I believe institutional racism in America clearly still exists, and I just wrote out a long comment on TIA that I think is worth cross-posting here. Thoughts?

You're definitely right. The institution of racism remains alive and well in the US. Unfortunately, the current state of dialogue on subjects like "white privilege" isn't doing much of anything to help this problem. If anything, it's making it worse.

I wrote an explanation on this subject a while back, here it is reposted:

I would say that anyone who uses the phrase “educate yourself” has no interest in advancing the cause of equality. Let me use this comic to illustrate my point.

There’s certainly a lot of data presented that shows that the US is deeply unequal society, and whites enjoy a number of societal advantages over blacks. But who is the audience here, someone naive that isn’t aware of this? You don’t need to convince me, I’m well aware that inequality is a serious issue across many lines: race, gender, sexuality, you name it. The data presented is convincing by itself. Yes, privilege is very much a thing. Yes, racism is alive and well in American institutions, and that is a bad thing. I am—and rightly should be—opposed to racism, sexism, homophobia, and similar injustices. Okay then, what can we do about it? This is where the comic falls off the tracks. No explanation for these inequalities is offered other than just “privilege”, full stop. Without a deeper understanding of the forces at work that cause increased college dropout and incarceration among blacks, it’s difficult to come up with a solution.

Implicit in the comic is an absolution from white guilt. Sure, she admits to benefitting from her race and sometimes catches herself being racist once in awhile, but that’s okay, because she speaks the magic words of privilege theory and wrote a comic about it. Therefore, she has done her part to defeat racism. Even if she does still benefit from it and the white supremacy power structure continues unabated. But she’s a good person, see? Individual people being “good” will have no meaningful impact on an unjust power structure. But hey, at least our conscience is soothed.

What especially sticks to me is the comic’s condescending, self-righteous tone, complete with the punchline of “fucking educate yourself”. Really? Has anyone, ever, been persuaded by this type of argument? “Ugh, I can’t believe I have to explain this to you.” How pretentiously juvenile can you get? The writer of this comic and the people who reblog it do so as a means of establishing their social justice street cred. It doesn’t matter what the people outside of your circle do, or if you convinced them to change their minds about white privilege. What’s important is that they get a social reward within their own group. It’s much easier—and more personally rewarding—to swap jokes or outrage than it is engage the rest of the world to try and make a positive change.

I can already hear the replies coming, “Pombologist is a mansplaining, tone-policing racist.” Here’s the other half of the online social justice quandary: criticism of the movement is taken to be a tacit opposition. It is black and white thinking at it’s worst. Do you side with the victims, or do you side with the racists? In the same way that parroting the same lines offers a reward, going against the group carries a hefty risk. Criticism is taken to be an act of betrayal, and the would-be ally for social justice is not merely expunged, but publicly humiliated in the Twitter pillory for indecency. How does this make anything better? How do you achieve social change by ostracizing your allies, or demanding that you never be criticized?

The Internet makes it amazingly easy to filter out the people and things you don’t want to hear. By constantly surrounding yourself with the “right” kind of people, it’s easy to be convinced that not only are you right, but that anyone among the unwashed masses who disagrees with you is wrong, and comically so. Within this bubble, the battle is already won. You’ve painted a pretty enough picture that convinces you that injustice is defeated, save for a few of the willfully ignorant outside the gates. Who needs to be an activist when you can just surround yourself with people who already agree with you?

I really do think that most people are aware that racism exists in America, and are consciously opposed to it. So, what’s the solution? My complaint with this comic is that it details a political problem and offers no solution other than a patronizing demand for the oppressors to “educate themselves”. This is such a bizarre attitude for an activist to take. In fact, it’s pretty much the opposite of activism. Change requires action by its nature. The status quo doesn’t need activists. Herein lies the problem with the current dialogue of privilege theory; it is not used as a way to critically examine how injustice occurs, but rather as a moral bludgeon. A condescending war cry of “check your privilege” may draw attention to the problem, but it will not fix it, nor win any converts.

