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The modern left-wing view of racism is as a systematic, structural power relationship between races. Individual decisions branching on skin color is neither necessary nor sufficient to get there, although it can and historically has contributed.

For example, divesting from your neighborhood out of concern for your property value when PoC start to move in does not necessarily reflect an individual racial bias. It could be a purely rational economic calculation based on other people’s biases. It’s still the bread and butter of the system of racism.

Just like discrimination that branches on culture or class and only incidentally produces outcomes along racial lines.

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> The modern left-wing view of racism is as a systematic, structural power relationship between races.

Incorrect. More correct would be: the dominant modern left-wing view is that there exists now in much of the world, and has historically, a systematic structural power imbalances between groups identified as “races”, that this disproportionately harms some of those groups, and that this is bad thing.

That the confluence of all those things is the proper referent of the label “racism” rather than that label referring to racial bias which is a component of all that is far more controversial even within the left.

> For example, divesting from your neighborhood out of concern for your property value when PoC start to move in does not necessarily reflect an individual racial bias. It could be a purely rational economic calculation based on other people’s biases. It’s still the bread and butter of the system of racism.

Uh, yes, because it's a product of someone's racial biases, it's still a part of systemic racism even by the simpler and more common definition of racism, because its a product of racial biases within the social system.

The point is, structural disadvantages are perpetuated and worsened by people and behaviors that are not specifically discriminatory or hateful themselves. Of course the mechanism is usually related to discriminatory or hateful views held by someone at some point.

I don’t like the conflation of terms either. But I see a lot of people talking past each other (“racism isn’t a big deal because most people aren’t racist anymore,” and “racism is a major problem in America because of structural inequality”). Parent got close to explaining how these statements are true at the same time, and I wanted to point it out.

The statements aren't true at the same time. Racism—of the personal kind—is very common (nigh universal), even if much of it is subconscious.

There are vast piles of research showing that personal racial bias manifesting through discrimination, whether or not it is conscious/intentional, is pervasive in America.

Structural racism is real, but it is not independent of personal racism—it is produced by and perpetuates personal racism.

I'm of the impression that most racial bias research depends on the implicit associations test, which hasn't been shown to actually measure bias and is apparently plagued by several other weaknesses including low reproducibility. I'm curious to know more.

A lot of what I've seen is based on tests of behavior toward others in scenarios where factors other than indicators race (skin tone in photos or illustrations, race-stereotypical names in case files, etc.) are identical. These are direct measures of bias that manifests in discrimination, bypassing any problems with the IAT.

Can you recall any identifying information about those studies that might make them easier to Google for? Of course, links are also appreciated!

Here's a 2015 NYTimes article with summaries of and links to a number of studies of this type:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/upshot/the-measuring-s...

Awesome! Thanks very much. I'll dig in ASAP.

The problem with this view is that it describes correlates instead of causes, and worse--that it confuses the two: most people understand racism to mean something like "differences caused by race", and thus something that is morally reprehensible. Your example is one that is caused (though indirectly) by racism, but others examples are not causal but correlated (or at least so indirectly causal as to be meaningless)--for example, that midwesterners appear racist because they have a lower threshold for cultural differences, which is caused by the correlation between culture and race.

Besides this, the left-wing view is easily confused with the popular notion of racism, which is widely considered to be immoral, and I think often the proponents of this viewpoint abuse the confusion, deliberately accusing skeptics and dissenters of "racism" without being clear that they mean the probably-benign "systemic racism" instead of the clearly immoral "racism". Further, many of these proponents also tend to consider "questioning systemic racism theory" to be an act of (systemic) "racism" because it inhibits the consensus required to combat (systemic) "racism".

TL;DR I think the marketing was deliberately obfuscatory, and this has had a huge detrimental impact on our national racial.

I believe the reason that the root post is the top-voted comment is that it poses a helpful question: how do we fix this?

My suggestion is that people stop being so damn concerned about their moral status and start caring more about actually fixing things.

A system with de facto separate and unequal schools is just as bad as a system with de jure separate and unequal schools. Whether that's the result of an emergent phenomenon or explicit planning has little effect on the people stuck in the system.

