INSTITUTE OF RACISM

Most white people in the US are familiar with explicit racism or racism that is a conscious choice to actively hate or discriminate someone of another race. Most white people associate explicit racism as the main form of racism in the US and believe to support racism it has to a conscious choice like joining the KKK or using racial slurs at a non-white person someone. Explicit racism is a growing problem in this country but it’s a very small part of the actual racism that occurs, often unconsciously, in this country.

Today most people in the US negatively affected by racism are affected by systemic (also called institutional or structural) racism. Systemic racism is forms of oppression and privilege that effects almost every aspect of our society to our laws, institutions, schools, justice system, media, culture, and everyday interactions. This form of racism, although often more harmful than explicit racism, is less understood or even recognized by the white moderate majority, who often preserve and perpetuate this racism unconsciously through complicity and Complacency.

“Structural Racism: A system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural

representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity. It identifies dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with “whiteness” and disadvantages associated with “colour” to endure and adapt over time. Structural racism is not something that a few people or institutions choose to practice. Instead it has been a feature of the social, economic and political systems in which we all exist.”

“Systemic racism is about the way racism is built right into every level of our society. Many people point to what they see as less in-your-face prejudice and bias these days, compared to decades past, but as Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

While fewer people may consider themselves racist, racism itself persists in our schools, offices, court system, police departments, and elsewhere. Think about it: when white people occupy most positions of decision-making power, people of color have a difficult time getting a fair shake, let alone getting ahead. Bottom line: we have a lot of work to do.”

“The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that. Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether whites know/like it or not. Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a white person who likes Black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you.

Yes, racism looks like hate, but hate is just one manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another, and so on. So while I agree with people who say no one is born racist, it remains a powerful system that we’re immediately born into. It’s like being born into air: you take it in as soon as you breathe.

It’s not a cold that you can get over. There is no anti-racist certification class. It’s a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world. It is a thing you have to keep scooping out of the boat of your life to keep from drowning in it. I know it’s hard work, but it’s the price you pay for owning everything.” “Black radicalism has taught that any serious “conversation about race” must address the systemic racism that results in patterns of racial inequality in the judicial system, the national and global economies, policing, the education system, religion, popular culture and a war machine that predominantly kills non-Europeans around the world…

…Racism is a system of power that oppresses people of African descent and other non-European peoples within the United States and around the world. Systemic racism manifests itself in the judicial system, the national and global economies, policing, the education system, religion, popular culture and a war machine that predominantly kills non-European peoples around the world.

The foundation of this system as it exists in the United States was laid down by the trans-Atlantic slave trade, in which black African people were stolen from Africa by European colonizers to work as slaves. Slaves worked in mines, rice fields or construction or on plantations. Their labor would be used to produce commodities that were later sold in international markets for profit, which helped create modern global capitalism. Slavery was protected by robust political and legal systems that designated slaves as property to be bought and sold, rather than human beings. The system curtailed the rights of all African-Americans, including those who were not enslaved. Slaves were brutally treated with torture, lynchings, whippings, rape and other forms of cruelty inflicted upon them. This created a system of racial hierarchy that put whites on top and blacks – free and slave – on bottom.

Slavery transferred wealth from black labor to white property owners because African slaves were not paid for their work. For centuries, slavery allowed whites – including those who did not own slaves – to amass wealth for their communities, while blacks were politically and economically oppressed. This laid the foundation for a massive wealth gap between blacks and whites that persists to this day, more than a century and a half after slavery’s demise. A 2013 study by the Urban Institute found that in 2010, white families’ average wealth was $632,000, black families’ $98,000 and Latinos’ $110,000. Redlining (the practice of denying or making it difficult for residents in poor, non-white communities to receive financial services like getting a mortgage or insurance or borrowing money), gentrification, discriminatory lending practices, no access to credit, low incomes and the recent recession have all prevented – and continue to prevent – African-Americans from accumulating wealth in their communities.

Moreover, slavery had dismal repercussions for the African continent. A 2007 Harvard study by Dr. Nathan Nunn analyzed the impact of the trans-Atlantic and the older but smaller trans-Saharan, Indian Ocean and Red Sea slave trades on Africa’s economic development. Nunn found that “the slave trade caused political instability, weakened states, promoted political and social fragmentation and resulted in a deterioration of domestic legal institutions.” Additionally, the “countries from which the most slaves were taken (taking into account differences in country size) are today the poorest in Africa.” Nunn concluded, “if the slave trades had not occurred, then 72% of the average income gap between Africa and the rest of the world would not exist today and 99% of the income gap between Africa and the rest of the underdeveloped world would not exist.”

After slavery ended in the 1860s, racism still persisted through the establishment of Jim Crow laws, a system that legalized racial segregation in the United States. This lasted for about a century. Jim Crow has been replaced by a mass incarceration system that disproportionately imprisons black people for nonviolent drug offenses, even though blacks and whites use drugs at roughly the same rates. Oppressive policing reflects similar entrenched racism: Every 28 hours, a black person is extrajudicially killed by a police officer, security guard or self-appointed vigilantes such as Zimmerman.

Systemic racism manifests itself in multiple facets of society. Patterns of racial inequality exist in the judicial system, the national and global economies, policing, the education system, religion, popular culture and a war machine that predominantly kills non-European peoples around the world.

As a political tradition, black radicalism would look at these phenomena and diagnose them as consequences of a racist power structure that oppresses black people. Its critique of white supremacy is radical in that it does not look at individual bigots, prejudiced beliefs, individual privileges or one political party as the root cause of black people’s suffering. The root cause of black people’s misery, to the black radical, is a racist power system, the purpose and design of which is to keep their people miserable. Reforming, improving or integrating into the racist power system is not enough for a black radical because the system is irredeemably rotten at its core. That is why Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., near the end of his life, worried that black people were “integrating into a burning house.””

—

Examples of Systemic Racism

Police and Justice System

Non-white people are more likely to get stop by police, arrested, harmed, shot by officers that will be acquitted, convicted and given harsher sentences than white people

Whitewashing Education and History

Education curriculum that whitewashes (downplays) slavery, genocide, rape and racism in the US while glorifying the oppressors such as both confederate and founding fathers slave owners

Confederate Monuments

Confederate monuments on public institutions being preserved by tax payers

Access to Opportunities and Wealth

Unequal access to job opportunities, good schools, higher education and wealth for non-white people

Conservative Political Narratives

Conservative political parties creating misinformed narratives and policies that imply white people are victims at the cost of non-white civil rights

Conservative Political Policies

Conservative political parties creating policies of mass Latino deportation, Muslim immigration ban, protecting police brutality against non-whites, voter suppression, etc

Churches

Religious institutions that approve and support conservative racists and white Supremacist, by labeling them “Good Christians”

Housing

Discriminatory real estate, banks, and government policies segregating communities and keeping non-white people in poorer areas.

USDA

Decades of racially biased laws and practices in the USDA that pushed non-white people off their land in the last century

Bias Media

The majority of news, TV, radio and social media in the US push racial biases in our society including unfair stereotypes and fears towards non-white people

Racial Disparities

To really understand systemic racism read about the racial disparities in this country in Police Interactions, Criminal Justice/Courts, Prison (Mass Incarceration), War on Drugs, Education, Employment, Wealth, Workplace, Voting, Housing, Surveillance, Healthcare and Media Representation.