- systemic: Relating to a system, especially as opposed to a particular part.
(Lexico Oxford English Dictionary)
(Lexico Oxford English Dictionary)
We hear a lot these days about how systemic racism persists in the United States.
Not just racism, but "systemic" racism. Racism that is built into the fabric of our society. Racism that blacks cannot avoid no matter how hard they try. Racism that whites have bolted into the way our civic institutions function, how our economy works, how our neighborhoods are built, how jobs are awarded, and how our courts view justice.
But is all of that true? It sure used to be, especially in the South, before 1865. But even after Jim Crow laws, redlining, white flight, and all the other phenomena academics and politicians have identified as tools of racist ideologies, we're told that white people like me currently tolerate, promote, and defend systems of subjugation and segregation now, in the year 2020. We're told that because differences between blacks and whites still exist socioeconomically, it's because racism continues to control the mechanics of being an American.
Today, Reuters put an infographic on their website to try and educate us on what this systemic racism looks like. Yet instead of proving that systemic racism exists, it appears the only thing these facts prove is something we already know: That differences exist between whites and blacks. What remains unproven is whether or not these differences result from systemic racism, or differences in lifestyles that may or may not have much of anything to do with our society's continued suppression of black Americans - if indeed, our society is actively and intentionally suppressing black Americans.
After all, just because life experiences are different for people of different skin colors and ethnicities, that doesn't mean racism is the driving force behind those differences. Or that just because systemic racism did, at one point in our nation's past, cause those differences, we continue to perpetuate that systemic racism today. Yes, racism remains a stubborn and ugly problem in our society, but that doesn't mean racism is "systemic" in our society. Racism exists within many individuals, but does it cripple our institutions?
The reason this distinction is important is because more and more politicians, clergymembers, celebrities, and everyday folk are using the term "systemic racism" or "institutional racism" in describing things from which whites suffer less than - or enjoy more than - blacks do. These terms are on the verge of becoming functionally irrelevant, however, because as you will see, there's little proof that they actually exist. So for people who are genuinely concerned about equal opportunities for all Americans, regardless of their race, focusing on what is true, relevant, and actionable should be a priority. Otherwise, all we're doing is twisting definitions. And how does that help anything?
So, here are each of the infographic slides provided by Reuters:
Right off the bat, this slide presentation levies an accusation of systemic racism, so you can see I didn't make that up. Meanwhile, as we move through this presentation, much of the language more accurately talks about "inequities". Racism does not necessarily equate to inequities. We need to be careful here, don't we? Spurious, sensationalistic, and accusatory language only serves to promulgate division and suspicion, two driving forces behind legitimate racism. So we should be wary when folks just sprinkle their vocabulary with the word "racism".
Depending on the sentence structure, it can also be sloppy grammar to say that racial "inequality" exists, when the correct word should be "inequalities". Nobody can deny that "inequalities" - plural in a way that implies not everything is unequal - exist between blacks and whites in the United states. However, saying that "inequality" - a broader term implying fundamental, across-the-board (or "systemic") unfairness - exists is untrue, and unfair to us all. Exaggerating the problem beyond accuracy is unlikely to create an environment conducive to fixing what actually needs fixing.
While we're on the subject of grammar, the fact that pregnancy-related deaths are higher for black mothers than white mothers is an example of a "difference", not necessarily an "inequality". For example, we know that black women are proportionately more likely to have abortions than white women, and that having an abortion can create complications if the mother wants to deliver future children to birth outside of the womb. There are also differences in diet and other personal choices that likely play significant roles in maternity outcomes. But systemic racism?
We hear a lot about black peoples' inability to access "quality healthcare", as if black people are systemically denied quality healthcare because of their skin color. The fact of the matter is this: The richer a person is, regardless of their race, the better their ability to afford "quality healthcare". Poor white people have just as much inaccessibility to premium healthcare as anybody of any skin color. And, frankly, since all poor people have access to healthcare - government-paid healthcare - doesn't that also imply that government-run healthcare systems are inferior... which begs the question: Why do Democrats keep advocating for government-run healthcare for all...?
Food insecurity is indeed a problem, and is a sign of poverty, but is it a sign of systemic racism? Just throwing numbers onto a digital screen and claiming they represent racism isn't proving it. Is it because grocery stores in predominantly black neighborhoods have closed because their customer base is black (or because their customer base is poor)? Is it because black families have been denied participation in food stamp programs because of their race? There are likely a variety of reasons vouching for the accuracy of statistics like these, but is systemic "racism" one of them?
I don't know about you, but many unquantifiable variables exist in this explanation of food insecurity. For example, how many people are in a "household"? I imagine the "uncertainty" of acquiring food increases the larger the household is, but are we talking about feeding parents, children, cousins, and grandparents (which could be considered two households or more, depending on the age of the kids). And what kind of food are we talking about? For example, I have to pass by many expensive food items at our local Kroger's because I simply can't afford them. But just because the food I'd prefer is expensive, that doesn't mean I'm "food insecure".
