Systemic Racism - What is it ? Black Awareness Stay Woke!

Yes, systemic racism is real. And people of color – African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and other minorities – face it every day. They still have a lot of work to do.

Racism of this kind, racism that infects the very structure of our society, is called systemic racism. And at first glance, it may be difficult to detect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrHIQIO_bdQ

Since the election of Donald Trump, hate crimes Opens a new window have been on the rise. White supremacistsOpens a new window have been emboldened. Anti-immigrantOpens a new window rhetoric has intensified. We condemn these awful examples of prejudice and bias and hate, but systemic racism is something different. It’s less about violence or burning crossesOpens a new window than it is about everyday decisions made by people who may not even think of themselves as racist. As sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva has saidOpens a new window, "The main problem nowadays is not the folks with the hoods, but the folks dressed in suits."

Systemic racism persists in our schools, offices, court system, police departments, and elsewhere. Why? 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.

We all have to do a better job of calling out systemic racism. Here are seven ways we know that it’s real.

📷According to one studyOpens a new window, white families hold 90% of the national wealth, Latino families hold 2.3%, and black families hold 2.6%. Not only that, the Great Recession hit minority families particularly hardOpens a new window, and the wealth gapOpens a new window has increased. Think about this: for every $100 white families earn in income, black families earn just $57.30. That’s almost unbelievable—and it’s a huge racial-justice issue.

EMPLOYMENT

It’s next to impossible to build wealth without steady and rewarding employment. But the black unemployment rate has been consistently twice that of whitesOpens a new window

📷over the past 60 years, no matter what has been going on with the economy (whether it’s been up or down). Hmm, maybe higher education would help with that? Well, according to the data, blacks with college degreesOpens a new window are twice as likely to be unemployed as all other graduates. That may be because, as one study foundOpens a new window, job applicants with white-sounding names get called back about 50% more of the time than applicants with black-sounding names, even when they have identical resumes. (This seems to be a widespread problem: even guests with distinctively black namesOpens a new window get less positive reviews from property owners on Airbnb.)

EDUCATION

Let’s discuss education a little more in depth. If you thought that preschool, at least, was a racism-free zone, well… consider that while black children constitute 18% of preschoolers nationwide,

📷they make up nearly 50% of suspensionsOpens a new window. When all age groups are examined, black students are three times more likelyOpens a new window to be suspended than white students, even when their infractions are similar. Overall, black students represent 16% of student enrollment and 27% of students referred to law enforcement. And once black children are in the criminal justice system, they are 18 times more likelyOpens a new window than white children to be sentenced as adults.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Given this, perhaps it should not come as a surprise that even though, as we said, blacks make up 13% of the population, they represent about

📷40% of the prison population. Why is thatOpens a new window? Perhaps because if a black person and a white person each commit a crime, the black person has a better chance of being arrested. It’s also true that, once arrested, black people are convicted more often than white people. And for many years, laws assigned much harsher sentencesOpens a new window for using or possessing crack, for example, compared to cocaine. Finally, when black people are convicted, they are about 20% more likely to be sentenced to jail time, and typically see sentences 20% longer than those for whites who were convicted of similar crimes. And as we know, a felony conviction means, in many states, that you lose your right to vote. Right now in America, more than 7.4%Opens a new window of the adult African American population is disenfranchised (compared to 1.8% of the non-African American population).

HOUSING

When the government sought to make mortgages more affordable back in the 1930s, thereby jumpstarting the epoch of suburban living, the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation (and thereafter private banks)

📷ranked neighborhoods all around the country, giving high marks to all-white neighborhoods and marking those with minorities in red as risky investments. RedliningOpens a new window, which essentially barred blacks and other minorities from sharing in the American Dream and building wealth like their white counterparts, was officially outlawed in the ’60s, but the practice really never went away. In fact, during the Great Recession, banksOpens a new window routinely and purposely guided black home buyers toward subprime loans. A recent studyOpens a new window demonstrated that people of color are told about and shown fewer homes and apartments than whites. Black ownership is now at an all-time lowOpens a new window (42%, compared to 72% for whites).

SURVEILLANCE

If you’re white, you don’t usually need to worry about being monitored by the police. But the day-to-day reality for African Americans is quite different. More than half of all young black AmericansOpens a new window know someone, including themselves, who has been harassed by the police.

Statistics also show that black drivers are about 30% more likely than whites to be pulled over by the policeOpens a new window. (So African Americans can expect to be monitored wherever they go—but did you know that they can’t even expect to safely cross the street? Blacks are twice as likely to die in pedestrian accidents than whites, perhaps because, according to one studyOpens a new window, motorists are less likely to stop for blacks in the crosswalk.) And of course it’s well-known that Muslims are under increasing and often illegal surveillanceOpens a new window.

HEALTHCARE

African Americans in particular face discrimination in the world of healthcare tooOpens a new window. A 2012 study found that a majority of doctors have “unconscious racial biases” when it comes to their black patients.

Black Americans are far more likely than whites to lack access to emergency medical care. The hospitals they go to tend to be less well funded, and staffed by practitioners with less experience. But even black doctors face discrimination: they are less likely than their similarly credentialed white peers to receive government grants for research projects. And it seems that facing a lifetime of racism leaves African Americans vulnerable to developing stress-related health issues that can lead to chronic issues later in life.

Let’s be clear: systemic racism is a corrosive and widespread problem in our society, and we all need to do a better job of confronting it—in our towns, in our neighborhoods, and in ourselves.

Want to be part of the solution? Here’s how you can take action:

Watch the totally amazing video below from our friends at DemosOpens a new window about the roots of systemic racismJoin us in supporting unity and justice by joining the Poor People's CampaignStart a conversation. Once you know the truth, it’s hard to keep it to yourself. So tell a friend, a sibling, a roommate, your kooky uncle…that systemic racism is real, and we all need to be fighting to end it.