I don't need to tell you that the last few months of American life have included quite a bit of conversation on race. Much of this conversation has centered around "systemic racism," a term that, while typical for many years in academic and activist circles, is still unusual in mainstream discourse. Many people have not thought much about this topic or are still new to discussing it. For this reason, I think much of that conversation is also imprecise. Systemic racism generally means racism that happens within a social system, an institution, or within all of society, instead of the racist prejudices of a person. But this meaning is quite broad, and so it can be quite vague and amorphous, with different people defining it differently in other contexts. This confusion does not always make for a great national conversation on a top where real conversation is usually fraught anyway.
So I think it is worthwhile to explore the different meanings people use when they say "systemic racism." I wanted to explore three different meanings I see used and merged into this concept:
Meaning 1: Explicitly racist laws and legal codes: Historically, the US has seen many policies written expressly with racial hierarchies in their text. Jim Crow laws were passed in the late 1800s on a state by state level, explicitly codified separate institutions would serve white and black residents. The US Government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act on a national level in 1882, explicitly barring immigration from China, and denying Chinese residents citizenship. It was no secret that these laws were motivated by racial prejudice, and the desire to keep a racial hierarchy.
Under this meaning, systemic racism refers to a kind of codified racial class system: policies crafted in a way that denies certain privileges to non-white Americans. While these laws are voted in and maintained by a public that may hold individual racial prejudices, the policies themselves are working on a legal and institutional level, not on a personal level. The law made it impossible for individuals who want to see racial inclusion to take action for equality in many cases.
Under contemporary American Jurisprudence, this is considered "disparate treatment" along racial lines and is ruled unconstitutional on its face. Thus, the post-civil rights era's legal system has gradually overturning laws that have explicit racist intentions. Due to this progress, it is very hard in contemporary America to point to laws where we see explicit racism in the text of the law. Legal progress doesn't erase the historical legacy of these laws, and people often rightly point to this history as an example of "systemic racism." However, in the contemporary conversation, it is relatively rare for folks to talk about present-day systemic racism, meaning this explicitly racist law.
Meaning 2: Racist actions on the part of actors within a system. Even as courts have been overturning many laws that explicitly codified racism, there still exist (and most would acknowledge) a significant number of people who harbor racist beliefs and intentions. Many of these individuals hold positions of power within social institutions and systems that allow them to enact their racist preferences out in the world. Even though the law bans "disparate treatment" legally, individuals can still covertly enact disparate treatment. In Minneapolis, have felt at the police was rooted in the fact that Bob Kroll, the police union boss for years, has been alleged to have said and done things that look from the outside like they are racist, like wearing a "white power" patch on his jacket. Importantly, Kroll has often used his power to block efforts at police reform pushed for by Black officers in his ranks. Because of the authority these racist individuals hold, their prejudices create, in effect, systemic impacts.
Now, some people would argue that these are isolated cases, and thus, they likely have a limited impact. I think this line of thinking is well-countered by conservative columnist David French constructs a beneficial thought experiment to illustrate the issue:
“Let’s optimistically imagine that only one out of 10 white Americans is actually racist. Let’s also recognize that—especially in educated quarters of white America—racism is condemned and stigmatized. If this is the reality, when will you ever hear racist sentiments in your daily life? The vast majority of people you encounter aren’t racist, and the minority who are will remain silent lest they lose social standing.
But imagine you’re African American. That means 10 percent of the white people you encounter are going to hate you or think less of you because of the color of your skin. You don’t know in advance who they are or how they’ll react to you, but they’ll be present enough to be at best a persistent source of pain and at worst a source of actual danger. So you know you’ll be pulled over more, and in some of those encounters, the officer will be strangely hostile. The store clerk sometimes follows you when you shop. A demeaning comment will taint an otherwise-benign conversation. Your white friends described in the paragraph above may never see these things, but it’s an inescapable part of the fabric of your life.”
Now, while I find this case compelling, there is a genuinely complicated aspect of doing this kind of analysis that it is difficult to prove intent. Racial prejudice to the degree it exists is almost always denied, and can often be presumed when that was not the intention. Its a nearly impossible endeavor to prove the link between racial issues in society stem and racist beliefs in individuals.