OK, who is arguing this isn't a fact? But how many blacks are denied entry to college because of their skin color? Come to think of it, how many blacks are encouraged NOT to go to college because of their race? How many public school teachers tell their black students their race will make them inferior college material? The fact that fewer blacks get undergraduate degrees isn't speaking to any systemic racism. The fact that fewer blacks get undergraduate degrees likely has to do with other facts, such as black males having higher teenaged incarceration rates than whites. So let's talk about prison reform and whether or not our drug laws need changing. Let's talk about how earnestly black parents study with their kids, challenge their kids on their homework, and allow their kids to suffer the consequences of undone or poorly-done schoolwork? I have friends leaving their public schoolteaching jobs because parents (some white, yes, but mostly black) would rather argue with teachers about their kids' poor academic performance than ride the kids harder at home.
This one screen contains an appalling amount of grossly distorted conjecture. For one thing, what "racial inequality" is being referenced? No public school turns away black students. All public schools are funded with tax dollars relative to the community in which the school is located. Some communities have more resources than others, but that fact is not driven by systemic racism. For example, poor white school districts in Maine are poor because the state has very little economic activity. The North Shore region around Oneida Lake, in Upstate New York, where I grew up, used to have 3 elementary schools. Now it has one. And it's virtually all-white in that area (literally - it snows like the Dickens up there for much of the year).
Liberals also like to characterize the differences between mostly-black and mostly-white schools as "segregation". But doing so marginalizes the actual segregation that used to be lawful across much of the South years ago. Just because some schools may have students of a predominant skin color does not mean they are "segregated". Using word games does not help resolve disparities in educational attainment. Many families of all skin colors and ethnicities move to wherever they believe their children will be able to maximize their public school educational opportunities. Economics is usually the only metric that prevents families from living in the most desirable school districts. And even in undesirable school districts - such as the Dallas ISD here in Texas - many non-white parents are transferring their black and Hispanic kids into charter schools, much to the dismay of liberals. It seems an increasing number of inner-city parents are becoming as savvy as suburban parents, frustrated with lethargic teacher unions, social promotion, and left-wing social engineering that dominates many big-city school districts. Don't blame the ills of faltering inner-city schools on racism - blame them on liberal educational policies run amok.
Again - how is this proof of racism? It's proof that black students likely come from poorer families, or perhaps proof that black families don't know the behind-the-scenes rigors of applying for student grants and scholarships. But racism? No.
By the way, if you're getting frustrated by the ineffectiveness of these slides, remember - they're from Reuters, not me. I'm just responding to what they're presenting.
And yet more statistics, but no proof of racism. Lower income, which translates into less health insurance, is not a proof of racism. Insurance companies today will sell to anybody who can pay their premiums.
Finally! At last, buried deep into this slide presentation, we have a chart showing us a disparity that deserves some attention.
Twenty-percent-longer prison sentences for black men for the same crime as whites? Why is this happening? Is this statistic relevant across the board, for blacks in the Northeast as well as the South, for example? How about for jury trials or for sentences made solely by judges? Is it because blacks generally can't afford higher-priced lawyers who supposedly know more legal tricks to get their clients reduced sentences? We've all heard anecdotal stories about bumbling court-appointed lawyers.
Nevertheless, let's consider that these crimes are likely not white-collar crimes, for which the defendant's wealth would probably play a greater role. How many white families of a defendant on trial for selling drugs, for example, have more money to pay for a high-priced lawyer than a black family would? Probably not enough to make it statistically relevant, right? My point is this: the more we take money out of this equation, the more unfortunate it seems that racism might be playing a role. And that would mean some sort of systemic racism is in play here. Which would be wrong.
I would say this needs immediate attention, because if our courts aren't fair places, we can't expect much fairness elsewhere in our society.
This slide purports to build on the nefarious specter of systemic racism introduced in the previous slide. I have a white friend in the federal prison system, and his experience in two facilities in two different states confirms the general statistics of our country's prison population: it's disproportionately comprised of black men.
Unfortunately, however, this slide quickly devolves into the highly debatable topic of police brutality. And yes, there is room for some debate here. Black men, for example, seem to resist arrest more than whites of either gender. Why is that? Resisting arrest is not a good indicator of emerging from one's police encounter alive. Resisting arrest is a wholly illogical action for anybody to take, particularly when cops are attempting to arrest you for a less serious crime. Why do black men - specifically black American men, not even black men of immediate African descent - continue to resist arrest?
And we're back to the spurious, needlessly-sensationalistic slides. The lack of journalistic integrity posed by this slide is stunning. It reads as though black people are being denied the right to vote because of their skin color. And that is simply not true.
It's sad to see Reuters patronize their readers so. Here, they try to convince us, by referencing the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, that whites have since been passing laws to deprive blacks of their right to vote. Felony convictions have always carried with them certain penalties that last longer than one's sentence, and some of those penalties have involved voting. That is not a racist construct, even if such laws may impact black felons. As long as those laws impact black and white felons equally, they can't be called racist.
