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Wordnik MenuHome March 31, 2024 by Shelley Gaske Five Words From … White Supremacy is All Around by Dr. Akilah Cadet Welcome to the latest installment of Five words from …” our series which highlights interesting words from interesting books! In White Supremacy is All Around: Notes from a Black Disabled Woman in a White World , Dr. Akilah Cadet shares her life and teachings to show the shadow structures in the United States (and beyond) that continue to give white, non-disabled, cis people advantages at the cost of others. Embracing the adage when you’re used to privilege, equality feels like oppression,” she provides an actionable framework to label and dismantle white supremacy. accomplice An accomplice is someone who uses their privilege to dismantle racism, oppression, and white supremacy … An accomplice uses their privilege as a road map to know how to show up for others. They are unafraid of what their fellow white peers will say as they embrace being the odd one out.” Dr. Cadet illustrates the difference between an accomplice and an ally. For her, being an ally is a fair-weather state of being. An accomplice is the person creating daily habits and actions to call out oppression, with or without self-promotion. intersectionality A term coined by Kimberle Crenshaw, intersectionality means the inner sections of our identities, who and what we are.” Where ethnicity, class, gender, and characteristics intersect.” Depending on the situation, a white woman can choose to be seen as white or a woman. Being a Black, disabled woman, Dr. Cadet’s experiences are shaped by being unable to separate these identities; she is not given the opportunity to self-label when living in white dominant culture. For more on intersectionality, see Kimberlé Crenshaw: The urgency of intersectionality and Intersectionality, explained: meet Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term . intent The intent was not to harm but the outcome was just that.” ‘That wasn’t my intent’ is an excuse to not do what you said you would do or evade accountability for harm or impact.” When someone says something that offends another person, Dr. Cadet explains that the speaker’s intent may not have been to harm—but if it did, the speaker still needs to acknowledge accountability for unknowingly causing harm. When speakers refuse to recognize the impact of their words, it may be a way for them to hide behind bias and miss an opportunity to be an accomplice. white centering When white people change the narrative of the story, situation, and harm caused to them–not the BIPOC person.” Dr. Cadet meets a white woman who openly says the N-word during a presentation on the wine industry. Though Dr. Cadet asks her not to use it, the white woman still does. When confronted about it later, the white lady called the situation a deeply emotional experience for me,” negating the experience and emotions of Dr. Cadet and instead placing herself and her feelings as the center of the story. white supremacy White supremacy is a structure, system, process, policy approach, benefit and VIP club only for white people. It is the overt and covert racism that Black people experience, the feeling white people have of being superior and feeling like the best. Simultaneously, it is the feeling of resistance when being held accountable.” Dr. Cadet acknowledges that people born into white privilege can have difficulty seeing and stepping away from it. No one loves the feeling of realizing they may have been wrong about something, or had advantages they weren’t fully aware of; Dr. Cadet stresses that the ability to learn and unlearn personal and systemic bias is key for those with various forms of privilege. Got a book you’d like to see given the five words from” treatment? Nominate it through this form , or email us! February 14, 2024 by Erin McKean Five Words From … Extremely Online by Taylor Lorenz Welcome to the latest installment of Five words from …” our series which highlights interesting words from interesting books! Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence and Power on the Internet , from technology journalist Taylor Lorenz, explores how social media platforms have changed what it means to create and consume content, who content creators are, and how they’ve used their influence—for good and ill. broetry By 2017, LinkedIn creators posting viral inspirational hustle porn known as ‘broetry’ were gaining massive audiences, forcing the platform to adapt.” In a 2017 BuzzFeed article about the phenomenon, a top ‘broet’ described his broetry philosophy: Don’t overestimate your readers’ intelligence. Be known for one or two adverbs.” ceWEBrities She hobnobbed with other online creators, then referred to as ‘ceWEBrities.'” Other short-lived ‘web’ blends include webize , webliography , weblish , and webutation . cinemagraphs Among the seeds tossed by Tumblr users were GIFs, or short looping images, and cinemagraphs, a type of animated GIF.” The word ‘cinemagraph’ was coined by New York City-based photographer Jamie Beck and Web designer Kevin Burg. lifecasting She was a journalist who used photos, text, video—every medium available—to invite users into her world and build her brand. She talked about dating and sex in one breath and the trajectory of the tech world in the next. She called it ‘lifecasting.'” Lifecasting in real-time is called livecasting . Some pundits tried to create a distinction between ‘lifecasting’ (framed as sharing the minutiae of daily existence) and ‘ mindcasting ‘ (sharing deeper, more philosophical thoughts alongside, or inspired by, life events). mamasphere As the blogosphere expanded throughout the mid-2000s, so did themamasphere .” Mommy bloggers formed loose collaborative groups, cross-linking to other mothers and adding them to their ‘blog roll,’ a list of blogs linked as a list on one side of a website.” Other internet-related -sphere words include manosphere , vlogosphere , and wikisphere . Got a book you’d like to see given the five words from” treatment? Nominate it through this form , or email us! January 6, 2024 by Erin McKean Five Words From … Thinking with Your Hands by Susan Goldin-Meadow Welcome to the latest installment of Five words from …” our series which highlights interesting words from interesting books! Thinking with Your Hands , from cognitive psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow , will open your eyes to the parallel track of communication that is literally in your hands. Thinking with Your Hands is a fascinating, well-written, and deeply researched book on the importance of gesture that will appeal to Wordniks and other language enthusiasts. emblems When people hear I work on gesture, they immediately assume I’m studying gestures like thumbs-up , okay , and shhhh —conventional gestures, called emblems , that everyone in a particular culture knows.” (If you’re interested in learning more about emblems in different cultures, you may enjoy Dictionary of Gestures: Expressive Comportments and Movements in Use Around the World . Bonus: this Wordnik list of emblematic gestures.) homesign The hand movements are called homesigns (because they were created in the home) and the children homesigners .” This video shows a Nicaraguan homesigner. intensional and extensional In an intensional event , the object of the action does not exist at the beginning of the event: ‘I baked a cake,’ ‘I drew a picture’—the event involves creating the object. In contrast, in an extensional event , the object is present at the start: ‘I cut the cake,” ‘I ripped the picture’—the event involves acting on an existing object.” spatialized By using gesture, the children ‘ spatialized ‘ their thoughts (they literally put them out into space), which, in this instance, helped them take more than one perspective on a moral dilemma.” teachable moment It feels like a ‘teachable moment’—a time when teaching a particular topic or idea is relatively easy, often...