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Institutional Racism

from Encyclopedia of Diversity and Social Justice

Institutional racism refers to the systemic oppression of people from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic

groups (Better, 2007; Cross, 2010; Knowles & Prewitt, 1970; Phillips, 2011; Taylor, 2009). In the United States, these

groups would typically include American Indians, African Americans, Latinas/Latinos, and Asian Americans. While the

historical reference point is intended to emphasize the continuing impact of past discrimination, institutional racism

also manifests toward people from other, more recently immigrated, and/or domestically recognized

underrepresented racial and ethnic groups; for example, Arab Americans. Whether the underrepresentation of any of

these groups has a historical or more contemporary origin, members of all of these groups are also negatively

impacted by the continuing practice of historically located discriminatory practices; for example, the racial profiling of

“Arab-looking” people as “terrorists.” In this instance, while racial profiling is not a new form of discrimination, its

application to this group in this manner has a more contemporary point of origin.

At the same time that institutional discrimination systematically impacts people of color negatively, it positively

impacts white people, both indirectly (by virtue of disadvantaging people of color) and directly (by specifically

advantaging white people) (Alexander, 2012; Bell, 2005). Because institutional racism often operates based on

human perception of racial and/or ethnic group membership, some people of color are assumed to be able to

“escape” this discrimination by “passing” for white. But institutional discrimination is much more insidious in that it

manifests in cultural practices that are embedded in societal norms. Thus, even if a person of color can pass for

white, her or his normative cultural practices may eventually “reveal” that she or he is “not white.” For example, a

light-skinned Latino may “become brown” if he assumes a collaborative rather than competitive posture in the

workplace. While this posture may not be immediately revealing of his brownness to white colleagues, it may create

subconscious awareness that something about him is “different” and, on that basis, cause him to become

marginalized. At the same time, the Latino may himself become subconsciously or even consciously aware that,

despite his best efforts to be a good employee, something about his efforts are essentially being “lost in translation,”

or not understood by his white colleagues as good employee behavior.

Social scientists argue that institutional racism is challenging to “prove” precisely because it is ingrained in white

cultural norms that operate as so-called neutral or objective societal norms (Better, 2007; Cross, 2010; Knowles &

Prewitt, 1970; Phillips, 2011; Taylor, 2009). As a result, the denial of access to equal opportunities and systemic

prohibition of privileges to racial and ethnic minorities have become so much a part of the normative practice of the

dominant group that this practice is often unrecognized as practice, instead understood and accepted as simply “the

way things are.” Accordingly, even the persistent and pervasive disparate lived realities of minority and majority

populations come to be explained, at least covertly, by allusions to differences in individual fortitude and/or to

cultural inferiority and superiority rather than systemic discrimination.

Some social scientists contend that in moving from overt discriminatory practices—like slavery—to more insidious

ones—like standardized testing in schools—institutional racism has moved from old racism to new racism (Alexander,

2012; Bell, 2005; Cross, 2010; Phillips, 2011; Taylor, 2009). Old racism is a function of an overall system of power that

clearly enables overt oppressive behavior by white people toward people of color. In contrast, while new racism still

clearly systemically discriminates against people of color, because it operates more covertly, identifying white people

as perpetrators and beneficiaries of this discrimination is more difficult.

Etymological Origin

Activist and writer Kwame Ture (formerly known as Stokely Carmichael) coined the phrase institutional racism in the

late 1960s during the U.S. civil rights movement (Ture & Hamilton, 1992). Ture, and other civil rights activists at that

time, argued that civil rights efforts that concentrated on dismantling racism at the institutional level of society were

more apt to bring about social transformation than were those focusing only on changing the racial attitudes of

individual white people (e.g., Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896; Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954; Civil Rights Act

of 1964; Voting Rights Act of 1965).

System-level changes were made during this era but either did not go far enough or could not be sustained long

enough to topple institutional racism (Lui, Robles, Leondar-Wright, Brewer, & Adamson, with United for a Fair

Economy, 2006). For example, although the Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned discrimination in housing, realtors and

banks continued redlining practices—denying access to, or limiting financial services in, neighborhoods where

residents were people of color or poor—because enforcement of the Act was so weak (p. 73). So while de jure or

legal Jim Crow segregation ended in 1954, in many quadrants of society, segregating practices continued

(Alexander, 2012; Bell, 2005; The Pew Center on the States, 2008).

