Traps and Tropes Quiz

Match the following definitions with the corresponding trap and trope.

• Spray and Pray Equity

• Equity experts drop in for training with no ongoing plan for learning or capacity building.

• Doing Equity

• Equity is nested with a single champion and holder of the vision.

• Siloing Equity

• Equity is at the level of self-reflection without penetrating the instructional core and/or school systems and structures.

• Navel-Gazing Equity

• Equity is work located in a separate policy, team, or body.

• Equity Warrior

• Equity is a series of tools, strategies and compliance tasks.

Match the following definitions with the corresponding trap and trope.

• Tokenizing Equity

• Failing to take time to build equity-centered knowledge and fluency, leading to behavioral shifts without understanding deeper learning or historical context.

• Blanket Equity

• Asking leaders of color to hold, drive, and symbolically represent equity without providing support and resources to thrive nor engaging the entire staff in the work.

• Structural Equity

• Investing time and resources to understand your equity challenges but reverting back to recycled, status quo solutions.

• Boomerang Equity

• Investing in a program or curriculum rather than building the capacity of your people to address equity challenges as complex and ongoing places of inquiry.

• Superficial Equity

• Redesign systems and structures without investing in the deeper personal, interpersonal, and cultural shifts.

Leaders need to see their work as ​ (a)   , ​ (b)   , and ​ (c)   in coalition with people of color.

• uplifting the voices of others
• holding other white people accountable
• taking action
• becoming an expert in equity
• cherry pick approaches to fit their perspective

When a solution to a challenge is not immediately obvious but can be known prior to taking action.

• Complex

• Complicated

• Intersectionality

• Implicit Biases

The solution to a challenge is not known and can only be seen or know during or after the action unfolds. There is no set of steps or algorithm that will tell you how to respond.

• Complex

• Complicated

• Intersectionality

• Implicit Bias

The global system that confers unearned power and privilege on those who become identified as white while conferring disprivilege and disempowerment on those who become identified as people of color.

• Settler Colonialism

• Stereotype Threat

• Anti-Black Racism

• White Superemacy

This practice removes or distorts Indigenous peoples from American History, including the historical loss of land, taking of other resources, and contemporary life.

• Settler Colonialism

• Anti-Black Racism

• Stereotype Threat

• White Supremacy

Theory about various interactions between race, gender, and other identities, as well as explaining how systems of oppression interact with each other in complex ways to impact people's lived experiences.

• Settler Colonialism

• Anti-Black Racism

• Intersectionability

• Stereotype Threat

A formation that both strips Blackness of value and systematically marginalizes Black people. This is overt, historical and embedded in all institutions through covert structural and systems through policies, institutions and ideologies.

• Settler Colonialism

• Anti-Black Racism

• Stereotype Threat

• White Supremacy

Subconscious associations that cause feelings and attitudes about other people based on characteristics such as race, ethnicity, age, and appearance.

• Stereotype Threat

• Intersectionability

• Implicit Bias

• Settle Colonialism