3.4: Systemic Racism

Reflection on “3.4: Systemic Racism”

This chapter helped me understand systemic racism in a clearer way. It explained that racism is not only about individual hate or rude behavior. It is also built into systems, laws, and institutions. These systems can create unequal outcomes even when people claim to believe in equality. The chapter gave strong examples from incarceration, health care, education, and affirmative action. It showed how racism is reproduced through policies, surveillance, access, and unequal treatment. This reading helped me see that systemic racism is connected across many parts of life. It is like a chain that keeps repeating unless people break it on purpose.

One major topic in the chapter is incarceration. The chapter uses The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander to explain how mass incarceration harms communities of color, especially Black people. Alexander explains that Black youth are criminalized more than white youth. The chapter describes how police and courts treat similar behavior differently depending on race. This is not only about a few “bad” officers. It is about patterns that happen again and again. When these patterns continue for years, they become a system.

The chapter explains the difference between cocaine and crack. It says crack and cocaine are the same drug, but they have been punished differently. Crack has received harsher penalties than powder cocaine. The reading explains that white youth are more likely to possess cocaine, while Black youth are more likely to possess crack. Because the penalties are harsher for crack, Black communities end up receiving stronger punishment. This is an example of systemic racism because the law itself creates unequal outcomes. Even if a person claims the law is “race-neutral,” the impact is not equal.

The chapter also challenges a common stereotype. Many people assume that drug dealing is mostly in poor Black neighborhoods. The chapter explains that affluent white neighborhoods can have high rates of drug dealing too. But the difference is policing and surveillance. When police watch one community more, they will find more crime there. When they do not watch another community as closely, that community looks “safer,” even if similar behavior exists. This helped me understand how surveillance creates inequality. It is not only about what people do. It is also about who gets watched, stopped, searched, and arrested.

The chapter then connects systemic racism to health. This part was powerful and sad. It explains that Black women have higher death rates during childbirth and Black babies have higher infant mortality rates. The chapter says these outcomes connect to lack of quality health care and bias from medical staff. This means racism can show up even in hospitals. People may assume hospitals are safe and fair. But the chapter shows that discrimination can affect life and death.

The chapter gives the example of Serena Williams. She shared that when she gave birth, she almost died because staff did not listen to her concerns. This example shows that even rich and famous Black women can face medical bias. If a celebrity can be ignored, it is frightening to think about what happens to ordinary Black women with less power and fewer resources. This example helped me see that systemic racism does not disappear with success. It can follow people into places that should protect them.

The chapter also includes a statistic showing Black patients are more than twice as likely to die from childbirth complications compared to white patients. This statistic is shocking. It shows that inequality is not small. It is serious and measurable. The chapter also explains that midwives can improve birth outcomes and Black women often report better experiences with midwives than with doctors. This made me think about trust. It also made me think about how history shapes current choices. When Black women were denied care by white doctors in the past, they relied on midwives and community support. That history still matters today.

Another major topic in the chapter is educational inequity. The chapter explains “disproportionality.” Disproportionality means one group’s outcomes are very different from another group’s outcomes. The chapter provides statistics showing differences in college graduation rates between Black people and white people. These differences do not mean Black students do not care about education. Instead, the chapter helps us see how unequal schooling systems create unequal results.

The chapter also explains how children of color are treated differently in classrooms. It cites research showing that teachers often have more negative attitudes about Black children compared to white children. Teachers may assume Black children have less ability, less potential, or worse behavior. The chapter says Black students often have fewer positive interactions with teachers. They may be praised less, pushed less academically, and punished more. This is another example of systemic racism because it happens inside an institution that shapes opportunity.

The chapter also explains how school discipline can be unequal. Students of color can be punished for behaviors that white students are not punished for. This can lead to more suspensions and less learning time. It can also create a negative cycle. If a student is suspended often, they fall behind. If they fall behind, they may feel discouraged. If they feel discouraged, it becomes harder to succeed. Then people may blame the student. But the root problem is the system.

The chapter also discusses segregation. It explains that segregation increased in many ways even into the late 20th century and 2000s. Many Black students attend predominantly minority schools. Many Black and Latino students attend intensely segregated schools. Segregation matters because schools are not funded equally. Schools also do not have equal resources, counseling, enrichment programs, or advanced classes. When students grow up in segregated schools, they may have fewer opportunities to build the academic profile needed for college admissions. This shows how systemic racism can be built into geography and funding structures.