Some have tried to square this circle by talking about "implicit bias," the idea that you can have racial prejudices that operate subconsciously. In some ways, this idea makes sense: cognitive science research has over and over again shown that we only do a fraction of our thinking on a rational, deliberative level, while the majority of our cognition happens on the more automatic level. Thus, it follows that many people would have racist stereotypes that come out when making split-second decisions that we cannot process rationally. It can even follow that one can have racial biases about one's race. In theory, this could also explain why police forces like the LAPD and NYPD, which are majority staffed by people of color, still face numerous complaints about racial bias. Some formulations of systemic racism use implicit bias as the crucial variable: if we could correct implicit bias, we can fix racism.
However, there are problems that implicit bias faces in explaining all systemic racism. One is that the concept of implicit bias has proven difficult to pin down empirically. Implicit bias tests, which try to test this concept, stands on weak empirical grounding. There is not much evidence that you can predict discrimination based on who scores highly on implicit bias tests. While this does not necessarily mean that implicit bias theory is wrong or has no explanatory, just that we should feel hesitant to pin all our hopes for explaining systemic racism on implicit bias.
So ultimately, while it is essential to acknowledge and think about this kind of prejudice, I don't think it is the most accurate definition of "systemic racism." Instead, I think it some of what is called "systemic racism," it also in and of itself cannot fully explain what people mean by "systemic racism."
Meaning 3: Social Systems producing disparate outcomes based on race: The third definition of systemic racism is the idea that when we look across society, we see many disparities occur along the axis of race, in areas like housing, education, income, and life expectancies. This definition is agnostic about how much interpersonal racism exists because it points out that a process that can seem neutral on its face can cause disparate outcomes.
Sociologist George Yancey illustrates the third meaning of systemic racism well with the following story:
“Pretend that we are going to have a mile race a year from now. I tell a third of the class about the race and hire a trainer for them. For another third of the class I tell them about the race six months later but do not hire them a trainer. But I do advise them that they may want to work on their own to get ready for the race. The last third of the class I call them the morning of the race and tell them that it is time to run. Assuming that the class is randomly divided into thirds, we know what will happen in the race do we not?”
Without context, we would imagine that a mile race is a fair competition: there is no referee or differences in the runners' course. Thus, there is no "disparate treatment" of runners during the race. But because of all that happened before the race, we would still expect the three groups to attain vastly different outcomes. In US law, this an example of "disparate impact" (as opposed to explicitly racist laws with "disparate treatment")
Likewise, because of American history, it is no surprise that significant disparities exist in American life because not all people started with the same advantages. These disparities can be explained by the history of racism, even if we assume there are no racist actors in our system today. I find it helpful to think of this in terms of "systemic racial inequality" because it helps illustrate that it is the unequal outcomes that are in question here.
To illustrate this a little further, housing discrimination in the 20th century is an excellent example of how this works. For most of the century, there was a practice known as "red-lining," where government agencies, in conjunction with banks, identified which neighborhoods were "good investments" for the government to back mortgages. Communities that were not considered "good investments" were colored in red, or "red-lined." These neighborhoods were often predominantly majority racial minorities, which made it very hard for them to buy houses and build wealth. Also, mostly white communities were closed off from black residents, both by government policy and covenants written into the deed of properties that barred sale to African Americans.
Over time explicitly segregationist housing laws and practices have been overturned. But huge disparities still exist in the housing markets because of that history. These disparities exist in homeownership rates, wealth built through homeownership, and neighborhoods that different races can afford to live. Thus, many seemingly race-neutral housing policies can have disproportionate impacts on communities of color.
I generally think this definition of systemic racism is the most commonly used: most people I know who talk about systemic racism have in mind these disparities. So I guess this is the frame most helpful to think through when the conversation comes up.
Conclusion
So why is the semantic exercise in defining racism? Well, because I think it is imperative when you try to solve social problems that you are precise about what the problem is. As I will get to in the 2nd half of this post, I have been discouraged in recent months by how often an imprecise definition of the problem brings people to look at solutions that do not necessarily bring progress. I think having a clear sense of what "systemic racism" means helps try to make progress. But more on this next time.