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Racism

One way to understand racism is to consider the ways in which policies and practices of institutions help to create and maintain differential outcomes and stresses for people who are categorized into different racial groups. Another is to consider why we as a nation allow these kinds of differences to persist. A third is to consider who benefits from things as they are and what have been the consequences for groups and individuals who tried to change the racial status quo.

Many people define racism as prejudice plus power. Most people understand how prejudice underlies different beliefs about groups other than one's own. But combining the concepts of prejudice and power points out the mechanism by which racism leads to different consequences for different groups. White privilege as a concept highlights the benefits whites enjoy in a racist country - whether white people ask for them or not. An understanding of white privilege suggests how that might be changed. Internalized racism describes one set of ways in which systems of oppression act on people of color, for example how people of color are supported for maintaining silence about racism and punished for speaking or acting in opposition. All of these concepts help us see the role systems, policies, laws and organizations have in maintaining differences among racial groups.

Institutional racism refers specifically to the ways in which institutional policies and practices create different outcomes for different racial groups. The institutional policies may never mention any racial group, but their effect is to create advantages for whites and oppression and disadvantage for people from other racial groups.

Cultural racism refers to the behaviors that reflect a worldview that overtly and covertly attributes value and normality to white people and whiteness, and devalues, stereotypes, and labels People of Color as "other," different, less than, or render them invisible. Many of the behaviors of institutions and individuals that we call "patronizing" are in fact forms of cultural racism.

[FN: Maurianne Adams, Lee Anne Bell, and Pat Griffin, editors. Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 93.]

Individual racism, refers to the beliefs, attitudes, and actions of individuals that support or perpetuate racism. Individual racism can be deliberate, or an individual may act to perpetuate or support racism without knowing that is what a person is doing.

[FN: Maurianne Adams, Lee Anne Bell, and Pat Griffin, editors. Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook, p. 89.]

*Structural Racism is defined later in this section.