The Racism You Can't See
Wednesday February 7, 2007
Definition: Institutional Racism
Generally speaking, Americans think they have a pretty good idea of what racist behavior looks like--the Michael Richards incident, for example, or perhaps Joe Biden's recent bizarre description of Barack Obama as "the first African-American [candidate] who is clean, bright, and articulate."
But these isolated celebrity outbursts are dwarfed by the everyday racism that defines the American caste system. No televised racial epithet can ever cause as much damage as the fact that, demographically speaking, black Americans are three times as likely to live in poverty as white Americans, or that the life expectancy for an average black American is about six years lower than the life expectancy for an average white American.
As I begin my coverage of Black History Month, let's look at the problem of institutional racism--a problem that often goes completely overlooked in mainstream political discourse.
See also:
Generally speaking, Americans think they have a pretty good idea of what racist behavior looks like--the Michael Richards incident, for example, or perhaps Joe Biden's recent bizarre description of Barack Obama as "the first African-American [candidate] who is clean, bright, and articulate."
But these isolated celebrity outbursts are dwarfed by the everyday racism that defines the American caste system. No televised racial epithet can ever cause as much damage as the fact that, demographically speaking, black Americans are three times as likely to live in poverty as white Americans, or that the life expectancy for an average black American is about six years lower than the life expectancy for an average white American.
As I begin my coverage of Black History Month, let's look at the problem of institutional racism--a problem that often goes completely overlooked in mainstream political discourse.
See also:
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