3 ms·

The original definition of structural racism is very basic and undeniable. Racial profiling by police departments is an obvious example. They profile by race be

The original definition of structural racism is very basic and undeniable. Racial profiling by police departments is an obvious example. They profile by race because it work, not because the police themselves are racist. And it works for historical and material reasons. It is not causal but correlational. Nonetheless, it works so the institution does it. As a result, the structure of the police department is racist. That said, this original definition has been completely ignored and void by the woke types and the terminology now has no coherent meaning at all.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> The original definition of structural racism is very basic and undeniable. Racial profiling by police departments is an obvious example. They profile by race because it work, not because the police themselves are racist. On the one hand, if that description were accurate, that would be institutional racism, which is not “the original definition of structural racism”, structural racism is about the interaction between elements of society and between racism at all three (institutional, personally mediated, and internalized) [0] levels. On the other hand, the description is not accurate, and racial profiling as a phenomenon is actually a very good place to talk about structural racism, because what is superficially boring institutional racism (and, to be clear, it is institutional racism on top of whatever else it is) is, when you look into the arguments for it even a little, colored rather extraordinarily by personally mediated racism (the kind of active racism that is thought of when the term is used without qualifiers), including racist priors leading to treating statistics drawn from the output of criminal justice processes involving all three kinds of racism (including racial profiling itself) as being race-blind. It’s literally “people of X race are more likely to be identified as perpetrators of crime under status quo systems, so in seeking to identify perpetrators of crime, we should focus on people of race X.” [0] “institutional racism” and the three-fold distinction between institutional, personally mediated, and internalized racism is originally from Jones CP. “Levels of racism: a theoretic framework and a gardener’s tale”. Am J Public Health. 2000;90(8):1212–1215.
- whitemary 4y ago
  I don't care whether or not the example also qualifies as "institutional racism" or how many obscure academic texts you cite. The institution is only one small part of the power structures that enforce the resulting behavior. In Frankfurt School critical theory, the largest structures in this case would be capitalism and the capitalist state (monopoly on violence). Of course, the state dictates the priorities of its institutions.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> The original definition of structural racism is very basic and undeniable. Racial profiling by police departments is an obvious example. They profile by race because it work, not because the police themselves are racist. On the one hand, if that description were accurate, that would be institutional racism, which is not “the original definition of structural racism”, structural racism is about the interaction between elements of society and between racism at all three (institutional, personally mediated, and internalized) [0] levels. On the other hand, the description is not accurate, and racial profiling as a phenomenon is actually a very good place to talk about structural racism, because what is superficially boring institutional racism (and, to be clear, it is institutional racism on top of whatever else it is) is, when you look into the arguments for it even a little, colored rather extraordinarily by personally mediated racism (the kind of active racism that is thought of when the term is used without qualifiers), including racist priors leading to treating statistics drawn from the output of criminal justice processes involving all three kinds of racism (including racial profiling itself) as being race-blind. It’s literally “people of X race are more likely to be identified as perpetrators of crime under status quo systems, so in seeking to identify perpetrators of crime, we should focus on people of race X.” [0] “institutional racism” and the three-fold distinction between institutional, personally mediated, and internalized racism is originally from Jones CP. “Levels of racism: a theoretic framework and a gardener’s tale”. Am J Public Health. 2000;90(8):1212–1215.

whitemary 4y ago
I don't care whether or not the example also qualifies as "institutional racism" or how many obscure academic texts you cite. The institution is only one small part of the power structures that enforce the resulting behavior. In Frankfurt School critical theory, the largest structures in this case would be capitalism and the capitalist state (monopoly on violence). Of course, the state dictates the priorities of its institutions.