In Search of Systemic Racism

Distinguishing and Evaluating Seven Different Senses of the Term

Racism

IN SEARCH OF SYSTEMIC RACISM

Distinguishing and Evaluating Seven Different Senses of the Term

David L. Bernstein

In today’s charged ideological environment, “systemic racism” is often asserted as nonchalantly as the day’s weather. The school system tells us that students must be taught to recognize and resist it. The corporate diversity trainer assures us it's in every nook and cranny of the workplace. Public health officials declare that we must eradicate it in the provision of vaccines. The college insists that the student admits his or her complicity in it. When asserted, the reader or listener is supposed to nod in agreement, having heard an incontrovertible fact, as well established as the historicity of chattel slavery in 19th century America or Jim Crow in the 20th. Because it was pervasive in the past, we are told, it must exist in equal measure in the present. Very often, the purveyor of the systemic racism claim provides a single titular example of phenomenon in the present and expects others to assume that if it exists in, say, the criminal justice system, it must exist everywhere else in society. Specific examples of systemic racism are also supposed to be taken at face value. Who would dare question the presence of systemic racism in the criminal justice system? Some claim that there is systemic racism in America and others claim that America itself is systemically racist. Rarely is it clear which of these two claims we are hearing. 

Notice how New York Times columnist David Brooks, whose nuanced writing I generally admire, commits what is called “the over-generalization fallacy”: “When, in 2004, researchers sent equally qualified white and black applicants to job interviews in New York City…black applicants got half as many callbacks or job offers as whites.” He goes on to say that “Racism is not something we are gently moving past; it’s pervasive. It seems obvious that this reality should be taught in every school.” What, precisely, would Brooks like schools to teach about systemic racism? That systemic racism exists in some general sense in America today? That it explains all or most disparity, as many proponents of the underlying ideology assert? 

It’s not that I dispute the existence of systemic racism—I don’t—but rather that I am often left wondering what the user means by the term, how prevalent this form of racism is today, and what the term does and doesn’t explain. Can gun violence in inner city Chicago be explained by systemic racism alone? For that matter, can systemic racism alone explain disparate rates of callbacks and job offers? Or are there other compelling explanations? In other words, systemic racism needs to be, to borrow a term from postmodern theory, interrogated. For America has a sorrowful history and legacy of racism. Racism surely exists in the present. In order to eradicate such racism, however, we must be precise in our analysis and avoid hyperbole. 

I’ve come up with seven distinct ways the term is used in today’s discourse—a typology of systemic racism claims. I use the term “systemic racism” to denote any form of racism that’s not reducible to the explicit attitudes of individuals, i.e., old-fashioned racism or bigotry, but is said instead to exist in social settings or structures. In describing the various forms, I examine the strength and plausibility of each. I hope that this framework encourages more nuanced discussions of the concept in the future. 

ONE: The Whiteness Paradigm. Systemic racism is often used to describe the dominant culture in America, one that supposedly favors “white” cultural practices. According to the National Museum of African American History and Culture:

Whiteness and white racialized identity refer to the way that white people, their customs, culture, and beliefs operate as the standard by which all other groups of are compared. Whiteness is also at the core of understanding race in America. Whiteness and the normalization of white racial identity throughout America's history have created a culture where nonwhite persons are seen as inferior or abnormal.

This white-dominant culture also operates as a social mechanism that grants advantages to white people, since they can navigate society both by feeling normal and being viewed as normal. Persons who identify as white rarely have to think about their racial identity because they live within a culture where whiteness has been normalized.

The problem with The Whiteness Paradigm is that it treats the very idea of a dominant culture as oppressive. Every country—and every institution for that matter—has a dominant cultural discourse and a set of accepted cultural practices. The Whiteness Paradigm is a denial of the obvious fact that all institutions prefer some behaviors over others. They cannot all be oppressive in nature, lest we render the concept of oppression—not to mention culture—completely meaningless. Moreover, cultures, by their very nature, must demand a measure of compliance. Prohibitions against walking around the streets naked or picking one's nose in public may force some members of society, especially those from other cultures, who were not raised under the same norms, to conform. Such accepted cultural practices should not be viewed as oppressive. Every society has them. 

