Dysconscious

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Relating to or involving dysconsciousness ("a state of impaired or distorted consciousness or awareness, especially in regards to social issues").

    "The findings presented herein will show what these beliefs and responses have to do with what I call "dysconscious racism" to denote the limited and distorted understandings my students have about inequity and cultural diversity—understandings that make it difficult for them them to act in favor of truly equitable edutcation. This article presents a qualitative analysis of dysconscious racism as reflected in the responses of my teacher education students to an open-ended question I posed at the beginning of one of my classes during the fall 1986 academic quarter to assess student knowledge and understanding of social inequity."

Example

More examples

"The findings presented herein will show what these beliefs and responses have to do with what I call "dysconscious racism" to denote the limited and distorted understandings my students have about inequity and cultural diversity—understandings that make it difficult for them them to act in favor of truly equitable edutcation. This article presents a qualitative analysis of dysconscious racism as reflected in the responses of my teacher education students to an open-ended question I posed at the beginning of one of my classes during the fall 1986 academic quarter to assess student knowledge and understanding of social inequity."

Etymology

From dys- + conscious. Coined by academic Joyce Elaine King in 1991 (see quotation).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.