SURJ POLITICAL ED SITE
Menu

racism 101

To follow along on the political education call on Racism 101
​(February 2017), download this file - you can download it as a Powerpoint or a .pdf file. You can also listen to the audio for the call here.
Racism 101 Powerpoint.pptx
File Size: 4262 kb
File Type: pptx
Download File

Racism 101 PDF file.pdf
File Size: 5969 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Understanding Racism

Racism is a word that is widely used and yet often carries many different meanings depending on who is using it. If we want to work together effectively for racial justice, and we do, we need to be clear about what racism is, how it operates, and what we can do to end it.

We define racism, also referred to as white supremacy, as the pervasive, deep-rooted, and longstanding exploitation, control and violence directed at People of Color, Native Americans, and Immigrants of Color that produce the benefits and entitlements that accrue to white people, particularly to a white male dominated ruling class.

Often white people think of racism as prejudice, ignorance, or negative stereotypes about People of Color. This definition often leads to the assumption that the solution to racism is to challenge misinformation about People of Color or other marginalized groups or to convince white people to be more tolerant or accepting.

In fact, prejudice, ignorance, and stereotypes are the result of racism, not the cause. Every one of us in this society, growing up with the lies, misinformation, and stereotypes found in our media, textbooks, and cultural images and messages, carries deep-seated and harmful attitudes towards many other groups. It is our responsibility, as people with integrity, to unlearn the lies and misinformation we have learned and to replace them with more truthful and complex understandings of the peoples and cultures around us.

Racism operates on three different levels and it is important to understand each of them and their interconnections. 
Picture
This short video frames the construction of whiteness as a tool of divide and conquer.
Picture
​Racism is the need to ascribe bone-deep features to people and then humiliate, reduce, and destroy them.
Ta-Nehisi Coates

Interpersonal
Racism

When a white person can take their misinformation and stereotypes towards another group and perform an act of harassment, exclusion, marginalization, discrimination, hate or violence they are committing an act of interpersonal racism towards an individual or group.
           
When we move beyond talking about prejudice and stereotypes in our society we generally focus on acts of interpersonal racism. These are the kinds of acts that we hear about in the media—a hate crime, an act of job or housing discrimination, negative racial comments about People of Color, racial profiling or violence by a police officer towards a Person of Color.

These acts are definitely damaging. But the system of racism is much larger than these personal acts. And racism would not be eliminated by ending these individual acts. If we limit our discussion to these interpersonal acts, we end up focusing on the impact of individual “rotten apples.” All we need to do is punish/censor/screen out these particularly racist individuals and things would be pretty good.

In fact, our culture is much more comfortable encouraging us to focus on an individual "rotten apple" than it is on helping us to see the ways in which racism is deeply embedded in the policies and practices of our institution and the beliefs and values of our culture.

One of the ways our culture keeps racism in place is by continuing to focus only on individual acts of racism.

Institutional
​Racism

Racism also operates through the policies, procedures, and practices of the institutions in our society. Racism is built into the policies, procedures, and everyday practices of the health care system, the education system, the job market, the housing market, the media, and the criminal "justice" system to name a few. That means that it operates both systematically and without the need for individual racist acts. People can simply be following the rules and produce outcomes that benefit white people and harm People of Color because the rules are set up to reproduce racism.

For example, during most of the history of this country it was illegal for white and Black people to marry across racial lines, eat together in public, travel together, or shop together on an equal basis. Therefore shopkeepers, bus and train conductors, public officials and others weren’t unusually racist to enforce segregation—they were just following the law, acting as law-abiding white citizens.

​Similarly a white school teacher can be teaching her students equally, addressing the needs of each individual student and helping every single one advance to the next grade level. But if she is teaching in a school or school system where there are no Teachers of Color, where white students are tracked into higher level courses than Black students, where Students of Color are disciplined more harshly than white students and/or the curriculum does not reflect the contributions of People of Color to our society, then the school is racially discriminatory despite the efforts of the “color-blind” teacher. 

Structural
Racism

The cumulative impact of interpersonal and institutional racism within our society creates a system of structural racism. The racism of different institutions overlap, reinforce, and amplify the different treatment that People of Color receive compared to that which white people receive, ensuring different life outcomes.

One example is the school-to-prison pipeline in which Children of Color are pushed out of our schools and into the criminal legal system. Racism within the school system, the welfare system, child protective services, the foster care system and at all levels of the criminal legal system interact to produce a system which disproportionately limits the educational opportunities of young People of Color and disproportionately disciplines and locks them up.


