Systemic racism is a term that’s often tossed around in conversations about inequality, but it’s important to dive deeper into what it actually means and how it has evolved over time.
What is it?
At its core, systemic racism refers to the ways in which racial prejudice is embedded in the policies, practices, and procedures of institutions—from schools and workplaces to the criminal justice system and beyond. It’s not just about individual acts of racism, but about a larger, structural framework that perpetuates racial inequality.
Slavery and Civil Rights
To understand systemic racism, it helps to look at history—because that’s where the roots of the problem lie. It didn’t start with one person’s prejudiced attitude or one bad law; it’s a system that was built over centuries.
When slavery was abolished in 1865, it wasn’t because society had suddenly rejected racism. Instead, the institution of slavery was dismantled but replaced by other methods of controlling and oppressing Black people.
In the U.S., for example, racism was institutionalized long before the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. One of the earliest examples is slavery. For nearly 250 years, Black people were enslaved, regarded as property rather than human beings.
Separate But Equal Doctrine
After the Civil War, Black Americans were supposed to be free, but they still faced discriminatory laws and practices. The period of Reconstruction was followed by the rise of Jim Crow laws in the South, which enforced racial segregation. Even though Black Americans had won the legal freedom to vote, own property, and live as equals, these rights were undermined through violence, disenfranchisement, and legal discrimination.
For example, literacy tests, poll taxes, and outright intimidation were used to prevent Black people from voting, while segregation kept them out of white schools, hospitals, and public facilities. These practices were legal under the doctrine of “separate but equal” upheld by the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson. The system was designed to keep Black Americans separate from, and inferior to, white Americans.
Fast-forward to the mid-20th century, and we begin to see the Civil Rights Movement fighting back against this entrenched racism. Landmark events like the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act were supposed to level the playing field. But these laws only addressed the most overt forms of racial inequality. They didn’t dismantle the systemic structures that had been built over centuries.
The impact of past racism continued to echo through the generations. Redlining, for example, kept Black families from buying homes in certain neighborhoods, ensuring that wealth and resources stayed concentrated in white communities. Schools remained segregated, and job discrimination was rampant.
Criminal Justice System
The criminal justice system, with its heavy policing of Black neighborhoods and the over-incarceration of Black men, also became a glaring example of how systemic racism persisted.
Even today, we see echoes of these historical practices. Take housing, for instance: though redlining is illegal now, many cities still see significant racial disparities in homeownership, wealth accumulation, and access to quality housing. Or look at the school-to-prison pipeline, where Black children, particularly boys, are more likely to be suspended, expelled, and incarcerated than their white peers, often for the same behaviors.
The criminal justice system still disproportionately affects Black people, with Black Americans being more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested, and given harsher sentences than white Americans for similar offenses. An excellent example of this is the sentencing for Marijuana possession; a White man charged with the crime would get probation, while the Black man charged with the exact same crime would be sentenced to prison.
One of the key things to understand about systemic racism is that it’s not always about overt racism or bigotry. It’s not about some evil person pulling the strings—it’s more about policies, practices, and biases that have been woven into the fabric of society.
Education
Critical Race Theory was a framework and method of looking at our criminal justice system through an acceptance of our institutions being built on systemic racism. Folks on the right distorted what it was and said that Critical Race Theory was being taught in elementary schools, when it was only being taught at high levels in law schools.
Systemic Racism in U.S. Politics
Even today we see practices that are racist in nature. Gerrymandering is a practice used by Republicans where they draw their districts in a way so that Black residents of the district are outside the boundaries of the district. It gives them an advantage in elections since Black Americans generally vote for Democrats (that changed in 2024).
We saw further evidence of systemic racism after the 2020 presidential election when Donald Trump claimed voter fraud took place in cities with large Black populations and they were responsible for his “loss,” though he still claims to have won that election.
His claims of voter fraud resulted in Republican governors and legislatures passing restrictive voter suppression laws cloaked in a need to protect “election integrity.” They used the false claims of fraud as a catalyst for these “election integrity” laws and policies, claiming they were necessary after “all of the voter fraud” in 2020.
Systemic racism is about the ways in which certain groups, particularly Black Americans, have been historically excluded from opportunities and resources, and how those inequalities are perpetuated in subtle, often invisible ways.
How Can We Fix it?
So, what can we do about it? Addressing systemic racism isn’t easy. It requires challenging not just individual prejudices but the very structures that perpetuate inequality. It means examining everything from education and housing policies to policing and healthcare systems.
But the first step is understanding that this is not an isolated issue—it’s a system that has evolved over hundreds of years, and it will take collective effort to change. Only by acknowledging the history and its ongoing effects can we begin to dismantle the systems that support racial inequality.
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