[danharaj]

Let me try to clear something up for you. The people protesting on the streets right now don't give a shit what color the boot on their neck is. Systemic racism doesn't just mean the system is full of racist individuals. It means that processes that make up the system lead to racist outcomes. And, yes, Black individuals can participate in racist power structures that hurt Black populations, and of course racism doesn't have a particular political party.

Stop treating politics as a game of football and look at how power is distributed and who benefits from that distribution. Material analysis, not color coded appearances.

[tonyarkles]

In Canada, we have at least 4 major political parties, and a few others that usually get a seat or two in parliament. The NDP is the third party (one time they had enough seats to form the official opposition). Anyway, only the Liberals and the Conservatives have ever been in power; every 10 years it seems to swing back and forth.

Jagmeet Singh, current leader of the NDP, tweeted the other day something along the lines of "Systemic racism comes from the power structures in place. If you want to find the source of systemic racism in Canada, you have to look at the parties who have been in power for the last 150 years: the Liberals and the Conservatives."

[bobthechef]

I have a serious issue with the idea of "systemic racism" or "racist outcomes". I have yet to receive a coherent and convincing explanation of what it is.

I can understand what "institutional racism" means when we speak of things like legal slavery and Jim Crow. Racism is right there, in black and white, in the law. It is legally instituted and thus institutional.

However, when we speak of "systemic racism" and claim that disparity in outcomes is racist, then we're starting to go off the deep end. Statistical disparity is no proof of racism. You must be able to explain the disparity and not simply claim that disparity is identical with racism or assume that there must be a racist, sinister cause behind it. By definition, racism is something only individuals can do and so racist laws are the product of racist people.

The best examples I can come up with are case where policies and programs exploit incidental facts to conceal true motives. For example, if you know the location of black neighborhoods, and you know that they tend to be poor, and your aim is to reduce the black population of Americans (i.e., a racist motive), you might plant more abortion clinics within walking distance of black neighborhoods[0] under the bogus claim that you're trying to alleviate poverty. Given the statistics, non-Hispanic black women had the highest abortion rates. About 80% of Planned Parenthood's surgical abortion facilities are within walking distance of black or Latino neighborhoods. Black women are three times more likely to have an abortion than white women. Now couple that with Margaret Sanger's overt racism and eugenics/population control fanaticism and you could begin to suspect racist motives even if the majority of employees, supporters, and those involved are not necessarily racist (though I expect a certain unacknowledged patronizing attitude toward blacks and the poor among many supporters).

Or consider the extremely high rates of black children born out of wedlock (comparable to rates among poor whites, IIRC). We know that the absence of the father from the home is a strong statistical indicator for future delinquency and the perpetuation of poverty. So are the perverse welfare incentives that work against marriage and stable families racist? You would have to show that the intent was racist, but in the absence of such proof, it is more reasonable to assume that well-meaning Great Society-type policies were poorly considered in much the same way well-meaning NGOs aid programs actually hurt those they seek to help by, e.g., wrecking local economies by flooding the market with free goods even during times where there is no crisis (examples are Haitain agriculture, Nigerian textiles, cobblers in Africa).

The murkiness of the idea is extremely dangerous because it begins to resemble a conspiracy theory. Sinister forces are vaguely assigned to myriad realities which means that various injustices, including accusations of racism, become permissible in the name of "justice". Furthermore, such things can distract from the real problems facing a particular group, minority or otherwise, and thus stifle solutions and consequently prevent such groups from truly flourishing.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6208a1.htm

[danharaj]

> By definition, racism is something only individuals can do and so racist laws are the product of racist people.

Well here's your problem buddy. You decided that racism is something that by definition can't be systemic. There's no way to argue a definition but one can evaluate what it's useful for. Your definition is really convenient for someone who doesn't want to reckon with systemic injustice against Black people, huh?

There's plenty of intellectual heavyweights who will explain in great detail what systemic racism looks like. Go read James Baldwin or Angela Davis or something.

[deleuze]

> By definition, racism is something only individuals can do and so racist laws are the product of racist people.

Who's definition? Yours? It seems rather obvious that when you start from a basis of assuming that racism is only the consequence of entirely atomized individuals, you fail to have any kind of understanding of what people mean by "structural."

The issue here isn't semantics. It's that you are obviously working backwards from a conclusion you've already reached

[specialist]

"By definition, racism is something only individuals can do and so racist laws are the product of racist people."

Are hackers criminals? You may think that hackers == people who like to tinker. Alas. Society coopted the term.

Please don't get stuck on formal definitions. I doubt that pedantry over "racist", "systemic racism" will much help public discourse, the current debate. As evidenced by the push back you've received here.

Maybe whenever you hear "racism", you can realtime translate to "prejudice and bias, often times racially motivated, or even just adjacent."

"...you could begin to suspect racist motives even if the majority of employees, supporters, and those involved are not necessarily racist..."

Go on.

FWIW, my favorite take on this is James Mickens, CS prof at Harvard, entertainingly makes this point in a way that even geeks can understand. https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity18/presentat...

[knowaveragejoe]

Here's a tangible example of systemic racism in practice:

https://www.revealnews.org/article/for-people-of-color-banks...

The rest of your post appears to be a lot of goofy far-right talking points.

[carapace]

Here's an example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment

> The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the African American Male was a clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service. The purpose of this study was to observe the natural history of untreated syphilis; the African-American men in the study were only told they were receiving free health care from the Federal government of the United States.

[pnako]

Right now you have the two political parties and virtually all the S&P 500 corporations, all the universities, and most of the media (including social media) actively supporting BLM and being against "systemic racism".

I know that things aren't that simple, but where is that "systematic racism" actually coming from, then? It can't be from the law, since the civil rights era has removed any legal discrimination.

And it can't be just coming from Fox News, 4chan and the odd corporation that doesn't tweet BLM stuff either.

[danharaj]

> Right now you have the two political parties and virtually all the S&P 500 corporations, all the universities, and most of the media (including social media) actively supporting BLM and being against "systemic racism".

Saying Black Lives Matter is not even the bare minimum. It is very easy for corporations and politicians to pay lip service to grievances without materially addressing them. In fact, that is usually what they do. There's a reason why the protesters are demanding to defund the police and a reason why the political machine is doing everything but negotiate on those terms. The protesters want concrete, radical reorganization of the police system so they have staked a bold position. Corporations want to protect their PR image and avoid losing profits. Politicians want anything but touching the police apparatus.

Just look at Joe Biden. His response to the protests was a proposal to increase police funding for "community policing" initiatives.

> but where is that "systematic racism" actually coming from, then?

Idk where you've been if you haven't seen the extensive documentation that the police are a big part of systemic racism. But it goes beyond them. It's also companies not investing in black neighborhoods, it's politicians pandering to Black voters in election years and then ignoring them for the rest. It's automated computer systems having bias baked into them [0]. It's a whole lot of stuff and I can't even know where you should begin.

[0] https://twitter.com/Chicken3gg/status/1274314622447820801

[pnako]

I would be curious to see some research regarding the racial composition of the police and its incidence on police brutality. Would a more diverse and/or more black police force be less, same, or more inclined to do police brutality?

At least it would solve the issue of racism. Get white cops to police white neighborhoods and black cops to police black neighborhoods. I suspect it's what's going to happen regardless of any explicit policy change.

[danharaj]

Diversifying police forces does not fix the problem. It's what the police do not who does it. Black individuals can participate in Black oppression. I will not elaborate on the point because it's not my place. I will just refer you to great thinkers like James Baldwin as I mentioned elsewhere in the thread.