Structural Racism is Still a Problem
Earlier injustices echo and assert themselves in today’s society
I was speaking to a teenager and was surprised to find they didn’t know the history of race in America, nor did they understand how earlier injustice echos down the years to impact our society today. (Rest assured… the teen does now.)
To help clarify, let’s look at a few mechanisms by which older, racist policies and actions still affect people today. It will take generations for Black (and sometimes Brown) people to recover from those hardships, and one first step is to understand and document the problem.
There are surprisingly few places this information is pulled together in a simple way, so here goes.
(Note there is also what I’ll call “active racism:” old-school dislike, hatred, bias and undermining of minorities. That’s for another day: this piece is about the “structural” form of racism.)
Generational poverty — the Tulsa Race Massacre and other impacts
Too many BIPOC people are poor. Years ago, post-slavery, Jim Crow and generally racist policies and events impoverished Black America in particular, and now those race-based wealth and income differences are embedded in our society in a way that holds back some Black folks.
Black people have historically had trouble getting financial services such as loans and insurance, particularly from white-owned banks and companies, resulting in fewer Black businesses, slower growth, business failures, lack of home ownership, and home foreclosures. Socially, that adds up to less family wealth, less educational attainment, and fewer social advantages — which self perpetuate and last generations.
When Black businesses have thrived, they were undermined or sometimes outright destroyed, as in the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921. Tulsa saw an immediate decrease in Black home ownership after dozens of Black businesses were burned, thousands were left homeless, and ripple effects on Black finances were observed outside of Tulsa.
“Red lining” where (often Black) zip codes were ineligible for loans also denied Black people access to capital and home ownership for decades.
Farm loans have been denied many Black farmers by explicitly racist policies at the USDA, and many other government programs were also applied in a racist way over the years. Much of that has been fixed, but it leaves a legacy of too few Black farmers in the US.
Generational poverty, land seizures and equivalents
In addition to starting and running businesses, families often build wealth by owning property, improving it, and having it rise in value. Many Black people were given property — farm land — after the Civil War, but various tricks and policies were used to take that land away, resulting in the number of farms owned by Black people dropping from 14% of all farms in 1910 to just about 1.4% today. A 90% reduction.
One trick used to seize land was to have racist officials impose higher taxes on Black farmers, driving eventual foreclosure. Another means was to give government grants preferentially to white farmers, resulting in Black farmers becoming uncompetitive or getting wiped out by a drought or other bad luck, and slowly going out of business. This disparity at the USDA persists into modern times.
POR (plain old racism or active racism) also accumulates over centuries, where millions of bureaucrats, functionaries and even neighbors deny a Black person a job, parole, a loan, healthcare, or a break. A Black person is 68% less likely to see a low-level charge dismissed. if a Black person can’t get a timely loan to plant a crop or make payroll, they’ll go under and a white-owned business with thrive instead. That adds up and has contributed to a downward spiral, or at least contributed to some forms of stagnation.
State-enforced illiteracy and poverty among Black farmers also made it harder for them to fight for equal treatment: before the end of the Civil War, it was actually illegal to teach Black people to read in many States. Today it is still a problem as minority school districts lag behind (for structural reasons as we will see below). People who can’t read well cannot navigate the system — even when that system is no longer stacked against them.
The law has often been no help, as racism was, and to a lesser extent still is, prevalent at all levels of government, including an actual anti-Black coup in Wilmington NC in 1898 that forced Black people out of government.
An illustrative story about ten Black farmers
Consider ten hypothetical Black people in 1860…. 8 are slaves and two are free farmers outside the South. In 1865, the slaves are freed and each gets 40 acres of land and a mule. Now ten farmers. All good, right?
But two of them need a new plough to stay afloat, and can’t get a loan. So now 8 farmers left. Twenty years later, governments start to assess 4 of the remaining farmers’ land at an unfairly high rate. Three of them are illiterate, having been raised as slaves and therefore have no idea what’s going on. In another few years, 2 more farmers lose their land due to taxes. Perhaps they stay on as sharecroppers for the new (white) owners. 6 farmers left.
Another few years, and there’s a drought. Four of the 6 farmers need trench digging equipment, or a loan for laborers, and there were Black banks willing to lend money last year, but they were burned down recently, so this year they go to white banks for the money. Two of the four either don’t get a loan, or there are weeks of review that delay the loan to the point the crops are damaged before irrigation is complete. Four farmers left.
A couple more decades, and crop prices are low. White farmers get loans from the USDA, who famously avoid loaning or granting to Black farmers. Now two farmers left. One of them buys a lemon of a tractor, and after repairs is short on funds to buy seed. His credit is not great, so he calls friends and family, and posts a note in his church. Unfortunately, the 8 bankrupt farmers who now have no land or savings represent the overall situation in this rather segregated community, and nobody has money to lend.
One farmer left, which is exactly what we see in reality. Over a century, a 90% reduction in Black farming.
Poor people have poor kids
Poverty itself is self-perpetuating.
The impact of poverty on a child’s academic achievement is significant and starts early. Young children growing up in poverty face challenges with cognitive and literary ability and [often] begin school both academically and socioeconomically behind their peers from higher-income backgrounds. — Jonah Edelman, PhD
Intuitively, a poor parent typically works longer and less predictable hours than a richer person, reducing time with kids. Many can’t help with homework they do not themselves understand, poor folks tend to raise their kids in neighborhoods with higher crime and all the social distortions that go along with that, and time is short if you’re working two jobs. Financial stresses can undermine marriages and two parent homes. So poverty enforced in one era echos and continues into future generations (to a point).
