Most of us think the word racism is synonymous with prejudice. But racism is more than just discrimination based on skin color. It's also about who has institutional power. Just as racism creates disadvantages for people of color that makes success harder to achieve, it also gives advantages to white people that makes success easier to achieve. It's hard to see those advantages, much less own up to them.
—Jodi Picoult
Use these videos, articles, and websites to learn more about the causes and effects of systemic and structural racism, and privilege.
SYSTEMIC RACISM | Racial Wealth Gap
INFOGRAPHIC | 500 Years of the Racial Wealth Gap
According to Living Cities, “The experiment of America is over two centuries old. Throughout our history, systems were designed that isolate and separate us, and that empower a select few—based on the invention of race—with the privilege of innovation, creativity, and power.
Policies, laws and practices have conferred advantages and disadvantages along racial lines—including in education, jobs, housing, public infrastructure and health. As a result, racial disparities exist across all indicators of success. Median Black household income in 2017 was $38,183 while the median white household income was $61,363—a gap of $23,180. Data from the Urban Institute showed that, in 2016, median white household wealth was $171,000 compared to median Black household wealth of $17,409”.
NEWS REPORT | How U.S. Systemic Racism Plays Out in Black Lives
According to Reuters, “from birth to death, Black people face systemic inequality in the United States more than 150 years after slavery was abolished.”
AUDIO | Systemic Racism with Ijeoma Oluo
INFOGRAPHIC | The Race Gap
According to Reuters, “inequality between white and Black Americans persists in almost every aspect of society and the economy. Such disadvantages have proven immune to decades of laws and policies meant to address them, leaving Black people with less education, less wealth, poorer health and shorter lifespans…wide gaps—rooted in the legacy of slavery, segregation and discrimination—have endured or widened in the years since the civil rights victories of the 1960s. Born from the enslavement of Africans in British colonies since the early 1600s, American inequality plays out over the course of a lifetime.”
AUDIO | The Unrelenting Cost of Slavery
On this episode of Bloomberg Paycheck, Bloomberg economics reporter Catarina Saraiva takes co-hosts Jackie Simmons and Rebecca Greenfield from slavery to the modern era to show big economic losses to Black people in addition to moments that led to big wealth gains for White people.
SYSTEMIC RACISM | Criminal Justice
VIDEO | Stanford Open Policing Project
The Stanford Open Policing Project seeks to analyze, and release records from millions of traffic stops by law enforcement agencies across the country. They help researchers, journalists, and policymakers investigate and improve interactions between police and the public.