Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: What this book is about -- Preparing for learning -- Understanding social construction and culture as foundations of meaning making -- Understanding power, privilege, and oppression -- Understanding race and racism -- Understanding ethnicity and ethnocentrism -- Understanding sex, gender, and sexism -- Understanding sexuality and heterosexism -- Understanding disability and ableism -- Understanding social class -- Understanding and enacting resistance to oppression: developing as an ally and advocate.

"This book offers fundamental understandings of concepts and frameworks related to diversity and social justice. Aimed at university and community audiences, it offers an introductory exploration of power, privilege, and oppression as foundations of systems of inequality and examines complexities within meanings and lived experiences of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, and social class. By integrating social science research with concrete examples and personal reflection, this concise, introductory level text invites the reader to consider the costs of systemic hierarchies for all people and envision possible alternatives to participating in oppressive hierarchy"--

English.