Poverty, if concentrated, also results in cultures of poverty where poor people are grouped into ghettos, or blocked from wealthier areas due to zoning laws that keep low-income housing and inter-generational families out.
Informal (private) safety nets
Beyond government programs, which are available to everyone, people have informal, private safety nets of support from family, friends and the community. Having wealthier, established personal networks can mean money, a spare room, a car to borrow, influence, a job in someone’s company, or even cash from a rich aunt, all of which intuitively helps a person out, particularly when they fall on hard times. For all the reasons above, Black America has lacked these resources, weakening this invisible support. Numerous studies show there is an impact on well-being based on private safety nets.
Cultural legacies
Culture is hard to define and track, but it appears that generations of poverty, the history of slavery, presence of media stereotypes, gang activity in poor neighborhoods, or other factors also lead to poverty. Black men are particularly affected, resulting in less marriage, less income, fewer positive Black role models (statistically) and so on.
A note to any actual racists
I welcome all readers, but I do hope you are not racist. If you are, you may now be thinking that Black people are actually intellectually or morally inferior in some way and that explains unequal outcomes without any “structural” causes.
I encourage you to give that up. We all know that Black folks in Maryland do a lot better than Black folks in Mississippi or Louisiana. Policy and history strongly impact racial gaps, and even if you hold onto the idea of some essentialist racial difference, you have to admit that bad policies result in inequality by looking at the states. This chart (and article) shows that the racial income gap varies from a low of 13% to a high of 68% across states, with some of the most regressive or least diverse states (WV, GA, KY, MO, AZ) generally having the worst gaps.
Even though personal responsibility and agency are still critical, we can also look at how the overall system and structural factors affect Black America. That’s not to say that anyone, of any color, facing a headwind should curl up and give up, or devote their time to complaint when only action will help, but to say that these headwinds do exist.
Why this is “Structural Inequality” or “Systemic Racism”
Even if there were no more racists, or they were largely powerless (and we are making remarkable progress in that direction), the setup we have now will, predictably, lead to worse outcomes for Black people for some time. That means it is no longer only about racism in the form personal hatred or bias: there are issues with the “setup” which we should properly call “structural.”
All the issues discussed above now exist without an old-fashioned racist (currently) interfering. Differences in family wealth, culture, ghettoization, reduced land and business ownership, education and zip code have been imposed by previous (actively racist) generations, and now the structures self-sustain in some ways.
And it’s not only past events with lingering effects; many modern structures that are not intentionally racist (or not obviously) keep things as they are. For instance, we (as a society) do not help poor people to leave the ghetto because zoning laws keep them there: you can’t build an affordable housing unit in wealthy areas, and occupancy limits prevent inter-generational housing in even the largest houses or apartments. Accessory dwellings are banned. We set “tax policy” that ties school spending to property values. It is not always race based: after all, who wants the pathology of poverty in their tony, upscale suburb, regardless of the person’s color? I can tell you that living among too many poor people tends to mean more criminals and a rougher neighborhood.
These are things that will hold back the next generation even if there were no longer a whit of racism left in society. So the term “structural” is apt, and differentiates from explicit or active racism. Calling this “racism” or “white supremacy” is confusing (and odd) in that structural racism differs from century-old accepted meanings of “racism,” but the new meaning is pretty well established, and it’s not productive to quibble.
Yet I am still not woke
A natural question is, so now what?
I advocate for solutions, study, and good policy. Better education (with approaches that are shown to actually work for BIPOC kids), more access to mixed income housing through ADUs, and end to the drug war, and a dozen other things we can engage with if we acknowledge structural issues.
However, that does not mean we need a new culture war. It does not mean that “woke” paranoia and race reductionism are correct. We can acknowledge that we have a problem, and that we have structures to fix and get to work. But attacking or blaming white America seems counter-productive rather than helpful. Critical (race) theory has been on the rise for decades, and unfortunately Black advancement (in particular, vs Hispanic, Asian and others) is stalled in many ways post 1970.
We don’t need to undermine 400 years of enlightenment thought, discard our Constitutional protections, blame inequality on toxic “whiteness,” accuse well-meaning people of “fragility,” or cancel anyone who disagrees in good faith.
Critical Race Theory is unfortunately focused so exclusively on race that not only are the racial problems uncovered, but racial animosity and division are also elevated to a near obsession. That fixation on race actually breeds more racism rather than less. It’s not working, folks.
We need a a new path to address race, but not a new narrative focused on blame. We actually need and should use the “linear” “racial progress narrative” that suggests we have done well recently, and can now do even better. In contrast, CRT “questions… Enlightenment rationalism” itself, digging into a cultural and philosophical battle that actually harms the cause.
From such a flawed foundation, CRT strives to insult and badger rather than unify and solve.
What to do?
Enlightenment rationalism actually works really well. Every time you read a peer-reviewed scientific article, observe the (hopefully) peaceful transfer of power in a democracy, start your car, or use another technological wonder, you benefit from Enlightenment rationalism.
We know how to fix things. The Enlightenment tells us to identify, study, debate and discuss, test hypotheses and eventually forge agreement. The first step in the rational, Enlightenment-based model, as they say, is admitting we have a problem. And we do, which I hope this story helps clarify.