The Whiteness Paradigm also speciously deems certain cultural traits, such a “perfectionism” and “sense of urgency,” as expressions of white supremacy. Education schools and others routinely train teachers and professionals in Tema Okun’s “White Supremacy Culture” framework, which instructs trainees that white supremacy culture “sacrific[es] interests of communities of color in order to win victories for white people.” There is nothing inherently supremacist about valuing perfectionism or a sense of urgency or anything particularly egalitarian or enlightened about valuing their opposites—inattentiveness and laxity. What’s more, these are by no means “white” cultural traits. Many whites have a very low sense of urgency and many non-whites a high sense of urgency, for example. Non-white, economically vibrant Asian countries embrace many of the same cultural practices around work that Western countries do (for an excellent discussion about this listen to Thomas Chatterton Williams in conversation with Jonah Goldberg on the Remnant podcast). There is plenty of urgency in the South Korean business community as there is in myriad black-owned and -run enterprises.   

To be sure, some dominant cultures are more or less inclusive of alternative cultural practices than others, and we should aim to create more inclusive and fluid dominant cultures. A highly exclusionary dominant culture that demeans alternative cultural expression can indeed be oppressive. A talented black professional with dreadlocks who doesn't wear the standard-issue Brooks Brothers suit should be able to rise in a corporate hierarchy regardless of his preferences in attire, within reason. 

In that light, creating more inclusive cultures doesn’t require “dismantling whiteness” but rather ensuring that the dominant culture is tolerant and that all people have access to opportunities provided by the dominant framework. On that score, America fares comparatively well, integrating immigrants of all races, ethnicities and religions better than just about any other country on earth. Of course, one can legitimately critique specific subcultures in America that aren’t tolerant and do exclude varied cultural expressions. In such instances, systemic racism may be a fair and accurate charge. 

TWO: The Disparity Paradigm. Another systemic racism claim is Ibram X. Kendi’s “anti-racism”, in which disparities are prima facie evidence of racism. (Kendi does not use the term “systemic racism” because he views all racism as systemic). Kendi states matter-of-factly, “When I see racial disparities, I see racism.” In Kendi’s view, racial inequity “is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing.”

Kendi’s formula is highly reductive in that it insists that racism is the only possible explanation for disparity. He states that “one either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an anti-racist.” Some groups, however, are better represented than other groups in certain fields for a whole host of reasons. There are more men in coal mining than women. There are far more Asians represented in the sciences per capita than either blacks or whites. Would Kendi suggest that there’s an insidious effort afoot to elevate Asian Americans in science? If anything, the opposite is true. Nevertheless, Kendi’s disparity paradigm has been undeniably influential in professional and civic life. Mainstream media often ascribe any differences in group achievement or representation to racism. Disparities in health outcomes, for example, are almost automatically attributed to systemic racism even though a number of studies controlling for income show that such differences are often driven by class, not race. This is not to suggest that disparities cannot reflect systemic racism—they may—or that we should not try to reduce consequential disparities among groups of people—we should—only that those disparities in and of themselves are a poor proxy for systemic racism.    

THREE: The Legacy Paradigm. A third way that systemic racism is used is to describe the lingering effects of historical systemic racism, such as the impact of “redlining” on black communities that still live in impoverished, formerly redlined areas. The wealth gap between blacks and whites is another example. The term redlining comes from government maps used first in the early 1930s that demarcated areas where black and other “high risk” residents lived and were therefore deemed risky investments. According to the Michigan Commission on Civil Rights, which issued a report on the Flint Water crisis that affected the largely African American area of Flint Michigan, the legacy of past racism is a major factor in Flint’s recent water problems:

We are not suggesting that those making decisions related to this crisis were racists, or meant to treat Flint any differently because it is a community primarily made up by people of color. Rather, the disparate response is the result of systemic racism that was built into the foundation and growth of Flint, its industry and the suburban area surrounding it. This is revealed through the story of housing, employment, tax base and regionalization which are interconnected in creating the legacy of Flint.

There is explanatory power in The Legacy of Racism Paradigm. If a community had been living under oppression for decades and the oppression suddenly subsided, one would expect that the members of the community would have trouble immediately accessing resources, education, political power, etc. When property values are kept artificially high in nearby areas (more often in politically progressive than in politically conservative areas), it can make it even harder for people to break out of a neighborhood with serious gang, crime and drug problems. 

The Legacy of Oppression Paradigm, in the near term, explains a lot. But the explanatory power wanes over time. Nearly two-thirds of black people now live in middle class conditions and above. They no longer live under the shadow of redlining. Many blacks—and whites and immigrants, as well—have moved from their formerly redlined districts. Indeed, the majority of people who lived in redline districts—about 85 percent—were white, and today only 28 percent of residents of formerly redlined districts are black.