Another example is how lack of affordable health care and access to affordable healthy food options, coupled with higher exposure to toxic chemicals and other forms of pollution, coupled with job discrimination and housing segregation produces greater health problems, shorter life spans, lower wages, and greater levels of poverty for Communities of Color.
​
Structural racism is reinforced by the many layers of cultural racism in our society—the systemic and pervasive images, pictures, comments, literature, movies, advertisements, and on-line media which consistently portray People of Color, Native Americans, and Immigrants of Color as inferior, lazy, dangerous, sexually manipulative, infantile, and less smart than white people, while holding up white people in general as capable, honest, hard working, patriotic, safe—the heroes, leaders, and builders of our country. 

Discussion Questions

What are a couple of examples of interpersonal racism that you have seen personally or heard about from the media recently?
What harm do they do? 

What are a couple of examples of institutional racism in our society?
What harm does institutional racism do to People of Color?
How does it benefit white people? 

What are examples of structural racism—the interplay between different forms of institutional and interpersonal racism?


What are examples of cultural racism that you have seen recently?
What do you imagine is their cumulative impact on People of Color, Native Americans, and Immigrants of Color?
What do you see as their cumulative impact on white people—what attitudes and expectations do they produce in us? 

What do you think needs to be addressed to stop these and other acts of violence against People of Color, Native Americans, and Immigrants of Color?
 


​
Picture
The 3 Expressions of Racism: Another way to think about racism as more than personal is to understand that personal racism (individual acts of meanness) occurs within institutions. The policies and practices of those institutions in their turn are disproportionately serving and resourcing white people while underserving and exploiting People of Color. This institutional racism reproduces itself within a culture that tells us that white people are smarter and more qualified while People of Color are undeserving. From dRworks workbook - www.dismantlingracism.org.
STRUCTURAL RACISM: The Unequal Opportunity Race
This 2010 video was produced by the African American Policy Forum (AAPF) to highlight the historical and structural barriers that create inequity based on race. The video builds on President Lyndon Johnson's point that: “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still believe that you have been completely fair.”  The video draws attention to both the disadvantages of having to run in lanes shaped by racial inequality, and the advantages that accrue to those who do not confront such obstacles.   

Picture


​Paul Kuttner offers some insight into the much used graphic that attempts to illustrate the difference between equality and equity. Take a look here.

Links

Understanding Implicit Bias
Race Forward: What is Systemic Racism?
Fourteen Examples of Systemic Racism in the US Criminal Justice System 
Systemic Racism: Eight Charts that Show Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice System
Systemic Racism: Health Disparities by Race and Ethnicity
The Difference Between Cultural Exchange and Cultural Appropriation
Race Forward: Racial Equity Impact Assessment Toolkit

Another way to think about how racism operates can be explained through
the 4 I's of oppression: internal, interpersonal, institutional, and ideological. 

​
Picture
Internal Racism: our internal racist beliefs, including our implicit biases
Picture
Interpersonal: acting out our racist beliefs and attitudes on others
Picture

Learning from our history 

Picture
One of the ways we know that race is constructed is through a study of our history. The Thind case is one example that shows how the institution of law and the institution of government (Congress and the Supreme Court) collaborated with science (Blumenbach's and Morton's racial hierarchies) and cultural racism (white is the norm) to deny citizenship to an immigrant from India. 

The year was 1923 and the rules of the Naturalization Act, first passed in 1790, made it very difficult for foreign-born People of Color to become citizens. Amendments to the act continued to limit citizenship based on countries of origin, easing immigration for people from Europe and making it much more difficult for immigrants from Central and South America, Asia, and India. The law perpetuated a racialized idea of citizenship, which would be reflected in the Supreme Court's ruling in the Thind case.

Bhagat Singh Thind, an Indian Sikh, filed a petition for citizenship, referencing the Naturalization Act of 1906 which stated that only "free white persons" and "aliens of African descent" could become citizens. His strategy was to persuade the court that he should be classified as "white," drawing from the racial theories developed by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in the late 1700s and later refined by Samuel Morton in the early 1800s. Their work focused on the development of racial categories and grouped people from India in the "caucasoid" or white racial category. 

A year earlier, the Supreme Court had denied citizenship to Takao Ozawa, using the argument that this scientific race theory categorized Ozawa, who immigrated from Japan, as "Mongoloid" rather than caucasoid.  

Unable to use the excuse of scientific categorization to refuse citizenship to Thind (because the science said he was Caucasoid), the Court admitted both that people from India were indeed classified as "caucasian" yet "white" was, in their words, "meant to indicate only persons of what is popularly known as the Caucasian race." The Court claimed "the average man knows perfectly well there are unmistakable and profound differences." They went on to say that while this determination could not be justified by science, it was nonetheless "in accordance with the understanding of the common man." 

For an extensive look at the Thind case, read the excellent history of this court case Yellow by Law by Devon W. Carbado (2009).