The chapter then moves to affirmative action. This section helped me understand why affirmative action exists and why people argue about it. The chapter explains that affirmative action is a set of procedures designed to reduce discrimination, fix the results of past discrimination, and prevent discrimination in the future. It applies to education and employment. The purpose is not to “give free points” to someone. The purpose is to address unfair barriers that already exist.

The chapter discusses major court cases, including Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. It also explains Proposition 209 in California, passed in 1996, which banned the consideration of race in public university admissions. The chapter explains that after the ban, Black and Latino student enrollment dropped sharply at competitive UC campuses like UCLA and UC Berkeley. This part helped me see that policy changes can have immediate real-world consequences. If diversity drops quickly, it suggests that unequal preparation and unequal opportunity were still present, and race-conscious policies had been helping address that gap.

The chapter also explains a key point: the number of Black students eligible for UC increased, and applications increased, but enrollment still declined. This means the problem was not that Black students were not qualified or not applying. The problem was that the admissions process was changed in a way that reduced access. This helped me understand how “neutral” policies can still create unequal outcomes.

The chapter explains that after Proposition 209, the UC system tried a “Comprehensive Review” approach. This means admissions considered other factors like life experiences and personal circumstances, not only test scores and GPA. This is a way to broaden evaluation. But the chapter still shows that race matters because race shapes schooling, tracking, discipline, access to AP classes, and exposure to resources. The chapter gives an example about AP course enrollment. White students made up a large share of AP courses in top high schools, while Latino and Black students were much less represented. This is not just about class. It also reflects race-based patterns, such as segregation and unequal counseling or tracking.

The chapter includes an important argument: banning affirmative action does not fix inequality in K–12 education. It removes one tool without addressing the root cause. This idea made sense to me. If students face unequal schools from childhood, then the outcome will show up later in college admissions. If we ignore that history and say, “Everyone compete equally,” it is not truly fair. It is like starting a race where some people are far behind because the road was blocked for them. Treating everyone the same at the finish line does not fix the problem.

The chapter also explains how some people say race-conscious policies are “polarizing.” But the reading suggests that it may feel polarizing mainly to people who do not want to change the status quo. If a system benefits some groups more than others, then correcting it will feel uncomfortable to those who benefit. This is not proof that the correction is wrong. It may be proof that change is necessary.

The chapter also mentions the Abigail Fisher case at the University of Texas. This reminds readers that affirmative action has been challenged many times. These debates show that race and access are still major issues in the United States. If society was fully equal, these policies would not be needed. But the chapter shows that inequality remains strong in incarceration, health, and education. That is why affirmative action continues to be discussed.

Overall, this chapter helped me understand systemic racism as a connected system. Incarceration, health outcomes, and school opportunities are not separate problems. They influence each other. If a community is over-policed, families face stress, loss of income, and trauma. If health care is biased, people suffer or die from preventable causes. If schools are segregated and unequal, students have fewer opportunities. Then these outcomes can be used to blame the community, even though the system created the harm. This is how systemic racism reproduces itself.

This reading also reminded me that data and stories both matter. Statistics show patterns clearly. Personal examples show the human impact. When I put the information together, I understand why Black Studies focuses on systems, history, and power. The chapter helped me think more critically about fairness. It showed that fairness is not only treating everyone the same. Fairness is also repairing harm and removing barriers that were built into society. Lifting systemic racism requires policy change, institutional accountability, and cultural change. It also requires people to be honest about history and the present.

Works Cited

Viveros Espinoza-Kulick, Mario Alberto, and Teresa Hodges. “3.4: Systemic Racism.” ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI), CC BY-NC 4.0.

Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Press, 2010.

Darling-Hammond, Linda. The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future. Teachers College Press, 2010.

Johnson, et al. (Referenced in chapter.)

Chacon, Jennifer M. (Referenced in chapter.)

