Words matter: Creating a language guide to inform your communications.

About

Is your organization working on how it can be more inclusive? One of the many ways you can do that is through the messaging and content you produce. Words matter. These Language guides provide instruction for respect and dignity, while steering clear of prejudice and stereotypes.

1. Accessible Language: A Guide for Disability Etiquette

2. I am Disabled: On Identity-First Versus People-First Language 

3. LGBTQ-Inclusive Language Dos and Don’ts

4. Talking About Pronouns 

5. Racial Equity Tools Glossary

6. Covering poverty: What to avoid and how to get it right

7. Inmate. Prisoner. Other. Discussed.

8. Sierra Club’s Equity Language Guide

9. Reporting Guides

10. The Social Justice Phrase Guide

11. A Progressive’s Style Guide

12. A Brilliant Way of Living Our Lives: How to Talk About Human Rights

Demos Assigned Racial Equity Readings

Note: I have not yet vetted this list. Posting here for future reference and reading.

REPORT — “Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Race”
Independent Television Service
http://resources.css.edu/diversityservices/docs/tenthingseveryoneshouldknowaboutrace.pdf

ARTICLE — “The Historical Origins and Development of Racism”
George Frederickson
https://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-02-01.htm

BOOK — The History of White People
Nell Irvin Painter (excerpts)

ARTICLE — “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack”
Peggy McIntosh
http://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/mcintosh.pdf

ARTICLES — “How Immigrants Come to Be Seen as Americans”
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/11/15/how-immigrants-come-to-be-seen-as-americans

BOOK — Race: Are We So Different?
Alan Goodman, Yolanda Moses, Joseph Jones (excerpts)

BOOK — Racing to Justice: Transforming Our Conceptions of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society
john a. powell (excerpts)

BOOK — Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (excerpts)

BOOK — Searching for Whitopia: An Improbably Journey to the Heart of White America
Rich Benjamin (excerpts)

ARTICLE — “The Case for Reparations”
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

ARTICLE — “A Dream Undone”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/magazine/voting-rights-act-dream-undone.html

REPORT — “Whiter Jobs, Lower Wages: Occupational Segregation and the Lower Wages of Black Men”
http://s1.epi.org/files/page/-/BriefingPaper288.pdf

REPORT — “The Gender Wage Gap by Occupation and Race and Ethnicity”
http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/the-gender-wage-gap-by-occupation-and-by-race-and-ethnicity-2013

BOOK — Freedom is Not Enough
Nancy Maclean (excerpts)

BOOK — Harvest of Empires
Juan Gonzalez (excerpts)

BLOG — “On Two Year Anniversary of Blow to VRA, New Evidence That Voter ID Laws Are Racially Biased”
http://www.demos.org/blog/6/4/15/two-year-anniversary-blow-vra-new-evidence-voter-id-laws-are-racially-biased

BLOG — “Racism is Destroying the Right to Vote”
http://www.demos.org/blog/5/18/15/racism-destroying-right-vote

BOOK — A Different Mirror
Ronald Takaki (excerpts)

WEBSITE — Kanaʻiolowalu
Kanaʻiolowalu is a project of the Native Hawaiian Roll Commission. It is a campaign to reunify Native Hawaiians in the self-recognition of our unrelinquished sovereignty
http://kanaiolowalu.org/about/

ARTICLE — “Famous are the Flowers: Ha waiian Resistance Then–and Now”
Elinor Langer
http://www.thenation.com/article/famous-are-flowers-hawaiian-resistance-then-and-now/

REPORT — “Tribal Nations & The United States, National Congress of American Indians”
http://www.ncai.org/attachments/PolicyPaper_VmQazPEqbvZDMeaDvbupWTSZLmzyzBKOknQRXnUyoVMoyFkEWGH_Tribal%20Nations%20and%20the%20United%20States_An%20Introduction.pdf

ARTICLE — “Struggle for Chicano Liberation”
Bill Gallegos
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-8/lrs-chicano/index.htm

BOOK—Yellow
Frank Wu (excerpts)

BOOK — Everyday Bias
Howard Ross (excerpts)