What is "structural racism"?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Seems like I've heard it refer to very different ideas:

1. acts of racial bias by people in power.

2. the material and social legacy of historical patterns of discrimination.

3. things that impact racial minorities disproportionately, regardless of the motive or reason.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

(yeah yeah people who try to talk about race on Atlas are stupidheds okay & we should ignore giant issues in american life because of forum demographics so give me a link to post my q elsewhere if you have a problem with it thanx)

[Gustaf]

I hate to be the semantics person but do you mean what is most commonly meant when the term is used or what it ought to refer to in someone's opinion?

I think, for example, that it is often employed in reference to 3. but I disagree that it should.

[Mr. Reactionary]

Ive been told that courts and property law are structural racism, so those.

[Boobs]

I think it's structural violence focused on a racial axis.

Structural violence is (rather cerebrally) moral exclusion (Opotow, 2001):

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It's a lot less obvious and visible than garden-variety racism to the majority; however, those who are the victims of structural racism see it much more clearly. It's not a single action, but rather an attitudinal (and thus, structural) aspect of racism.

So it's a mix of all three of the ideas you brought up – they aren't mutually exclusive.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

You could pretty easily make the argument that it often occurs in school systems too.

[Boston Bread]

Is it the same as systemic racism?

I would interpret both systemic and structural racism as referring to social institutions that reinforce racial inequality.

[Person Man]

Is it the same as systemic racism?

I would interpret both systemic and structural racism as referring to social institutions that reinforce racial inequality.

I'd go with that.