Changing an unjust structure is not a problem with an easy or obvious solution. But what I can say is that it will not be accomplished without allies. Change is most certainly possible, but doing so will require activists to motivate people outside of their clique to help them, and right now, the online social justice community is failing in that regard spectacularly. There is no actionable plan, only hipster-esque self-congratulation. If you are serious about making the world a more just place and tearing down racism, the patriarchy, or any other unjust institution, then it is, and always will be, your job to educate us.

I think where the narrative falls apart is the assumption any disparity between groups is down to prejudice. The classic example is asking if the NBA is prejudiced against nonblack people.

Your post is a point that I feel SJWs try to and fail at getting across rather miserably. My resorting to base insults and refusing to provide evidence or sources, they come across as childish and petty.

I also believe that insitutionalized racism exists everywhere in the world and that, as bad as it seems in the US, in more homogeneous societies like in the Arab world, the racism is far more overt. It's also like that in China. A lot of it can be chalked down to ignorance and the fact that we just aren't used to living around people who aren't like us.

Reddit will always have an Ameri-centric view because the majority of users are American of course. Racism exists, is somewhat natural and should in fact be brought to people's attention.

If only those SJWs had the foresight to cite those instead of crying "white privilege!" and "institutionalized racism!" at everything. Maybe people might be actually be convinced it exists. But then they wouldn't be SJWs anymore.

And yes, it IS your job to educate people if you want to convince them of your point.

That being said, how would you react to this blog post refuting some of the points here?

I will say America still has an institutionalized racism problem, but that it's a different beast than it used to be. It's not a matter of laws or rules or structures that are built against minorities. It's those wielding their institutional power in ways that is guided by their racial bias. This is much harder to deal with, much harder to prove as racism as opposed to other factors, and much more likely to completely fly under the radar of those who aren't affected by it. And all that is going to make go off on a bit of a rant that can get a bit tangential at times.

That last part is important to your main point. Yes, there's still institutionalized racism, but when it occurs on a much more micro and personal level as opposed to laws and outright large-group (KKK-like) gatherings and posturings it's much easier to remain completely ignorant of it. Not everyone is, or realistically can be, socially conscious. Not everyone has the time we do to sit here on reddit and talk about silly shit, let alone important shit. Some don't care enough to look into it and educate themselves. Some are blindly faithful that good people are out there taking care of everything. Some simply don't give a shit at all.

Also, a lot of what you talk about as conclusive evidence links back to class just as much race. We have a widening wealth gap between ALL wealthy and poor people. If there's one group (white people) with a larger proportion of wealthy people than the others while that happens, even in the complete absence of racism, the wealth gap between those racial groups will grow as well. If we lose social mobility (which by damn near all accounts, we have been) and gaps in wealth grow between rich and poor, of course different groups with differing proportions of rich and poor among them will have shifting gaps between them as well. This bleeds into your gap in life expectancy as well. Those in poverty aren't as capable of getting necessary or proper medical treatment. If we are stuck in a poverty trap and were to completely eradicate racism, then, depending on the strength of said poverty trap, divides in wealth among racial groups wouldn't really change noticeably and neither would all those other factors linked to wealth and class. There has to be that social mobility that allows the damage of the past to be undone in order to see the results of the improvements we've made.

And this is part of where a lot of doubt about institutional racism comes from. I'm not going to say it's because people have connected the class issues with the racial ones, but that people are at least aware (and in some cases blindly hopeful) of alternative explanations. You mention Darrel Wilson, and so does that last article you link. It talks about most black people thinking it was racism, most white people being not so sure. There are some personal biases going on in both sides in such cases. Largely confirmation type biases. For those who feel society is still racist they blindly run to accept these as examples, while those who think it isn't that racist search for alternative explanations. People won't necessarily believe what is even clearly true, let alone what might be true, and there are some things that we will never know whether they are true or not.

