RACIAL EQUITY IS THE ONLY PATH

A message from the Chestnut Hill Institutional Leaders

Once again, we find ourselves grieving the unjust loss of life and acts of violence against Black Americans in our country. As a group of community-based organizations that work together and collaborate on a regular basis, we unequivocally condemn violence, standing in solidarity with other communities and with every person who rejects hatred, racism, bigotry, intimidation, and social division.

 As leaders of various Chestnut Hill institutions, we want to make it known that:

• We believe that Black Lives Matter
•  We maintain that peaceful protest and informed discourse are foundations of American democracy
•  We believe that racism creates inequity and inequality in economic and educational opportunity, housing, health care, and environmental security
•   We pledge to work toward the elimination of racism and the social inequities, by working together collectively, and being proactive in our individual activities, as never before in order to create a more just, inclusive, and peaceful society
•  We commit to awareness, growth and action through self-examination, recognition and dismantling of power imbalances where they exist, and institutional accountability within our organizations

Signed jointly by:

Chestnut Hill Business Association
Chestnut Hill College
Chestnut Hill Community Association
Chestnut Hill Conservancy
Chestnut Hill Hospital
Chestnut Hill Local
Crefeld School
Friends of the Wissahickon
Morris Arboretum
Norwood-Fontbonne Academy
Philadelphia Cricket Club
Springside Chestnut Hill Academy
Woodmere Art Museum

Diversity Terminology

• Asexual: someone who does not experience sexual attraction.
• Biracial: a person who identifies as coming from two races; a person whose biological parents are of two different races.
• Bigender/Dual Gender: a person who possesses and expresses a distinctly masculine persona and a distinctly feminine persona and is comfortable in and enjoys presenting in both gender roles.
• Bisexual: a person who is attracted to people of their own gender as well as another gender.
• Cisgender: a description for a person whose gender identity, gender expression and sex assigned at birth align (e.g., man, masculine and male).
• Ethnicity: the culture of people in a given geographic region, including their language, heritage, religion and customs.
• First Nations People: individuals who identify as those who were the first people to live on the Western Hemisphere continent; people also identified as Native Americans.
• Gender: social, cultural and psychological traits linked to males and females that define them as masculine or feminine.
• Gender Identity: refers to a person’s internal, deeply felt sense of being a man or woman, or something other or in between, 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.
• Heterosexual: a person attracted to members of another sex or gender.
• Homosexual: a person who is attracted to members of what they identify as their own sex or gender (the terms Gay and Lesbian are preferred).
• Intersex: a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with reproductive organs, sexual anatomy or chromosomes that are not considered “standard” for either male or female.
• LGBTQIA: an inclusive term for those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual.
• Microaggression: brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership
• Multiracial: a person who identifies as coming from two or more races; a person whose biological parents are of two or more different races.
• Multiethnic: a person who identifies as coming from two or more ethnicities; a person whose biological parents are of two or more ethnicities.
• Pansexual (also referred to as omnisexual or polysexual): referring to the potential for sexual attractions or romantic love toward people of all gender identities and biological sexes; the concept of pansexuality deliberately rejects the gender binary.
• People of Color: used primarily in the United States to describe any person who is not white; the term is meant to be inclusive among non-white groups, emphasizing common experiences of racism.
• Prejudice: is a preconceived judgment or opinion, usually based on limited information
• Queer: an umbrella term that can refer to anyone who transgresses society’s view of gender, sexual orientation or sexuality.
• Questioning: refers to an individual who is uncertain of her/his sexual orientation, gender or identity.
• Race: refers to the concept of dividing people into populations or groups on the basis of various sets of physical characteristics that result from genetic ancestry. Sociologists use the concept of race to describe how people think of and treat groups of people, as people very commonly classify each other according to race (e.g., as African-American or as Asian). Most sociologists believe that race is not “real” in the sense that there are no distinctive genetic or physical characteristics that truly distinguish one group of people from another; instead, different groups share overlapping characteristics.
• Racism: prejudice plus power; a cultural phenomenon; systemic subordination of members of targeted racial groups
• Religion: a system of beliefs, usually spiritual in nature, and often in terms of a formal, organized denomination.
• Sex: separate from gender, this term refers to the cluster of biological, chromosomal and anatomical features associated with maleness and femaleness in the human body. Sexual dimorphism is often thought to be a concrete reality, whereas in reality the existence of Intersex individuals points to a multiplicity of sexes in the human population. Sex is often used synonymously with gender in this culture. Although the two terms are related, they should be defined separately to differentiate the biological (“sex”) from the sociocultural (“gender”).
• Sexual Orientation: refers to the gender(s) that a person is emotionally, physically, romantically and erotically attracted to. Examples of sexual orientation include homosexual, bisexual, heterosexual and asexual. Trans and gender-variant people may identify with any sexual orientation, and their sexual orientation may or may not change before, during or after gender transition.
• Social Identity: 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.
• Stereotype: a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing
• Transgender: has many definitions. It is frequently used as an umbrella term to refer to all people who deviate from their assigned gender at birth or the binary gender system. This includes transsexuals, cross-dressers, genderqueers, drag kings, drag queens, two-spirit people and others. Some transgender people feel they exist not within one of the two standard gender categories but rather somewhere between, beyond or outside of those two genders.
• Transsexual: refers to a person who experiences a mismatch of the sex he/she was born as and the sex he/she identifies as. A transsexual sometimes undergoes medical treatment to change his/her physical sex to match his/her sex identity through hormone treatments and/or surgically. Not all transsexuals can have or desire surgery.
• Unconscious Bias: social stereotypes that individuals form outside their own consciousness, we all have them as a result of our need to socially categorize