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Within society, institutional racism exists within all systems. However, scholars, practitioners, and activists in law,

sociology, and education in particular maintain that the manifestations of institutional racism in two systems have

been the most durable and, thus, pernicious (Alexander, 2012; Bell, 2005; Cross, 2010; Harry & Klingner, 2006;

Taylor, 2009; The Pew Center on the States, 2008). The systems of social control and related punishment, and of

education and related social access, have worked and continue to work discretely and in the moment, as well as in

tandem and over time, to overtly and covertly advantage racial and ethnic majorities and to disadvantage minorities.

To help establish the New England colonies, England emptied its prisons of those sentenced to death, transported

them to the “New World,” and offered them the chance to work a specific number of years to garner freedom

(Alexander, 2012; Bell, 2005; Lui et al., 2006; Ture & Hamilton, 1992). Eventually this European indentured labor pool

ran out, and slavery was introduced. Enslaved Africans were not only denied access to education, they were

forbidden from even independently developing literacy skills. Following the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863,

through the Freedmen's Bureau—a federal agency developed to assist distressed “freedmen” or former slaves—

more than ninety thousand free blacks enrolled in one thousand public schools that were opened for them across

the southern United States (Bell, 2005, p. 87).

Concomitantly, the Ku Klux Klan was established to intimidate and, thus, limit the movement of newly free blacks in

society (Alexander, 2012; Bell, 2005; Ture & Hamilton, 1992). “Black Codes” were passed to further control their daily

activities (Alexander, 2012, p. 31; Bell, 2005, p. 77). These Codes falsely criminalized lawful actions of only free

blacks, who were then given the option to pay a fine or serve prison time. Unable to pay the fine, their former slave

owners were “given the opportunity” to pay the fine for them, and then forced them into indentured servitude to

repay the debt. Many southern states required all free blacks to sign yearly labor contracts; if they refused, they were

arrested and jailed, or forced into unpaid labor. Consequently, incarceration rates rose dramatically after slavery was

formally abolished.

Despite various forms of resistance to blacks’ full access to participation in democracy, by 1900 the literacy rate of

free blacks was 50 percent, due, in large measure, to the efforts of thirty thousand black teachers (Bell, 2005, p. 49).

Still, the quality of public education available to the historic descendants of enslaved Africans was substandard. And

while legal efforts to bring about educational parity were pursued, the doctrine of “separate but equal,” codified by

the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, maintained that segregation in education did not, in theory,

prevent realization of educational equality, even if that was the practical effect of the policy. It was not until the

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision in 1954 that so-called separate but equal educational facilities were

deemed inherently unequal and, therefore, unconstitutional.

In marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Brown decision, critical race scholar Derrick Bell (2005) argued that Brown

falsely convinced civil rights activists that equality had been won. As a result, focused attention on educational equity

waned, while resistance to integration persisted, albeit in more covert, and, in some cases, even unconscious

fashion. White flight abounded out of integrated public school districts and especially into private academies, many

of which initially diverted public educational funding into their coffers. A parallel unintended consequence of the Civil

Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which effectively ended the Jim Crow era in all aspects of U.S.

society, was that the ranks of public school teachers became increasingly white, largely because African Americans

had greater entrée into a broader range of professions, many of which paid much better than teaching. Absent

adequate training to understand and respond to the specific educational needs of African American students in

manners comparable to those typically afforded to white students, white teachers’ conscious and unconscious racial

biases became conflated with everyday educational practices.

In this way, institutional racism is said to be “operative,” meaning that any effort to mitigate or eradicate it is met with

some form of “sabotage” rendering the effort moot. Bell (2005) explained both overt and covert manifestations of

sabotage as being rooted in interest convergence. Institutional change that supports greater equality for

nondominant groups is permitted only when, and to the extent that, it also serves the interest of the dominant group.

However, at the point of perceived interest divergence for the dominant group, that permission is revoked,

regardless of the impact on the nondominant group.

Over time, educational segregation has been repackaged, negatively impacting not only African American students

but other students of color as well, and it is now transpiring within a single and across all schools, rather than only

between two distinct sets of schools (Cross, 2010; Taylor, 2009). In 2006, special education scholars Beth Harry and

Janette Klingner documented that, while students of color are still disproportionately assigned to the most poorly

resourced schools with the most poorly trained white teachers, even when students of color attend better schools,

they are overrepresented among students referred to special education for learning, developmental, psychological,

and behavior intervention. In contrast, white female students, who most mirror the majority teaching force in terms of

race, gender, and socioeconomic class background, are underreferred for remediation, even when such remediation

is actually warranted.