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Incarceration

The New Jim Crow (2010) chronicles the great systemic issue of incarceration that disproportionately affects communities of color, especially Black people. Michelle Alexander names statistic after statistic that demonstrates how white youth, for example, are criminalized way less and less harshly compared to Black youth (pp. 95-99). Cocaine is criminalized less than crack, as there are harsher penalties for being caught with crack. Experts, including WebMD, confirm that cocaine and crack are exactly the same; the only difference besides how they appear (cocaine as powder and crack as a rock) is how they are regarded. White youth are more likely to possess cocaine, while Black youth are more likely to possess crack (p. 97). Stereotypically, there is more drug dealing in Black neighborhoods, but Alexander actually describes how affluent white neighborhoods have higher rates of drug dealing (p. 97). Again, communities of color are criminalized more, and because these neighborhoods are surveilled more, they are more likely to get punished. White youth have fewer arrest rates and less severe punishment for possessing and dealing drugs (pp. 96-97). For more about Incarceration, see Chapter 10.

Systemic Racism and Health

Studies across the nation show that Black women have higher mortality rates while giving birth, and Black children have higher infant mortality rates. Some of the mortality rates among women tie to the lack of quality healthcare, doctors that have a bias against them as Black women, and more. Tennis superstar Serena Williams revealed that when she gave birth to her baby, she almost died. She publicly shared that the medical staff did not listen when she told them about some of her conditions that she felt were causing complications. Studies show that from complications from childbirth, “Black patients are more than twice as likely to die than White patients (37.3 vs. 14.9 per 100,000 live births)” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cited in Burris et al. 1576–96). Further, “Recent studies show that midwives are associated with improved birth outcomes, lower rates of infant death, and that Black pregnant women in the U.S. report greater satisfaction with the care they receive from midwives than from physicians" (Vedam et. al cited in Muigai, p. 86).

Muigai writes about how, historically, Black women have turned to midwives when white doctors wouldn’t treat them.

Figure : "Lost and Found." (CC BY 2.0; Blondinrikard Fröberg via Flickr)

Educational Inequity: Schooling

One way to understand inequity and diversity is to look at disproportionality, or how representation differs greatly compared to other groups or others within a group (NASP). In the two examples below, we see disproportionate rates of graduation for Black people compared to white people.

• "…the difference between blacks and whites in college graduation rates was greater in 2000 than in 1940…" (Katz, Stern, and Fader, 2005, p. 93)
• “…in 2000, 15 percent of 26-to-30-year-old African American women had graduated from college, compared to about 33 percent of white women of the same age. For men 26-30, the spread was proportionately larger: college graduates were about 29 percent of white men and a very low 12 percent of black men” (Katz, Stern, and Fader, 2005, p.94)

Sidebar: Teacher-to-student interactions

In other studies, we see how Black children and other children of color are treated differently by teachers compared to white children. This is a type of interpersonal oppression or person-to-person. For example, Darling-Hammond (2010) says,

… dozens of studies have found that teachers typically hold more negative attitudes about Black children’s personality traits, ability, language, behavior, and potential than they do about White children, and that most Black students have fewer favorable interactions with their teachers than White students (Footnote: Irvine, 1990). Studies have also found that children of color are more likely to be treated differently in the classroom—neither pushed academically nor praised as much as White students—and more often punished for offenses that White students commit without consequence; they are also more likely to be suspended from school than Whites who commit the same infractions. (Footnote: Fine, 1991; Nieto, 1992; Carter & Goodwin, 1994) (Darling-Hammond, 2010, p. 65).

Further, institutionally Black and Latino students have experienced segregation at high rates, even in the 2000s. Darling-Hammond writes,

During the 1990s, segregation increased further across both schools and classrooms…By 2000, 72% of the nation’s Black students attended predominantly minority schools, up significantly from the low point of 63% in 1980. The proportion of students of color in intensely segregated schools also increased. Nearly 40% of African American and Latino students attend schools with a minority enrollment of 90 to 100% (2010, p. 35).

These examples of educational inequity demonstrate discrimination and oppression from the interpersonal to structural levels. These practices and policies within schooling perpetuate cycles of domination that have consequences on Black and brown students. In the next subsection, we discuss Affirmative Action, which is one way schools seek to bring equity.

Figure : "Picketing the separate and unequal D.C. schools: 1947." (CC BY-NC 2.0; Washington Area Spark via Flickr)

Affirmative Action

Affirmative action has been a contentious measure to address equity. The Legal Information Institution at Cornell Law defines affirmative action this way:

Affirmative action is defined as a set of procedures designed to; eliminate unlawful discrimination among applicants, remedy the results of such prior discrimination, and prevent such discrimination in the future. Applicants may be seeking admission to an educational program or looking for professional employment. In modern American jurisprudence, it typically imposes remedies against discrimination on the basis of (at the very least) race, creed, color, and national origin (Legal Information Institute).