Where do most of America's blacks live? They live in urban areas, correct? And most urbanites rent, right? The biggest asset an American usually has is their home, but you have to own your home to have it counted as an asset to your net worth, right? Many blacks do not own their home (another slide points out this fact). Many non-urban blacks also live in the South, which tends to be less affluent even in mostly-white rural areas, meaning property values are much lower than in, say, California, or the Northeast's suburban regions. Compound this reality over generations of inheritances, and disparities of net worth are bound to become noticeable. But is that because of racism? Perhaps yes, in terms of the racism of the Confederacy and Jim Crow laws. But neither of those entities exist today.
Remember, too, that at the founding of our country, only white male LAND OWNERS could vote. Women couldn't own land. Many white men didn't own land, either; they were too poor to buy it, and many didn't have the political clout helpful in obtaining land grants from the government. There are levels of wealth between all sorts of categories of people groups. Jews, Catholics, Baptists, Poles, Italians, the Irish, and Asians - not to mention Native Americans - have all been discriminated against in various ways throughout America's past. About the only American cohort that has never been discriminated against is the wealthy, white, Episcopal male. To focus on the differences between levels of wealth just by skin color ignores other sad realities of our history.
This wouldn't be an official slide show by a mainstream media outlet without the tired, fallacious tirade of income inequity. Do you really think any company afraid of a lawsuit these days would pay a woman less than a man for the very same, exact job? Or a black person less than a white person for the very same, exact job? Where both job candidates had exactly the same resume, education, and work-related experience? If it does happen, it happens in such limited numbers as to be statistically insignificant. Besides, programs like Affirmative Action, and tax advantages for "minority-owned" businesses, are designed to offset the legacies of past injustices.
Of course, retirement income is also impacted by one's ability to accumulate wealth during one's working years. But Reuters has yet to prove systemic racism today causes blacks to save less for retirement than whites.
Besides, not having a college degree doesn't necessarily mean one's income will be at a poverty level. Tradespeople, for example, earn very good money without having a college degree. We've had many, many tradesmen to our old house over the years - and yes, they were all tradesMEN - because none of them have been women, and frankly, none of them have been black. They've all been either white or Hispanic men.
OK, let's talk about predatory home loans. Dig into the research yourself, and you'll learn that a very sophisticated operation was conducted in the United States between the department of Housing and Urban Development and mortgage lenders.
After World War Two, our American government began funding the construction of public housing projects all over the country. These projects were built by the lowest bidder to the most minimal of standards. Even if they hadn't been occupied by impoverished people who tended to live in violence and civic neglect, they would have likely fallen into severe disrepair all on their own. And that's what happened - witness the infamous Cabrini Green in Chicago, and the multitude of similar housing projects from Boston to Los Angeles. Within a few decades, America's public housing stock was an international disgrace, and needed to come down.
There was no way Washington could pay to fix all those apartment buildings. And sociological thought had also pivoted from the earlier high-density model, into which it was presumed poor people could be stuffed on top of each other. No, the current, contemporary vision is low-density public housing, or even better yet - Section 8 vouchers for single-family homes and privately-owned apartments.
As it happened, towards the mid-1990's, plenty of established suburban neighborhoods were fast becoming unfashionable, having been outpaced by newer construction and features that made the first post-war subdivisions starkly dated by comparison.
The only way to fit tenants of the soon-to-be-demolished public housing projects into other housing was to get folks renting low-income housing into a higher level of housing. That would free up existing space so public housing families could be moved into aging single-family homes or cheap, privately-owned apartments, with the aid of Section-8 vouchers. The government went to lenders and asked them to devise mortgages that people with sketchy credit histories could obtain, so they could buy-up and out of the properties targeted for Section-8 recipients. And that created the major contributor to what became the Mortgage Meltdown. Which, yes, impacted black borrowers the most. But nobody set out to target blacks - not the government, and not the banks.
Does the fact that certain health problems kill blacks sooner than whites point to racism as a problem in today's society? Do white doctors and nurses treat blacks with less skill or empathy because of their skin color?
Instead, since we can prove that blacks are generally less wealthy than whites, can't we also extrapolate that blacks probably live in greater numbers next to sites of industrial pollution, since such properties are less valuable? What about the stereotypical black diet high in starches, fried foods, and sugars? Black men likely also have jobs requiring heavier labor, which is known to shorten lifespans. There are many factors that contribute to lifespans, but blaming current constructs of racism doesn't help anything.
Conclusion
Indeed, with the exception of those troubling jail sentences, the vast majority of this presentation is outright wrong. Nothing here proves that racism today contributes in any significant way to the things that may particularly ail American blacks. Yes, past institutionalized methods of racism, with slavery and the Jim Crow laws especially, did indeed cripple the black experience in our country. But from an institutionalized, systemic perspective, there is no proof here that racism remains an impediment to black progress in our society. There appear to be problems with how blacks are sentenced for the same crimes as whites, and we still need to work on the issue of how cops - both black and white - treat black American men during arrests. But to characterize race relations in our country today as still plagued with endemic, contemporary, institutionalized racism is itself unfair and, to the extreme, is itself racist.
Equality is most successfully achieved through accountability and accuracy. To promulgate distorted rhetoric such as Reuter's presentation serves nothing but the same old patterns of division against which we're supposed to be fighting.