If someone's fragile moral ego gets in the way of an accurate description of the problem... well, that person's ego is the problem.

FWIW you see the same problem in flailing engineering projects.

> My suggestion is that people stop being so damn concerned about their moral status and start caring more about actually fixing things.

This is silly. Moral status is a necessary component of political capital. The entire reason the progressive left stuck to their confusing "systemic racism" term is because it conveniently allows them to strip dissidents and critics of the political capital necessary to implement their fixes or even advance the national discourse. Of course, we could think wishfully about a world where politics were irrelevant (as I sometimes do), but that's not productive.

What alternative term would you use to refer to racially disparate outcomes that are the result of how large systems operate?

The term "systemic racism" was coined and stuck because it's evocative of the actual idea, not as some sort of grand conspiracy to strip you of your honor.

But I don't care. We can call it "silly putty" if it means we can actually talk about it instead of closely defending our honor. And if you have an alternative name that is evocative of the underlying problem and doesn't offend you, I'd love to hear it.

> This is silly

It is my experience that when people disarm themselves, productive conversations are possible.

Perhaps I'm wrong. But if so, then there's no solution anyways. So we might as well try.

It's hard to believe you care about advancing the conversation when you respond with straw men and ad hominems. Of course, I'm used to it because I challenge positions like yours a lot. Still, the constant need to redirect these bad faith rebuttals is exhausting.

To be clear, I don't care much for "my honor". Like I said, I care about making good outcomes politically tenable. As for conspiracy theories, that's literally what "systemic racism" is. And we could talk about it if it weren't for all of the weasel words and slander.

If you cared about the conversation, you'd be trying to get rid of the weasel words instead of attacking the people who call them out.

> It's hard to believe you care about advancing the conversation when you respond with straw men and ad hominems

You're right. Chalk it up to frustration in a different thread. My apologies.

> As for conspiracy theories, that's literally what "systemic racism" is

I mean, that's clearly hyperbolic, right? Systemic racism is a real thing -- see red lining or Jim Crow. We can at least agree that the concept is useful and refers to a real phenomenon, even if we're going to debate the severity/degree of that phenomenon in the present.

> you'd be trying to get rid of the weasel words

I don't think systemic racism is a weasel word. I think it's a well-chosen, evocative, and just damn accurate noun for the concept it represents.

Again, do you have an alternative word?

> You're right. Chalk it up to frustration in a different thread. My apologies.

Thank you for the apology; I understand the cumulative frustration bit. Hopefully I wasn't the cause of the frustration in the other thread.

> Again, do you have an alternative word?

I would say "disparate outcomes that correlate with race" or some such. I don't object to "systemic racism" when it specifically means "disparate outcomes caused by racism" (e.g., redlining and jim crow); however, it's often used as a blanket term for any racial disparity whether or not there is evidence that it's actually part of the system and not simply the result of different choices made by different groups, or an artifact of documented historical oppression. In the latter case, its effect is to shut down any conversation about the actual cause of the disparity, because anyone who questions the systemic racism explanation is guilty of endorsing racism.

So if that's not a weasel word, it's something similarly nefarious and inhibitive of dialog.

I really think all parties (or at least those who aren't threatened by advancing the dialog) are better served by clear, meaningful terms, and I don't think that's what we have with "systemic racism". Insofar as it means what you say, then it's grossly and widely misused, which has the same effect as if the word were meaningless to begin with.

I don't think the line you're trying to draw is easy -- or even possible -- to draw.

What about cities that were originally segregated via red-lining, but now remain extremely segregated along those same geographic lines today even after those policies have been eliminated? Is that systemic racism?

In almost all cases, systemic racism is caused by a complex mix of historical racism, contemporary racism, and rational economic choices that aren't taken with explicit racial intent but none-the-less help sustain the inertia of the system.

> What about cities that were originally segregated via red-lining, but now remain extremely segregated along those same geographic lines today even after those policies have been eliminated? Is that systemic racism?

Disclaimer: This is mostly exploring a society where racism (as it is traditionally defined) has been completely removed. This isn't what we have (we both agree on this point), but the exercise is still useful in theory.

