, reverse discrimination cannot exist.

Reproductive capacity: The ability to produce the next generation. One of the purposes of sexism is to give men control over women’s reproductive capacity. This is why sexism is a key component of capitalism and colonialism. It allows the system to reproduce its structure, values and labour force from generation to generation.

Resources: Resources are what people need to accomplish anything. They include land, food, forests, fish, money, skills, information, knowledge, social mobility, and so on. 

Roma or Romany people: A nomadic people of Europe, originating in India, now spread all over the world. They have been severely oppressed by white European-descended people for centuries, and still are today. The outsiders’ name for them is Gypsies. 

Separation/connection: Separation is the basis for oppression, competition, conquest, and hierarchy. It is the belief that people are independent from each other and nature, and actions can be taken in isolation, without affecting everyone and everything. Connection is the opposite. It is the belief that everything is linked—nothing can happen to one that does not affect all. It is unthinkable to oppress or exploit another person in a system of connection. 

Sex: See Gender/sex 

Sexism/misogyny: Sexism is the political/economic/social/ideological system that privileges men and oppresses women; misogyny is hatred, fear, and mistreatment of women by individual men. 

Sexual orientation: This refers to a person’s emotional, physical, and/or sexual attraction to people of their own or the opposite sex. See 2SLGBTQIA+

Solidarity: Acting in support of another individual or group out of awareness that none of our issues or struggles are separate. What affects one, sooner or later affects all.

South/North: The world is divided into South and North as a result of centuries of colonialism. The Northern countries, particularly in Europe and North America, are industrialized and are understood to be white; the Southern countries, particularly in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific, live by selling raw materials and are populated predominantly by racialized people. 

“South” has replaced the earlier descriptor “Third World.” Third World began as a self-naming by countries who tried to stay out of the Cold War. It was adopted by twenty-nine post-colonial states at the African-Asian Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955. However, the term was picked up by North Americans and made into a hierarchy—First World (the capitalist North), Second World (the socialist North), and Third World (the South). As a result, many people of the South rejected “Third World” along with “underdeveloped,” “developing,” and “less developed.” All of these terms deny the process by which the North deliberately “un-develops” the South through colonial oppression and exploitation. 

Straight: This is a common slang term for heterosexual people. 

Struggle: Struggle refers to the ongoing efforts of oppressed people to achieve liberation. 

Tokenism: A dominant group sometimes promotes a few members of an oppressed group to high positions and then uses them to claim there are no barriers preventing any member of that group from reaching a position with power and status. The people promoted are tokens, and the process is called tokenism. Tokens can also be used as a buffer between the dominant and oppressed groups. It is harder for the oppressed group to name the oppression and make demands when members of their own group are representing the dominant group. An organization can place tokens in competition with one another, with some characterized as “good” and others as “bad.” This is a way of reinforcing the behaviour the institution requires of those who would assimilate.

The term “token” can have a negative connotation, implying criticism of oppressed group members who choose or are forced into token positions. As Tim Wise says, the criticism should be applied to the game, not those forced to play it (2009).

Tokenism can also refer to the adoption of “politically correct” terminology and appearances to disguise the lack of change to structures of wealth, power and status. 

Transformation: Beyond simply change, the reshaping of a system, structure or institution around new goals, in this case, more just goals.

Transgendered: This is a term that includes a wide variety of people who do not fit clearly into the male/female gender division of Western patriarchal culture. Some people included in this group are: transexuals (see definition below), cross-dressers/transvestites, drag queens, androgynes (people with physical traits of both male and female) and intersex people (people with primary sex characteristics of both male and female; that is, chromosome, hormone or genital features, formerly called “hermaphrodites.”) Transgendered people can also be referred to as “non-binary,” “gender variant” or “queer.”

Transexual: Some people have a strong sense that they have been born into the wrong body. Their identity is female, but their body is male, or the other way around. Such people are referred to as “transexual.” Some choose to live publicly as the gender indicated by their body, some choose to dress and live as the gender of their identity, in spite of the sex of their body. Some pursue medical treatment, such as hormones and surgery, to change their body to fit their identity. Transexual people suffer from the oppression of heterosexism. They can share in some issues with gay/ lesbian/bisexual people, but in other cases, their issues are separate. 

Trauma: “An inner injury, a lasting rupture or split within the self due to difficult or hurtful events. Trauma is a psychic injury, lodged in our nervous system, mind and body, lasting long past the originating incidents, triggerable at any moment.” Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal, p 20.

Two-Spirit: In the belief systems of some First Nations, there are more than two genders, most commonly seven or nine. Each of these genders involves a different combination of the characteristics Western society defines as “masculine” or “feminine.” In the middle of this range of genders are people who are equally “male” and “female.” These are the “two-spirit” people. In many Native cultures, two-spirited people were held in high esteem. In some, they were thought to have particular spiritual gifts and were trained to be spiritual leaders and healers. In many cultures, not only North American, but all over the world, two-spirited people had or still have particular roles, for example, as caregivers for children. Some two-spirit people are what the mainstream culture would define as gay/lesbian/bisexual, but not all. These two terms do not define the same thing. A two-spirited nature encompasses much more than just sexual orientation. It is a complete gender identity. (This information was given by Tuma Young, a two-spirited Mi’kmaq gay man, at a workshop on two-spirited people, Atlantic Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual Conference, Halifax NS, 1993.)

Unemployed: See Employed/unemployed 

Violence: I use the word “violence” in the broadest sense, that is, any action by a person or group that causes harm or is against the interests of any other person or group. The extreme form of violence involves physical force, but there are more subtle means as well—threats, damage to self-esteem, humiliation, cruel humour, withholding resources, ignoring needs, making someone invisible, providing and controlling addictive substances. 

Visible minorities: See Black/African-Nova Scotian/People of Colour/BIPOC/Racialized People/Visible Minorities/New Canadians.

Wealth: See Money/income/wealth.

Western: Western is not a term with any agreed-upon definition and can be controversial. I use it when I mean a thought tradition that evolved in the early empires of the Mediterranean circa 3000 BCE, becoming more firmly defined in Greece, carried into Europe with the Roman Empire and then spread into the rest of the world through colonialism. It is characterized by individualism, private ownership, competition, male dominance, hierarchy, conquest and exploitation. It overlaps with, but is not quite synonymous with, “Global North,” “European,” “settler colonial” and what, in my books, I call “oppressive societies.”

Witch: Witch comes from the Anglo-Saxon word “wicce.” Some authors say wicce means “to bend or shape,” others say it simply means “wise.” A witch is a spiritual leader in European pagan traditions. Witches can be male or female. Witches were once healers and female witches acted as midwives. Many people accused of being witches were imprisoned, tortured, and burned to death during the witch hunts of the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries. Most of those who were persecuted were women. After this time, pagan traditions went underground, and witches became a Halloween caricature of evil. Halloween itself is a remnant of the European pagan tradition where the last day of October was celebrated as Sahmain, the Wiccan new year, when the “veil between the worlds” was at its thinnest. Both the tradition and the witches are now re-emerging.

Workers/working class: See Capitalists/Workers