Learning and Resources

The NAACP’s principal objective is to ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality of minority group citizens of United States and eliminate race prejudice. The NAACP seeks to remove all barriers of racial discrimination through the democratic processes. Here are some sources of information on the issues.

Definition of Key Terms

Race: 
“A specious classification created by European Americans to place themselves at the top of a hierarchical social structure” 
– The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond 

Racism: 
“Racism generally means believing that a person’s behavior is determined by stable inherited characteristics deriving from separate racial stocks; each of these distinctive attributes is then evaluated in relation to ideas of superiority and inferiority.” 
– Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society 

Trigger: 
“An incident that threatens an individual’s’ self concept, challenges their belief system or activates a previous negative experience.” 
– Ramapo for Children 

White Fragility: 
“A state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. It is white people’s responsibility to be less fragile; People of Color don’t need to twist themselves into knots trying to navigate us as painlessly as possible.”
-Robin DiAngelo 

White Privilege: 
“A historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of benefits including preferences for and better treatment of white people, and exemption from racial oppression; and costs including the loss of unique histories and cultural expressions, and dehumanization that disconnects white people from people of color’s humanity and violent experiences of racism.” 
– Peggy McIntosh & Paul Kivel 

White Supremacy: 
“White supremacy is the racist ideology that is based upon the belief that white people are superior in many ways to people of other races and that therefore, white people should be dominant over other races. White supremacy is not just an attitude or a way of thinking. It also extends to how systems and institutions are structured to uphold this white dominance.” 
-Leyla Saad, Me and White Supremacy