Structural systemic racism sounds really bad, because it suggests pervasive racism that cannot be overcome. In reality, discussing structural racism is a sign of progress. Racism through the 1950s was generally accepted and overt. The Civil Rights movement helped society dramatically change its views on race. No longer was it accepted as a fact that African Americans were genetically inferior to whites. Martin Luther King Jr. challenged us to live up to the ideals of equality that were espoused by the founding fathers (but not always achieved). Since the 1950s, racism has declined dramatically. For example, in 1973 64% of whites who participated in the General Social Survey thought that it should be OK for home owners to refuse to sell their home to someone because of their race. By 2014, only 28% thought that way.

But 28% is not insignificant, so racism has not disappeared. With events like the resurgence of white nationalism that was displayed in Charlottesville in 2017, some argue that progress on race has stalled, if not gone backwards. Republican politicians now fear being primaried if they push back against Trumps exploitation of racial fears. In 2006, the Voting Rights Act was extended by an uncontroversial vote of 98-0, including 16 Republican senators who are in the Senate today. But last week, in light of the Supreme Courts gutting of the VRA, those same senators refused to even allow restoring it to be debated.

Judging someone based on their appearance is a survival skill; as people evolved, we had to learn who would be more likely to hurt us and who wouldnt. It made sense to think that people who looked like us were less likely to be dangerous than strangers who didnt. We cant know everything about everyone so our brain tries to detect patterns and groupings to allow us to navigate the world with less than perfect information. So judging people as a group when we dont know them as individuals is something we may be inclined to do. But that doesnt mean we cant correct that.

For example, when I was in college I was mugged in Chicago by a group of Black youths, one of whom had a gun. After that experience, groups of Black kids that looked like them made me nervous for a while. Ironically, after graduating from college I was a resident tutor in a program for minority youth. These kids I came to know well as individuals, so of course I was not nervous around them. Stereotypes (rednecks, frat bros, preps, jocks, nerds, theater kids, Wall Street traders, etc.) exist because it is easier to group people who share some characteristics than it is to treat them as individuals. But nobody likes to be known only as part of a group, and it is not fair to attribute characteristics, either positive or negative, to all members of a group. While we may not be able to resist our initial instincts, we can control how we act on those instincts. And over time we can adjust those instincts.

Racism is not unique to whites, though because whites are the majority, white racism has the most impact. Jesse Jackson at the peak of the crime wave in the early 1990s famously said: There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved. Prior to the Black is beautiful movement, light skin in the Black community was seen as preferable. Prejudice is universal.

Systemic racism means that there is a racial bias in the system, not necessarily due to the actions of an individual choosing to be racist. For example, historical racial discrimination in housing and employment means that white families live in wealthier communities than Black families. Because of a system in which education is funded by local taxes, mostly white upper-class suburbs tend to have many more educational resources than low-income minority communities. Historic inequities have been perpetuated by the existing system.

Another example would be if a white mortgage banker assesses the application of a white applicant, who may share a similar background. The applicant may have something in their application that is a red flag (perhaps unsteady employment or drug use) that might discourage approval of the application. But because the banker relates to the applicant, he may go to bat for that applicant. Now if the same banker gets an application from a Black applicant with a dissimilar background but the same red flag issue, he may not go to bat in the same way. He was not consciously discriminating against the Black applicant, but the result is the same. The systemic racism is that there are fewer Black mortgage bankers so that Black applicants wont get the benefit of the doubt as often as white applicants do, which contributes to racial inequality.

Racism still exists. In a recent study of major corporations hiring practices the authors of the study sent out resumes that were exactly the same, except some had typical white names while others had names that were typically Black. While some companies had no difference based on race, in others, the white applicants were favored. That doesnt mean every decision is the product of racism, but there is often a thumb on the scale for the white majority.

This is concept of white privilege, which gained prominence a few years ago. While often used pejoratively (check your privilege) as a way to diminish someones credibility (so its use often seems counterproductive), it is a concept worth considering. It does not mean that all white people are in privileged positions. Poor whites rightly dont feel particularly privileged, but a minority who is otherwise in the same position will be even worse off.

White and Black people use drugs at about the same rates (based on surveys and ER visits), yet Black people are more likely to be arrested, if arrested more likely to be tried and convicted, and if convicted, more likely to get longer sentences than whites. So Black drug users are more likely to get a prison record for the same behavior as white drug users, making it harder for them to find employment, housing, etc. So African Americans still face racism in almost all aspects of their lives even as individual racist acts have declined. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

Kent James has a doctorate in History and Policy from Carnegie Mellon University and is an adjunct in the History Department at Washington & Jefferson College.

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