Which also brings it back to the micro and personal issue. To say whether or not what Darrel Wilson did was racially motivated we have to literally know what his thoughts were, and the way only way we can do that is if he chooses to make them known. This might sound strange, but a lot of the issues with racism are similar to the issues of rape when it comes to proving charges of it. It's not enough to show that an event happened (a white cop shot a black man or that sex happened), but instead you must prove the state of mind of the people involved (that the white cop did it because he hates black people or that one person was an unwilling participant in the sex) making it tricky to definitively show and convince others of.

All of this adds up to the clusterfuck you describe of white people being less believing of racial bias; which is exactly why I favor a hard push towards reigning in the force police are able to use with less focus on the idea of racism being the cause. I think it's important they be able to actually enforce their authority, and that it's important that people comply and they have ways to deal with those who don't; but there's absolutely far too much being quick to pull the trigger and killing people going on. Of all races, though yes minorities do get it worse, but again it's easy to link to crime rate, which links back to that class issue. That by focusing on handling these situations in non-lethal ways we still achieve that goal of reducing police violence and brutality, but we eliminate that massive burden of proving racist intentions in the actions of police officers. It gives us a much easier platform to argue for, one that is a concrete set of standards that our police forces should be held to, rather than an ephemeral specter of racism to try and capture. Not to mention the ways I'd like to see our society step up to provide more meaningful help to those stuck in poverty, or reforming those criminals that can be reformed, or the changes to drug laws I'd like to see. I favor pushes for things that will very much help close those gaps without even bringing up the racism argument. Not because I don't think racism is important, but because to accurately gauge it you first have to control for everything else.

But of course, I got my bachelors in economics, so I kinda like to control for other variables before pointing directly to one as the cause of everything and see these things (issues of racism, class, crime, education) as feeding off of each other. I admit that "ignoring the racism aspect" can sound cold, but I don't mean to do it entirely. Any actual concrete proof of racial discrimination in hiring practices, judicial decision making, police action, or anything of the like should be prosecuted as harshly as possible. But before we get to taking on the ephemeral, ever shifting, and damn near impossible to put under a spot light racism we should do what we can to eliminate the other causes of our current racial inequality. Partially because even large parts of that "majority of white people who don't believe anti-black discrimination is prominent these days" would likely be able to be convinced of such measures as improved education and tighter leash on police abuse of authority. And because as I said with the wealth trap bit, if black people are the predominant victim of abuses of police authority tacking those abuses would predominantly aid those black victims whether we label it "fighting racism" or "fighting abusive police authority"; just as a shrinking the general wealth gap would also shrink the wealth gap between racial groups since they're not proportionately represented.

I don't think that's "institutionalized" racism. Why is a large percentage of Black Americans impoverished? Sure, you can trace the roots to slavery, but plenty of other majority groups (Irish, Chinese, etc.) worked their way out of poverty. I would attribute this to Black culture contributing to the cycle of poverty.

Why are Black people arrested and imprisoned more often? Because they overwhelmingly commit more crimes than any other racial group, proportional to their population.

I would certainly be less inclined to hire someone with an unprofessional name. I think it's ridiculous and people should consider these things before naming their children. There is no "cultural heritage" being created by such a name, they're just made-up words. It's one thing if, y'know, you're picking an actual Swahili name. "Younike" is just dumb. And yeah, I'm allowed to have that opinion. I've seen white people with those names, too; it's not a racial thing.

Anti-white racism is an increasing problem. People are being made to feel ashamed of their skin color. There are people teaching their children to apologize for being white. It's actually happening, and it's just as disgusting as any other form of racism.

America doesn't have an "institutionalized racism" problem. Black America has a culture problem that they blame on racism rather than looking inwards and realizing they have the power to solve their problems themselves. It is destructive, abusive, anti-intellectual, a form of learned helpness, anti-LEO, anti-American, pro-gang, pro-drug use, and violently destroying the Black community from the inside out. It is reprehensible in a way I never even thought possible until I moved to an impoverished area of a major city and saw it for myself.

Until I'm allowed to say that without being labelled a racist, I refuse to give a shit about any of these problems, because if no one's interested in addressing the root cause, they will never be fixed.