Those stuck in highly dysfunctional communities may be facing cultural hurdles (as well as racism) borne of traumas that developed under decades of oppressive conditions. Indeed, as Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson has brought to light, the oppressive conditions of American society through the 1960s may have engendered cultural norms in certain sectors of the inner city that make it more difficult for some people to rise out of poverty. The same is likely the case in white majority areas in, for example, former manufacturing areas. While such cultural traits may often have been forged under the pressure of systemic racism, they shouldn’t be conflated with systemic racism; they represent an outgrowth of oppression that has taken on a life of its own. In short, while The Legacy of Oppression Paradigm tells part of the story, it must be balanced against other possible explanatory factors.

FOUR: The Institutional Paradigm. Another way that systemic racism is used is to impute a culture of racism to institutions: this concept is often distinguished as “institutional racism.” This can be a useful application of the systemic racism concept. Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered George Floyd, served in the notorious Third Precinct of the Minneapolis police force. Many of the ongoing complaints of harassment and abuse were lodged against officers of the Third Precinct, and it’s quite possible and even likely that the Third Precinct maintained a culture that encouraged abuse and harassment. 

While Derek Chauvin pressed his knee onto George Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes, three other Minneapolis police officers stood guard and made only half-hearted attempts to stop their fellow officer from committing murder. Either these officers supported the brutality on full display by their fellow officer against a subdued and handcuffed black man (another officer reportedly contributed to his death by putting his knee into his spine) or they felt they couldn’t intervene without experiencing retribution or scorn. Either way the behavior of the other officers exposes an egregious cultural bias in the Precinct that was already widely seen to deviate from the department’s norms. What’s more, the Third Precinct, backed by a recalcitrant police union, reportedly resisted reform efforts embraced elsewhere in the department. Other plausible examples abound of systemic racism confined to particular institutions. 

Like other claims of systemic racism, claims of systemic racism in particular institutions should be interrogated. Undoubtedly, institutional racism exists in some institutions and can explain disparate outcomes in hiring, mobility and treatment of minorities in those institutions. 

FIVE: The Implicit Bias Paradigm. Another paradigm holds that an underlying culture of racism persists in the larger society that generates discriminatory outcomes. The Michigan Civil Rights Commission, already referred to above, defines “implicit bias” as “stereotypes or attitudes that operate without a person’s conscious awareness.” The Commission then appeals to the unconscious operation of implicit bias to explain the Flint water crisis: 

This brings us to the question: Would the Flint water crisis have been allowed to happen in Birmingham, Ann Arbor or East Grand Rapids? We believe the answer is no, and that the vestiges of segregation and discrimination found in Flint made it a unique target. The lack of political clout left the residents with nowhere to turn, no way to have their voices heard…This suggests that race played a role in the Flint Water Crisis precisely because it was never considered. That it is so deeply entrenched in the very fiber of society that we have normalized what occurs in communities that are “primarily of color” and poor. (Emphasis added.)

The question, however, is not just whether the crisis would have happened in Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids—very likely it would not have—but rather would it have happened in a poor white area such as Beattyville, Kentucky? Poor black and white areas likely have less political clout because they lack the financial resources, knowledge of the system, and political connections to effectively petition the government. This itself might be a reflection of bias in the system: is there any place on the planet where poorer people have as much clout as wealthier people? Given what we know about the lack of political power in poor white areas, it’s not clear if any implicit bias at work in ignoring the water crisis and similar problems is primarily racist or classist in nature. Progressive activists will often argue that class and race operate “intersectionally”—that is, the two factors exacerbate each other. But this is a cop out—it may well be that by studying the phenomena and controlling for income, we would find little trace of racism, or little evidence of classism. 

The Implicit Bias Paradigm has also been applied to disparities in hiring. Research teams from University of California, Berkeley, and University of Chicago conducted a study in 2021 in which they sent 83,000 fictitious applications for job postings to 108 Fortune 500 employers, with randomly assigned and racially distinctive names. They found that distinctively black names on applications reduced the likelihood of hearing back from an employer by 2.1 percentage points compared to distinctively white names. This research is not, however, the slam dunk proof of society-wide bias that some claim. First off, the 2.1 percent difference in outcome is low: it could easily be a statistical error, and really be zero, or for that matter five percent. Moreover, the differences in contact rates varied: about 20% of the companies were responsible for half of the discriminatory behavior. Rather than uncovering society-wide racial bias, the study may have revealed specific institutions where one or more hiring manager held racial biases—in other words, it may have exposed institutional or even personal racism, not widespread implicit bias. Finally, the data revealed in the study are often susceptible to rather different interpretations.

