I have heard terms like “systemic racism”, “structural racism”, and “institutional racism” thrown around, mostly by white, left-leaning college students, and I was curious to discover what these terms are supposed to mean. I found a paper, written by Keith Lawrence of the “Aspen Institute on Community Change”, and by Terry Keleher, of the “Applied Research Center at UC Berkeley”, called: “Chronic Disparity: Strong and Pervasive Evidence of Racial Inequalities POVERTY OUTCOMES Structural Racism” (A free version is available here: http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Definitions%20of%20Racism.pdf)
UC Berkeley certainly has “credibility” in my mind as standing for all things “leftist” in our society, so I was convinced the second author spoke for a large academic and political constituency. I’ve never heard of the “Aspen Institute on Community Change”, but The Huffington Post, another purveyor of leftist ideology, seems to know who he is. That’s good enough to convince me that these two authors speak for the majority of left-wing academics and journalists out there on the idea of “structural racism” and what it is supposed to mean.
The paper provides the following definitions:
“Structural Racism in the U.S. is the normalization and legitimization of an array of dynamics – historical, cultural, institutional and interpersonal – that routinely advantage whites while producing cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of color.….Structural Racism encompasses the entire system of white supremacy, diffused and infused in all aspects of society, including our history, culture, politics, economics and our entire social fabric. Structural Racism is the most profound and pervasive form of racism – all other forms of racism (e.g. institutional, interpersonal, internalized, etc.) emerge from structural racism.”
(https://www.scribd.com/document/295254225/Definitions-of-Racism-Chronic-Disparity-Self-Assessment. Free version: http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Definitions%20of%20Racism.pdf )
The paper goes on to say that the primary way you know “structural racism” exists is the fact that there is “inequality” among the races. In other words, so long as there are a disproportionate number of black people who are poorer than white people, then there is “structural racism”. The paper says it’s difficult, if not impossible, to actually identify any *particular* government, social, or business policy that causes “structural racism”. It’s simply assumed that it must be there because black people are poorer than white people on average:
“The key indicators of structural racism are inequalities in power, access, opportunities, treatment, and policy impacts and outcomes, whether they are intentional or not. Structural racism is more difficult to locate in a particular institution because it involves the reinforcing effects of multiple institutions and cultural norms, past and present, continually producing new, and re-producing old forms of racism.”( https://www.scribd.com/document/295254225/Definitions-of-Racism-Chronic-Disparity-Self-Assessment. Free Version: http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Definitions%20of%20Racism.pdf )
Starting in the 1960s, “Jim Crow” laws were legally abolished in the South. Laws were also passed outlawing any form of “discrimination” based on skin color in housing, jobs, and other areas of public life. Additionally, the welfare state was massively expanded, with wealth transfers from whites to blacks. (See https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p70-141.pdf , Page 6: “Both the likelihood of receiving means-tested assistance and the length of benefit receipt differed among racial groups. In 2012, the average monthly participation rate for Blacks, 41.6 percent, was higher than that of Asians or Pacific Islanders at 17.8 percent and non-Hispanic Whites at 13.2 percent.”)
Despite all of these legal changes in the 1960’s, blacks, as a group, remain poorer than whites. (https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-263.pdf) . Blacks also have a number problems associated with their demographic group. For instance, crime rates that are disproportionate to their percentage of the population, and heavy “black on black” crime- i.e., black criminals are mostly preying on other black people. In some years, more than fifty percent of the murders in the United States are black people being murdered by other black people, despite the fact that they are only about 13 percent of the American population. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/topic-pages/tables/table-21 (Think of the gangs in Chicago, and the almost ritualized murder that goes on there between black gang members, and you’ll see why this is the case. See Page 18 of: https://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/2011-Murder-Report.pdf )
There are also large numbers of black unwed single mothers raising children without a father. For instance, in 2017, according to the US Census, 6,229 thousand black children under 18 out of 13,232 black children were living in single mother households. While 11,603 thousand white children out of 53,291 thousand were living in single-mother homes. That is, 47 percent of black children were with single mothers, while 22 percent of white children were with single mothers. (See Table CH-2 and CH-3 at: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/families/children.html )
These dismal figures create a problem for black racial collectivists like Al Sharpton, and their “white progressive allies”: They need an explanation for why, despite the fact that there is no legalized race discrimination, and even laws prohibiting race discrimination in jobs, housing, employment, and other areas, blacks still are in a lower socio-economic class from whites. They also need to explain the large numbers of single black mothers raising fatherless children, and the disproportionate amount of black crime committed -mostly against other black people. This explanation has to place the blame somewhere other than the black people making bad choices. This rationalization needs to avoid looking at the attitudes, behaviors, and choices made by black people, and look outward, at the white majority.
