You’re trapped, in a room with no doors or windows, and the walls are closing in on you. Drowning endlessly in raging waves of faceless racism and never-ending segregation. This is the everyday life of ‘racial minorities’ in the United States of America. Suffering at the hands of government figures, employment grillers, educational systems, law enforcement officers, and medical practices; this, is Institutional Racism. I wanted to discover the extent of which Institutional Racism exists, how Institutional Racism affects people of colour, and what the government is doing to prevent Institutional Racism. This is what I found.
Institutional Racism exists in employment, education, medical services and justice systems. The African-American population
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A cycle is evident in the effects of Institutional Racism; lack of education leads to no job or low income wages, which then proceeds to poor housing and poor medical care, which ultimately results in death. Richard Rothson of The American Prospect spoke on the situation occurring in Baltimore City. Recently the government adopted a restriction against black Americans purchasing houses in the same suburbs as white Americans. Federal housing subsidy policies going as far as to direct low income, black families to segregated neighbourhoods away from mid-class suburbs. When interviewed, Baltimore’s mayor claimed, “Blacks should be quarantined in isolated slums in order to reduce spread of communicable disease into white neighbourhoods, and to protect white values among white majority.” This set of circumstances is related to discrimination in political figures as well as no employment and lack of education. Failure in education, according to usnews.com, talks about how African-American children are at a disadvantage in school curriculums, leaving them improperly educated, which results in lack of employment. This revolves back to the housing crisis in Baltimore, furthermore providing the facts that when an African-American person isn’t hired from an employer, based on the idea of limited education factors, they are segregated to a low income wage community, which can often be proclaimed as …show more content…
Discrimination of protected groups (ie. African-Americans) from businesses is prohibited, which allows the prospect of equal rights in employment. The law reaches out to cover protected groups while in ‘public accommodations,’ for example; private, meaning retail businesses, and public, such as town squares. This is information from findlaw.com, informing the idea that no discriminatory actions should be acted upon due to race, colour, religion or disability. Jay Michaelson of The Daily Beast, apprises the ‘Disparate Impact’. The ‘Disparate Impact’ allows a person to challenge actions by organisations they believe are discriminatory towards race, colour, religion or sex. This extends not only to employment but also housing. This is a powerful tool for fighting this type of institutional racism that is often silent, systematic and insidious. ‘No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, colour, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.’ Quoted from findlaw.com Title Vl of the Civil Rights Act, talks mainly about equality in education. Most, nearly all, public and private schools and colleges abide under this law. This means that any educational system receiving federal financial assistance must run their
This being despite constant growing evidence that race really does matter in the post-civil rights age, effective solutions are in short supply and as the authors talk about "mutual obligations." The authors brought up a nice analysis of American race inequality, focusing on the rise of white supremacy and the continuation of white privilege despite the removal of direct institutionalized segregation. Solving current racial problems seems nearly impossible because it requires addressing largely unseen forces of indirect institutional
Following, numbers of shootings involving law enforcement and black men, race became a pertinent topic among American people. It seems that two groups have revealed themselves through these discussions, those who believe race is still a problem in America, and those who believe America is a post-racial society. History is one of the clearest indicators showing that race may still be relevant in modern communities. A plethora of connections can be drawn between discrepancies in poverty, incarceration, and poor education between whites and blacks when you look at events in our nation’s history such as slavery, sharecropping, Jim Crow laws, and more. With that being said, one of the more significant examples of institutional racism in America is one that is rarely
Do you ever believe that you have been a victim to a microaggression and there was nothing ever done about it? A victim of institutional racism that made you feel doleful and surly? Institutional racism happens a lot, but not as much as microaggressions, but a lot of people wonder why they get this type of vibe from white supremacist. These are the same people in the same country, with the same daily schedule but somehow they judge people based on their skin color. Some reason you aren’t allowed to lead this country if you are any other skin than white. There's a lot of racism in America, and a lot of people really wonder will the microaggressions, microinsults, the institutional racism will ever stop. People look at our president Donald J. Trump with his campaign of “Make America Great Again” does he mean the bad times for the African Americans? The bad times, for the Asian Americans? Do white people in general categorize all cultures/ ethnicities other than white as minorities? There are two articles that come together, to grow on this idea, to answer the questions above and to explain in full detail. Both of these articles, compare on what and how plenty of “minorities” feel in America. The speech essay “Analyzing Some Thoughts On Mercy” and the argumentative essay “6 Reasons We Need to Dismantle the Model Minority Myth of Those ‘Hard-Working ‘ Asians” by Ross Gay and Rachel Kuo deal with the problem with racism shown by white supremacy. Through these texts the
Racism goes a long way down the American history. It came as a result of slavery which began in 1619 when African slaves were brought to Jamestown, Virginia, which was an American colony in the North, to help in producing crops such as tobacco. Slavery was then a common practice in all American colonies through the 17th and 18th centuries, where African slaves helped in building the economic foundations of the now American nation. Slavery was then spread to the South in 1793, with the new invention of the cotton gin. About halfway through the 19th century, there was immense westward expansion in America, together with the spreading abolition movement in the North,
Racism has been an ongoing problem for decades, but now it has evolved into more complications rather than black people versus white people and wanting equality.