The effect of the special education referral mill for students of color, especially Latino and black male students, has

been described by legal and educational reformists as the “school-to-prison pipeline,” or the cumulative effect of

educational policies and practices that push the already most marginalized students out of classrooms and schools

and into the juvenile, and eventually the adult, criminal justice system (Alexander, 2012; Harry & Klingner, 2006).

According to the Pew Center on the States, as of 2008, while one in every one hundred people in the United States

is behind bars, one in every fifteen black men are, and one in every nine black men aged twenty to thirty-four (p. 3).

Scholars in many fields argue that economic interests drive the impetus for this pipeline, just as they did for slavery

and, ultimately, as they have done continuously in the interim since slavery and until the pipeline's emergence

(Alexander, 2012; Bell, 2005; Cross, 2010; Harry & Klingner, 2006; Taylor, 2009; Ture & Hamilton, 1992). Considered

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in sum, these interests have been dubbed the Prison Industrial Complex in the effort to illustrate societal economic

dependence on various forms of incarceration, in a manner akin to what President Dwight D. Eisenhower did with his

coining of the expression the military industrial complex in 1961 (Alexander, 2012).

With the advent of corporate capital flight to Third World labor markets and the massive automation of unskilled jobs

domestically, even a two-tiered educational system—that differentially prepares some students academically and

others vocationally—no longer has efficacy (Alexander, 2012; Bell, 2005; Cross, 2010; Taylor, 2009). However, the

enormous economic success of for-profit prisons has led to the reproliferation of Black Code–like legislation

targeting minority male youth in society at large, including the special educational policies and practices that

effectively dump these youths highly prepared only to become future prisoners.

Critical race scholars and sociopolitically oriented multicultural educators argue that the durability of institutional

racism manifest in these intertwining systems of social control and education cannot be explained solely by the fact

that they are lucrative (Alexander, 2012; Bell, 2005; Cross, 2010; Taylor, 2009). If that were the case, those negatively

impacted by these systems would be more racially and ethnically diverse in composition. That these systems

adversely effect almost exclusively racial and ethnic minorities, and do so over hundreds of years in a recognizably

patterned fashion despite being directed at different groups, reveals that acknowledged and unacknowledged

biases and, further, conscious, subconscious, and unconscious forms of racism, drive this durability as well. While

biased and racist impacts of economic exchange are often seen as by-products of an almost inescapable economic

imperative, in the context of institutional racism, the imperative—whether overt or covert—is to continuously protect

and extend the racist status quo in which economics play only a part (Better, 2007; Knowles & Prewitt, 1970; Phillips,

2011).

References

Alexander, M. (2012). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. The New Press New

York.

Bell, D. (2005). Silent covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the unfulfilled hopes for racial reform. Oxford

University Press Oxford UK.

Better, S. (2007). Institutional racism: A primer on theory and strategies for social change. Rowman & Littlefield

Lanham MD.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

Civil Rights Act of 1964, Pub.L. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241, H.R. 7152.

Cross, B. E. (2010). New racism, reformed teacher education, and the same ole’ oppression. Educational Studies:

A Journal of the American Education Studies Association, 38(3), 263-74.

Harry, B.; Klingner, J. (2006). Why are so many minority students in special education? Understanding race and

disability in schools. Teachers College Press New York.

Knowles, L.; Prewitt, K. (Ed.) (1970). Institutional racism in America. Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River NJ.

Lui, M.; Robles, B.; Leondar-Wright, B.; Brewer, R.; Adamson, R. United for a Fair Economy. (2006). The color of

wealth: The story behind the U.S. racial wealth divide. The New Press New York.

Pew Center on the States. (2008). 1 in 100 behind bars in America 2008. The Pew Charitable Trusts Washington,

DC.

Phillips, C. (2011). Institutional racism and ethnic inequalities: An expanded multilevel framework. Journal of Social

Policy, 40(1), 173-92.

Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).

Taylor, D. L. (2009). “Set up to fail”: Institutional racism and the sabotage of school improvement. Equity and

Excellence in Education, 42(2), 114-29.

Ture, K.; Hamilton, C. V. (1992). Black power: The politics of liberation. Random House New York.

Voting Rights Act of 1965, Pub.L. 89-110, 79 Stat. 437.

Allison Smith

Jennifer Crosthwaite

Christine Clark

Copyright © 2014 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

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Smith, A., Crosthwaite, J., & Clark, C. (2014). Institutional racism. In S. Thompson (Ed.), Encyclopedia of diversity

and social justice. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Credo Reference:

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