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The NAC International Perspectives have defined anti-racism as “the active process of identifying and eliminating racism by changing systems, organizational structures, policies, practices, and attitudes so that power is redistributed and shared equitably.”

Anti-Blackness is a term for those distinct actions, behaviors, and systems that are directed specifically towards dominating or subordinating Black people within U.S. American society. Anti-Blackness includes the act of labeling features of Blackness and Black cultural artifacts—such as clothes, speech, hairstyles, and music—as desirable, without acknowledging the humanity of Black people.

To decolonize is to recognize, reject, and replace the systems implemented by the colonizer. According to Leigh Patel, “Much of this work begins from the assumptions that communities that have been under the heel of colonization hold within them deeper resources and ways of being, refusing to be defined through the colonizer’s terms.”

The intention behind the term BIPOC—which stands for Black, Indigenous, People of Color—is to center the experiences of Black and Indigenous peoples in the United States, while making a distinction between these two groups and other groups of color.