1) Racism can be manifested in many forms, including poverty, housing problems, underemployment, unemployment, wage differences, lowered educational opportunities, high crime rates, and welfare dependency. What are the causes of racism. Describe the primary cause of individual and institutional racism. How are these factors dealt with by society?
Explain how institutional racism could result in internalized oppression for members of marginalized populations. Provide examples relevant to a specific minority group, based on the chapters you selected.
There are two different levels of racism found in contemporary health care; institutional and interpersonal racism. Institutional racism encompasses policies and practices carried out by government and other institutions that may limit the benefits received by Indigenous Australians compared with non-Indigenous
Take a step into the tragic period between the 1940s and ’60s and imagine how prevalent racism was at the time. In a historic period during the Civil Rights movement and even later, how would we portray racism within America? Was it in its beginning stages? Or had it hit its highest point? It’s commonly known that racism was at its height around these intimidating moments. However, when compared to racism in America this last decade, have we really made any progress? Although much has changed about racism, from our laws to our rights, the educational system, along with the justice system, serve as clear examples in revealing the negative effects of racism and discrimination that continue to heavily influence our nation.
Along with misogyny and LGBT+ phobia, racism is one of the many methods of discrimination and bias that still exists today in America. It affects many ethnicities; Asian, Latino, even Indigenous Americans, but racial bias in the United States today especially focuses on African Americans as it did since the times of slavery. How does the race system still exist? The answer is simple; racial bias, like a living creature, will constantly adapt to its surroundings as time passes. Michelle Alexander’s nonfiction book, The New Jim Crow (2010), discusses the several changes made to the racial caste system following slavery and how most African Americans themselves cannot see it in its form today.
extended to the entire population. Based on Oliver and Shapiro’s study of Federal Reserve data, “…discrimination follows Blacks no matter where they want to live and how much they earn” (20). For instance, in 1991 the Federal Reserve performed a study of over 6 million residential mortgage applications by race and earnings, and the report resulted in a “systematic pattern of institutional discrimination in the nation’s banking system” (Oliver and Shapiro 19). Black applicants were rejected twice as much as white applicants. Hispanics were also included in the Federal Reserve study regarding mortgage discrimination, and the study found that Blacks and Hispanics were denied mortgages two to three times as much as Whites. Financial profiles
Taking into consideration my early childhood, youth and adolescence, I could say that I was surrounded by people, who were friendly and shared common cultural values. However, with the hindsight at my whole life, I could say why the sense of institutional racism touches me so deeply. I was raised by my mother and my grandmother, both of whom could not read and write. Thus, for the illiterate people there were no chances to have higher status in the society. The only way to survive for them was hard physical work. Institutional racism, as a form of oppression, is more consequential and involves policies and acts that affect a large number of people. Life of my family is only one example of its impact. Even though, a lot of time has passed since then, the most recent incidents with Rodney King, Trayvon Martin and George Zimmer, illustrate how a black man continues to be viewed as a menace to society in America (Blumenfeld, 2010).
When examining the timeline of slavery in the United States of America, it can seem like
Institutional racism has solidified its position into various aspects of American society. It has installed itself into employment practices, all levels of education, healthcare, housing, politics and the criminal justice system. Institutional racism has made some subtle changes to replace the boldness of slavery and Jim Crow. However, in educational institutions the effects of racism and discrimination are so delicate they typically go unnoticed by students of color. Individual racism usually happens on the personal level where the prejudice is expressed either consciously or unconsciously while there is some form of interpersonal encounter. When it comes to institutional racism it is similar to the individual concepts, however policies and practices are associated with with the belief of racial dominance of one group over another. It is a powerful system that use race to determine power and privilege(Reynolds et al., 2010). Even after the desegregation of school, educational institution are still separated. In Shelby County where I have lived since 1999 there are schools for minorities, and there are schools for whites. The schools for minorities in the city of Memphis have police officers walking the halls and there no books for learning. There are higher numbers of Whites students enrolled in private, charter, and magnet schools in the more affluent segments of the county. They will be exposed to the advantages of a proper education because of their race and privilege
After living in a place like Bend Oregon for 18 years I haven’t ever noticed a difference between blacks and whites. Bend has been said to be “one of the whitest places to live”, yet I never viewed a city by its race. Being racist to me meant that it was the whites who had a problem with the blacks and whites didn’t want anything to do with blacks. I hadn’t actually seen racism in action from anyone here. Now, after watching the film Crash and reading the essays “Blinded by the White: Crime, Race and Denial at Columbine High” written by Tim Wise and “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” written by McIntosh, my understanding of race, diversity, and communications have changed.