Harvard economist Roland Fryer argued in 2010 that “the significance of discrimination as an explanation for racial inequality across economic and social indicators has declined. Racial differences in social and economic outcomes are greatly reduced when one accounts for educational achievement.” This is not to suggest that there aren’t remaining society-wide biases (Fryer believes that discrimination likely accounts for a 7 percent discrepancy in workplace outcomes). It means, rather, that we should look at claims of implicit bias carefully and be wary of exaggerated claims and imprecise explanations.

SIX: The Discriminatory Policies Paradigm. A sixth claim is that certain public policies negatively impact blacks, such as discriminatory applications of drug laws. The Asbury Park Press and the USA Today Network looked at thousands of arrest records and drug convictions nationwide over the past three decades, and found that black people were arrested more frequently and punished more severely than whites for drug crimes, even though drug use among whites and blacks is roughly the same. Of course, it is possible that certain public policies, such as drug laws, either intentionally target black people and can properly be regarded as examples of systemic racism, or unintentionally affect black people disproportionately. 

Unless the intent of the policy is racist, however, disparate outcomes by race should not be attributed to systemic racism. Many public policies do not work as intended, and some of those policies disproportionately impact specific groups in ways that were not foreseeable. For example, government rezoning of an area might force several white-owned businesses to go belly up, but one wouldn’t normally attribute such a policy impact to systemic racism. There is a strong argument that the Great Society reforms of the 1960s designed to help poor people actually generated a destructive dependency on government that disproportionately hurt black communities and families. Whatever one’s view on the matter, these were well intentioned efforts; they cannot plausibly be ascribed to systemic racism, no matter the outcome. Similarly, efforts to desegregate public schools also may have had deleterious effects on black communities; they, too, are not examples of systemic racism. 

Of course, if the intent of drug laws with draconian sentences for crack cocaine was to imprison black people, the charge of systemic racism would hold up. But even here the picture is more complicated than many criminal justice reform advocates acknowledge. Brown University economist Glenn Loury argues that “there were plenty of reasons these laws came into existence, not the least of which were complaints from black leaders representing communities devastated by the crack epidemic and the violence that came with it. You can’t attribute that to racism.” Loury goes on to argue, however, that “neither can you ignore the willingness of American society at large to accept a set of laws that incarcerated a staggering number of black men.” Put in terms of this typology of systemic racism, Loury’s argument would be that unabated mass incarceration is better explained by The Implicit Bias Paradigm (the public’s lack of empathy for black people) than The Discriminatory Policy Paradigm (drug policies that intentionally put black people behind bars).

SEVEN: The Exclusive Network Paradigm. A seventh and final form of systemic racism is one in which a dominant class of whites hoards professional opportunities in a closely knit professional or social network. This form of systemic racism surely existed in the past and just as surely exists in the present to some degree. What’s less clear is if today such exclusive networks are primarily a function of race or class. More than twenty years ago, I was involved in a project to recruit young blacks into the commercial real estate industry, where they had long been under-represented. It was a highly successful endeavor, ultimately changing the face of the industry in several major metropolitan areas. One wonders, however, especially in light of more recent upward mobility of blacks in various professions, if the scarcity of black talent in a given field is still a function of class, race or both. To what degree are even middle-class whites deprived of the myriad opportunities that wealthy people with connections—white or black—extend to their friends and family members? Such a phenomenon can be studied, controlling for wealth and income. 

A more rigorous approach to discussing and analyzing systemic racism will not answer every question about how much systemic racism exists, where it exists, and what it explains and doesn’t explain. Such questions may not be entirely answerable. However, a more exacting approach to questions of systemic racism will certainly provide for richer discussions and clearer insights into why disparities stubbornly persist and aid society in designing better solutions to these age-old problems. 

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A passionate advocate of the free expression of ideas, David L. Bernstein is founder of both the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values and the Institute for Liberal Values, of which Free Black Thought is a proud member. He is past President and CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and former executive director of the David Project. His book, Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews, is forthcoming from Post Hill Press in October 2022. Follow him on Twitter.