Glossary: Language Justice
Language Justice
The term “language justice” is a powerful way to describe individuals’ fundamental right to have their voices heard.
Language justice is about building and sustaining multilingual spaces in our organizations and social movements so that everyone’s voice can be heard both as an individual and as part of a diversity of communities and cultures. Valuing language justice means recognizing the social and political dimensions of language and language access, while working to dismantle language barriers, equalize power dynamics, and build strong communities for social and racial justice.
(source: https://nesfp.org/sites/default/files/resources/language_justice_toolkit.pdf )
Related Terms:
The term race refers to the concept of dividing people into populations or groups on the basis of various sets of physical characteristics (which usually result from genetic ancestry).
intersectionality is the theory that the overlap of various social identities, as race, gender, sexuality, and class, contributes to the specific type of systemic oppression and discrimination experienced by an individual (often used attributively).
The objective of creating a fair and equal society in which each individual matters, their rights are recognized and protected, and decisions are made in ways that are fair and honest.
Racial justice is the systematic fair treatment of people of all races, resulting in equitable opportunities and outcomes for all.
The term “language justice” is a powerful way to describe individuals’ fundamental right to have their voices heard.
Identity politics is the term used to describe an anti-authoritarian political and cultural movement that gained prominence in the USA and Europe in the mid-1980s, asking questions about identity, repression, inequality and injustice and often focusing on the experience of marginalized groups.
In relation to art, the term diaspora is used to discuss artists who have migrated from one part of the world to another, (or whose families have), and who express their diverse experiences of culture and identity in the work they make; often expressing alternative narratives, and challenging the ideas and structures of the established art world.
Decolonising the art institution usually means reviewing the canon and questioning its ability to include different voices or perspectives (remembering that decolonisation is not the same as diversity).
Racial equity is about eliminating racism.
Equity is the outcome when race will no longer be a predictor of health, education, income, etc.
Equity is a proactive, strategic approach that accounts for structural differences in opportunities, burdens, and needs in order to advance targeted solutions that fulfill the promise of true equality for all.
Related Features:
As an educator who was radicalized by Black feminist and womanist literature, I have always been clear that that was my goal for SISTORIES--to provide the grounds for Black women and nonbinary femmes to adopt a politic to address the root cause of the social issues that cause them harm by seeing and writing themselves into the historical narrative of Black femmehood.
Developing strong, meaningful, relationships between artists and archivists has so much potential to be fruitful for both fields. Interestingly, both art and archives have been historically undervalued in academia: artistic practice as a vehicle only for expression or reflection of issues, requiring translation by a critic or art historian to make sense of its real value (4), and archivists as “handmaidens of historians,” seen as passive intermediaries between records and the historians who interpret them (5)
From footage of hollering contests to oral histories of civil rights activists, Folkstreams.net is one of the most dynamic collections of independent films on the internet, containing over 100 documentaries, biopics, and performances available for free, alongside enrichment guides, transcripts, and an easily accessible list of rights information.
...Voices in Collective Thought presents some of the events and popular reactions lived throughout the October 20th electoral fraud and current crisis in Bolivia. Last November, after a thirteen year long presidency and a scandalous attempt at fraud, Evo Morales stepped down from presidency.
”Against the Best Possible Sources presents the latest chapter of my ongoing project involving extensive research of the TIME, Inc. corporate archive and an investigation of the earliest history of the first professional journalistic fact-checkers, a role created by TIME in 1923 and held exclusively by women until 1971.”
“Social Distance (a photo project)” serves to reclaim the way we will talk about this “history-book” time. I am still actively working to broaden my scope of subjects, making sure that this project not only reflects my world as a young white person with access to financial support, but reflects the realities of those without that privilege and safety net as well. What will be the story we tell about this pandemic? How do we make sure it’s not remembered as ‘the great equalizer’, but rather, as something that is playing upon systematic inequalities that have existed for centuries?
“I was inspired by lectures of Dr. Darin Waters of UNCA about “collective historical memory” and as a white Ashevillian felt like it could be a learning experience that I could pass on through this work and inspire others in my community to take a look at the rich history that is in danger of becoming forgotten as our town becomes more homogenized.”
Artist Furen Dai’s How Race Was Made? (2019) extracts language (relevant to today’s discourse) from Census archives from 1790 to 2010, dating back to its institutional inception.