Furthermore, they need an explanation that will dismiss the fact that most Americans appear to oppose any kind of racial discrimination, and generally regard judging people based on skin color to be wrong. In fact, they need to explain how the laws prohibiting race discrimination got passed in the first place. If Americans are mostly racist, why would a racist white majority pass laws that prohibit firing someone because of their skin color?
A system of philosophy with its origins in Marx, and probably other philosophers, can provide the rationalization needed. Marxism says that the bourgeoisie fundamentally didn’t think like the proletarians, and vice versa. These two groups could not use reason and persuasion with respect to each other, because the content of their minds, their ideas, were ultimately determined by their social class -by their “material circumstances”. This is why Marx viewed socialists who believed that there could be a peaceful transition to socialism as “utopians”. They didn’t recognize what Marx saw as “reality”. Marx, on the other hand, viewed his version of socialism as “scientific” -because he embraced the “class struggle” -which in practice meant eventual warfare between the proletarians and the bourgeoisie, until the bourgeoisie could be wiped out. Only then could socialism be achieved. For Marx, the bourgeoisie couldn’t help what they were, and couldn’t help but exploit the proletarians. Individual bourgeoisie might claim to be fighting for the proletarians, but, as a whole, they invariably exploited the proletarians because of the way their minds worked, which caused their thoughts and actions to be fundamentally at odds with the proletarians.
Black racial collectivists and their white “allies” take this idea, and simply racialize it. The white majority takes the place of the bourgeoisie. Now, it is the whites, who have a system and method of thinking that is fundamentally different and at odds with blacks, who are the new “proletarians”. This paper on “structural racism” supports this idea. It says that “racism” is defined as “…race prejudice plus power.” (Page 13: http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Definitions%20of%20Racism.pdf )
What is “power” according to this paper?:
“The People’s Institute defines power as ‘having legitimate access to systems sanctioned by the authority of the state.’ (Chisom and Washington, op. cit., p. 36.) Other definitions which you might find useful are: 000 Power is the ability to define reality and to convince other people that it/s their definition. (Definition by Dr. Wade Nobles)…” (See Page 21: http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Definitions%20of%20Racism.pdf)
Notice this second definition, in particular. Reality isn’t simply something separate and apart from the observer. It is somehow “plastic” or “malleable”, depending on the mind that observes it. This is a Marxist notion:
“Karl Marx later provided the most succinct statement of the collectivist view of the primacy of social interaction in the preface to his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: ‘It is not men’s consciousness,’ he wrote, ‘which determines their being, but their social being which determines their consciousness.’” https://www.britannica.com/topic/collectivism
For Marx it was one’s “social being”, i.e., whether he was proletarian or bourgeois, that determined “his consciousness” The content of his mind, his ideas had less to do with an independent reality, and more to do with the group he was born into. (I have written on the before: http://deancook.net/2018/08/16/karl-marx-polylogism-and-utopian-socialism-how-fundamental-philosophy-drives-history/ )
Given this Neo-Marxist view of “power” as being “…the ability to define reality and to convince other people that it/s their definition….”, the fact that there are whites, even a majority of whites, who oppose judging people in hiring and jobs based on the color of their skin, and even pass laws to outlaw it, doesn’t matter. Whites, by their invariable method of thinking, based in the nature of the “white mind”, institute social structures that “systematically” oppress black people. This is their explanation for how, today, there can be no legalized discrimination based on skin color, and how most whites express a desire that there be no such legalized discrimination, and yet blacks are still economically behind whites.
