Systemic Racism: What It Is, and How to Recognize It
The best definition of systemic racism Reid has found comes from Texas A&M sociologist Joe Feagin. “‘Racism is systemic when it’s embedded in all social institutions, structures, and social relations, with co-dependent racist institutions, policies, practices, ideas, and behavior that give unjust resources, rights, and power to white people, while denying them to Black people,’” said Reid, summarizing Feagin.
It’s difficult to recognize systemic racism, Reid said, because we’ve become accustomed to understanding racism as individual, overt acts. “It’s not so easy to recognize when it’s at work, when it’s in the pay disparities, the health outcome disparities, when it’s in the friends that you love, when it’s in family members,” said Reid. “There is a huge education piece that needs to happen.” Indeed, systemic was only added to one dictionary’s definition of racism as recently as last year, and only after complaints over its inadequacy.