In the fight with Affirmative Action, court cases where schools were accused of denying admission to students in order to admit supposed “less qualified” candidates such as in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), etc. Affirmative Action famously increased student of color enrollment at the University of California campuses until it was banned when Proposition 209 passed in 1996 to forbid the consideration of race in public school admissions. "Initially, Proposition 209 drastically reduced diversity at UC’s most competitive campuses. In 1998, the first admissions year affected by the ban, the number of California Black and Latino first-year students plunged by nearly half at UCLA and UC Berkeley" (Watanabe, 2022). The enrollment of African Americans at the top three selective schools since the banning dropped 34% at UC Berkeley, 22% at UCLA, and at 30% UC San Diego (Johnson, Mosqueda, Ramon, Hunt; 2008, p. 1). This is especially significant because the enrollment of these groups were way below the population residing in the state.

The impact of banning Affirmative Action in California public universities led to the implementation of a Comprehensive Review in 2002 at the University of California for admitting students, which serves to apply weight to other admission factors, i.e., “students experiences and personal circumstances” and not just SAT scores and GPA (Johnson, Mosqueda, Ramon, Hunt; 2008, p.1). Johnson, Mosqueda, Ramon, and Hunt also point out that the post-Proposition 209 declines are also significant because

1. “the percentage of UC-eligible African American high school graduates rose from 2.8% to 6.2% (California Postsecondary Education Commission, 2004)” and
2. “the number of African American applications to UC campuses has increased by 65% since 1997 (UCOP, 2007b; UCOP 2007c). (Johnson, Mosqueda, Ramon, and Hunt; 2008, 1).

These statistics show that there was a decrease in African American students at UC campuses despite them meeting criteria. Chacon (2008) points out that:

the implementation of Proposition 209 has done nothing to address the disadvantages faced by underrepresented minorities in California’s primary and secondary education system. Instead, Proposition 209 simply has taken away one tool, however "artificial," that could have remediated some of those inequalities (Chacon, 2008, p. 1219).

Further, she writes that some Proposition 209 proponents advocate for “class-conscious strategies” because they claim the issue is not race (Chacon, 2008, p. 1219); others claim that considering race is “polarizing” and worsens when we do things like place high regard for race in policies like affirmative action (Chacon, 2008, p. 1220).

Students of color have disproportionately inequitable educational experiences. For example, Solorzano and Ornelas (2004) point out that whites made up 49% of AP courses in the state’s “top 50 high school” while Latinos only comprised 16% and Blacks 5% (Johnson, Mosqueda, Ramon, and Hunt; 2008, p. 5). Such a statistic might show how Blacks and Latinos are less in AP classes and are therefore considered less competitive for admissions slots and that race, not just class, is a factor. But as the second point about how the implementation of Proposition 209 does not address equity in K-12, it therefore ignores the root of the problem. This is epitomized by the claim that considering race in policy is “polarizing” because it would likely be polarizing if one is not an advocate for educational access for all and instead hopes to maintain the status quo. It is true that affirmative action enables other criteria for admissions, but there is still the same expectation for students to perform as well as those at the same school as those who were not admitted under affirmative action. Further, affirmative action is consistent with Brown v. Board of Education in providing access to education that students of color may not have otherwise due to the lack of preparation they faced from institutional racism (such as tracking) present in their schooling. Affirmative action recognizes the inequities and potential of students of color.

Sidebar: Abigail Fisher v. Affirmative Action

Abigail Fisher, a white woman, fought against affirmative action in court in 2013 and 2016 for her spot at the University of Texas, Austin, citing that the reason she didn’t get admitted was because it favored students of color over her. Ultimately, Fisher lost her case. Cases like hers and others are highlighted in this 2022 PBS update, "The evolution of affirmative action cases, from Bakke to Fisher" which provides links to the cases and to where-are-they-now with some of those who brought affirmative action to court.

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This page titled 3.4: Systemic Racism is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Mario Alberto Viveros Espinoza-Kulick & Teresa Hodges (ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI)) .

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