Pointing to lower average IQ scores among blacks than whites as an alternative reason for the disparity is seen as “systematic racism”. The black racial collectivists and their white apologists basically say the tests are “rigged” in favor of white people, even if the white people are all acting in good faith to create fair tests. (And “fair” is another “white idea” anyway.) They believe that IQ tests reflect the nature of the white mind, which is fundamentally different from the black mind. IQ is a “Euro-centric concept”. To the black racial collectivist, the fact that IQ tests have been shown to correlate with job success and achievement simply reflects the white majority’s ability to somehow “rig reality” to promote their race over the black race. (https://www.aei.org/society-and-culture/the-bell-curve-explained-introduction/)
The subjects of history, economics, science, and every other field, reflects “Euro-centricm” because the white mind is fundamentally not the same as the black mind. “Reason” is just another system for whites to, mostly unknowingly and unwittingly, exploit blacks. Hence, the funding for “black studies programs” at universities, where they can supposedly find this “black logic” that is fundamentally different from “white logic”.
This is why blacks who study in school, work hard, and obey the law are “acting white”. They are trying to adopt a system and method of thinking that is essential to the “white mind”, but not the “black mind”. Page 5 of the paper says this: “The acceptance by persons of color of Eurocentric values.” ( http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Definitions%20of%20Racism.pdf)
How do they explain high levels of black on black murder compared to white on white murder, and high levels of black men abandoning their children to be raised by single mothers? According to the purveyors of “structural racism”, the reason for all of this is “internalized systemic racism” of black people by their “white oppressors”:
“INTERNAUZED RACISM: (1) The poison of racism seeping into the psyches of people of color, until people of color believe about themselves what whites believe about them — that they are inferior to whites; (2) The behavior of one person of color toward another that stems from this psychic poisoning. Often called ‘inter-racial hostility;’…” (Page 5: http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Definitions%20of%20Racism.pdf )
In other words, the fact that a black man murders another black man isn’t really his fault. It’s the fault of the whites who made him that way, and the white oppressors can’t even help the way that they are:
“A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States…” (Page 5: http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Definitions%20of%20Racism.pdf )
What is the purpose of this way of thinking? If backs and whites fundamentally think differently, by their very nature, then how can they communicate at all? How could there be any sort of dialogue or understanding between blacks and whites? I think for “race pimps” like the authors of this paper, it’s just a con game -a way of absolving individual black people of their own responsibility for where they are in life, and shifting the blame to whites, who will then feel guilty and provide more welfare and legal benefits to blacks. Hence, the push for things like “reparations”, today.
But, it’s a very dangerous game they’re playing. At some point, a sufficient number of people with this sort of “polylogist thinking” will draw the obvious conclusion from it. If blacks and whites fundamentally cannot reason or dialogue with each other, then only one method is left: Physical force. In fact, the authors of this paper seem to advocate the use of physical force by black people when they speak of what it means to be an “anti-racist”:
“(As applied to people of color), some use the term anti-racist. Others use synonyms such as freedom fighter, activist, warrior, liberation fighter, political prisoner, prisoner of war, sister, brother, etc.” (Page 6: http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Definitions%20of%20Racism.pdf )
Notice how most of the metaphors used here are that of people engaged in a violent struggle or war. This is because, on some level, racial collectivists, just like Marxists, believe in a “class struggle” that can only be resolved with violence. They use the language of warfare to describe themselves, because it is a war to them. This is why you can expect to see more things like the 2016 shooting of white cops in Dallas by a black racial collectivist.
These ideas have come to dominate our universities, our media, and our cultural institutions. This means the level of violence between the races will continue to escalate. In the end, the racial collectivists will get their desired race war, if we don’t repudiate ideas like “structural racism”.