Picture
Institutional: the racist policies and practices of the institutions and organizations that determine our day to day realities
Picture
Ideological: the racist beliefs and values of our culture, reproduced by the media, schools, and the institutions that determine our day to day realities

Picture
Race is not scientifically or biologically "real." Race was constructed for social and political purposes. Race was constructed as a hierarchy and not as a multicultural "salad" or "soup." In other words, race was constructed in order to reinforce the idea that "white" is superior and at the top of the hierarchy, that "Black" is inferior and at the bottom of the hierarchy, and that all other constructed racial categories move up and down between those two anchors depending on what is happening at any given moment in our history. For example, before 9/11, many Arab Americans were considered closer to white; now, as a result of U.S. foreign policy and rising Islamophobia, the racial category of "Arab" is considered closer to the bottom. White supremacy refers to the ideology or belief system that this pyramid or hierarchy suggests - the idea that white is superior, better, more while all other races are inferior, worse, less. White supremacy is reflected in individual beliefs, in institutional policies and practices, and in our cultural assumptions about who is deserving and who is not. We do not have to be members of the Ku Klux Klan to be participating in white supremacy.

For more about the construction of race and its consequences, visit Race: The Power of an Illusion website.



Cultural Appropriation

Picture

​Cultural appropriation is the logical consequence of cultural racism. Cultural appropriation occurs when those of us in the white group take a piece or pieces of a people's culture without having authentic relationships with the people or the culture and/or without their permission, often (not always) in order to financially profit.  

So for example, we assume the traditional dress of a people for a Halloween party and call it a "costume," while remaining unaware of and unconcerned about the roots of such dress and the history of oppression that the people producing that dress have faced and fought.


A Short History of Racism

Picture
The origins of racism in western societies is deep and complex. Legal and political racism in what was to become the United States started to take root in the early 1700s in the mid-Atlantic coast British colonies. Until that period, Europeans, Native Americans and Africans often worked and lived together in shared circumstances of servitude. They also resisted and rebelled together against the way they were treated.

As early as 1640, however, before the word "white" ever appeared in colonial law, the colonial courts began to make racialized distinctions that set up white privilege. One of the earliest examples of the establishment of white privilege involves three servants working for a farmer named Hugh Gwyn; the three servants attempted to run away to Maryland. In the records from the case, one was described as a Dutchman, the other a Scotchman; the third was described as a Negro. They were captured in Maryland and returned to Jamestown, where the court sentenced all three to 30 lashes -- a severe punishment even by the standards of that time. The Dutchman and the Scotchman were sentenced to an additional four years of servitude. The black man, named John Punch, was ordered to "serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere."


This court ruling reflected the reality that the landowning class in Virginia and the other growing colonies was heavily outnumbered by the growing numbers of Europeans coming as indentured servants, the growing numbers of Africans being forcibly brought to work the land, and the large numbers of Indigenous peoples and communities being slowly and relentlessly moved to make way for colonial settlement. The attempted escape of Hugh Gwyn's three servants was one of many such attempts, large and small, by those facing shared servitude and exploitation. In response, the landowning class in Virginia began to pass laws and create policies like the 1640 case of John Punch. These laws and policies were explicitly designed to "divide and conquer." The weapon of choice was racism -- designating "white" as a legal category and introducing the concept of life-long servitude (slavery) as distinguished from shorter-term servitude (indenture). The landowning elite constructed race and racism as a tool of control, persuading poor and working class European immigrants to give up their language and customs, assimilate into whiteness, and ignore their economic and social common ground with peoples brought from Africa into slavery and Indigenous peoples being forced off their land. 

By the 1730s, legal and social racial divisions were firmly in place. Most Black people brought forcibly from Africa and their descendants were enslaved and even free Black people had no right to vote, bear arms or bear witness in court. Black people were also barred from participating in many trades during this period. Meanwhile, whites gained the right to corn, money, a gun, clothing and 50 acres of land at the end of their indentureship; often "free" white men found paid work in the capture and control of runaways and Indigenous peoples. In other words, poor whites “gained legal, political, emotional, social, and financial status ... directly related to the ... degradation of Indians and Negroes.”

Although poor whites gained some economic benefits over enslaved and Indigenous peoples, the increased productivity from slavery widened the gap between wealthy whites and those who were poor. The legacy of this history is evident today; although the wealth gap is larger than it has ever been in our nation's history, the politics of racial divide and conquer are disturbingly alive and well. 



LINKS to resources that go deeper into the history
​of race, racism, and the fight for racial justice

Click here for a short article on the history of race-based slavery in Virginia.

Click here for a longer article on how colonial Virginia created slavery and race.

Click here for an informative review of Theodore Allen's book "The Invention of the White Race."

Click here for an even longer article on "The Birth of Race Based Slavery."

Click here for interactive timeline on The History of Racial Injustice.

​Click here for a civil rights chronology.

Click here for the article "1667: The year America was divided by race."

Click here for a video on "The west was built on racism. It's time we faced that."
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Home