Is Institutional Racism Real? Here Are Some Numbers.
Back in the saddle for a stunning conclusion to our discussion of institutional racism. But first, a review:
Racism is both individual and systemic, and this is fundamental.
One way to organize your brain around it?
Generally speaking, there are two types of individual racism:
- Internalized: Private thoughts/beliefs, influenced by culture. Most of us have internalized some racism.
- Interpersonal: A person’s behaviors and speech, which can be intentionally or unintentionally racist. Being “called out” is a learning opportunity, not a reason to get our hackles up.
Generally speaking, there are two types of systemic racism:
- Institutional: An organization’s policies and modi operandi that result in worse outcomes for people of color than for white people. Sometimes called “structural racism.” (NB: White Americans, particularly evangelicals, often respond skeptically to reports of institutional racism.)
- Structural: We’ll get there next.
Some Evidence
If you want to skip to the evidence of institutional racism, here’s the best brief compendium I’ve found: Institutional Racism Is Our Way of Life. It is exclusively focused on outcome differences between white and black people, which is unfortunate—but it's a great start, and I'll keep you posted as I find brief overviews addressing the experiences of other groups. (For instance: This Is What Modern Day Discrimination Against Native Americans Looks Like.)
One Last Word About Skepticism
Well, a few last words.
White people’s skepticism about this is common but crazy, because institutional racism is ridiculously easy to demonstrate. Institutional racism is defined by its outcomes, so proving its existence requires only a good set of evidence indicating that an organization’s actions result in different outcomes for different groups of people. And that evidence is there in spades: longitudinal data, personal stories, the works. Organizations serving heterogeneous groups of people routinely provide better results for white than for nonwhite people.
But even here the doubt kicks in:
Shrewdly spotting loopholes in the research. Source
Hold up, we say, nodding sagely. That’s not fair; it’s comparing apples to oranges. People don’t come to an institution with the same backgrounds and experience. My kid tests as a proficient reader in third grade because I taught him to read when he was four, not because teachers treat their white students better than their students of color.
Or:
Kids of color are just acting out more in class, we say ruefully. Maybe it’s a parenting issue, or a community issue—but it’s their behavior that results in their suspensions from school, not their race.
I get this, because skepticism is almost always my first response to data of any kind. As a graduate of a fancy math-and-science high school, I consider myself eminently qualified to Debunk All The Studies. Aha! I think. You’re not controlling for all of the independent variables!
At this kind of response, the studies’ authors—sociologists and economists with decades of research experience—patiently smile, wearily rub their eyes, and say, “Yes, dear, we know about controlling for independent variables. We can’t actually secure funding for research that doesn’t address these elementary issues in the first freaking sentence of the grant proposal. You can trust our research, because we are professional researchers. Also, we truly don’t have some secret, conspiratorial reason to fudge this data. We are not in the pocket of Big Social Justice. We are not in anyone’s pocket. Have you seen our houses and our 1989 Volvos? We are academic sociologists, not kingmakers. Can you please just let us do our work thank you.”
Does this mean that all studies purporting to demonstrate institutional racism are 100% legit? Of course not. But there’s no reason for me to send you to sketchy sources when there’s a preponderance of strong, legitimate evidence.
All this to say: Researchers are ahead of us, and their work is generally gotcha-proof. We can trust the evidence. Institutional racism is real, it’s widespread, it’s happening today, and it has serious consequences.
Today’s Actions
- Read this exhausting, if not exhaustive, list of statistics touching on schools, the workplace, law enforcement and more: Institutional Racism is Our Way of Life (US News and World Report). This is a good article to bookmark for future reference.
- Use some of the article’s links to learn more. And/or:
- Spend a few minutes at Google Scholar with the search term “institutional racism.” (I limit my search to recent articles.) Skim the results, read some abstracts. Add search terms for more detail about how institutional racism plays out in your line of work (“institutional racism healthcare,” education, etc).
- Sit with this information for a few minutes (or days). If you’re like me, you’re on the positive end of every single one of these statistics. I can’t imagine life any other way, and the goal here is not to make-believe our way into empathy. But we’ve got to let this information sink in. Once it sinks in, we’ll start noticing it more. Once it sinks in, we can replace skepticism with love and action.
- To cement it in your brain and spread the word, talk with someone about this.