Assuming all such policies are removed, I would confidently say "no" for lots of reasons. Firstly, integration doesn't happen the moment racist forces are removed. Minority groups can and often do self-segregate for reasons that no reasonable person would identify as anti-minority racism (e.g., the social stability in a shared culture, hatred for people who look like historical oppressors [I guess this one is racism, but not one that is talked about under the rubric of 'systemic racism'], etc). Secondly, all else equal, a system in which wealth grows linearly would still see a growing disparity between disparate races even apart from racism; this is not desirable, but it's still not "systemic racism" in any meaningful sense. Thirdly, there are economies of scale to be had by participating in the majority culture, privileging those who've integrated over those who haven't--if you remove barriers to integration and some minority groups haven't integrated, they're at a disadvantage. Some might argue that this is systemic racism because the system privileges one group over another, but it's only related to race insofar as races tend to correlate with cultures, and also because it is a universal cultural reality completely divorced from any racist motive. Lastly, (by definition) different cultures make different decisions in different distributions--if some cultures make decisions that lead to poorer outcomes even if those cultures are the manifestation of historical oppression, it's still not systemic racism if all active forces of racism have been removed from the system.

Of course, all of this goes out the window if "the system" encompasses minority cultures and "racism" is allowed to mean "any disparity between races"; however, no one uses it in that sense, or at least every time a moderate or conservative brings up one of these "different choices -> different outcomes" possibilities, legions of university professors and other esteemed progressives shout them down, "no, it's systemic racism!" implying that "systemic racism" excludes cultures that choose their own disparities.

Of course, this whole semantic exploration is testament to the ambiguous nature of the term.

It's a very obvious example of a motte and bailey argument.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey

It absolutely is, but most of our population lacks a cursory familiarity with rhetoric to the gain of these progressives and other predatory groups. :(

>which is caused by the correlation between culture and race.

Why do you think there's a correlation between culture and race? Could it have something to do with people of color being explicitly excluded from white society as a matter of public policy until, like, 50 years ago?

Agree with this.

My personal way of saying this is "we all do racist things, but very few of us are racist." Very often the most pragmatic choice in a situation also happens to be racist. Just own the racist things you do, and try to change the world for the better so you are no longer pushed into doing racist things.

I don't buy that. Moving out of an area due to declining property values is not inherently racist. It's a mix of economic, cultural, and class issues.

Calling that racism is to potentially miss the root cause of much of this stuff, and it has to do with poverty. The poor of any ethnic group or race are treated badly.

> we all do racist things, but very few of us are racist

That's confusing because you're using two different definitions of the word "racist" in the same sentence. At some point we should do everyone a favor and use two words when we mean two things.

They’re the same word describing different things. Many white people are aghast at being accused of doing something racist because it implies that they themselves are racist. It shouldn’t, and it hampers the conversation to imply it does (the same logic can be applied to sexism and most other isms as well).

Not saying there aren’t racists out there (lol tiki torches), but most people don’t fall into that category.

Surely you see the issue when the same word describes perhaps the worst atrocities in human history and something people can't help being or doing. The implication is that people can't help but be the scum of the earth.

Two words for two concepts would decrease the stakes of the conversation and perhaps make room for some actual understanding and progress.

Right, so like the parent said, it would be better if people didn't coopt an existing word to mean something else. Especially when "something else" is often merely "disagreeing with someone".

I'd say instead that a PoC can be negatively affected by racism that isn't the result of a racist act by someone else. This is why it's so easy for people who don't experience it to minimize or otherwise feel that racism is less of a problem than it actually is. We don't feel like racists and we (probably correctly) assume that others are mostly like us. And so if we and most others like us aren't being racist, racism must not be much of a problem.

Aside from the property values example someone else listed, here's another one. If a well-off community decides to impose a tax on their residents to help fund the local schools, that doesn't feel racist. Everyone is just trying to ensure a quality education for their children. But what that does is allow the underfunded public school system to remain underfunded. If everyone's children were receiving substandard educations, there would be more pressure on the state to fix the situation for everyone in the state. But when only the poor communities are underfunded thanks to the wealthier communities kicking in those extra funds, you end up with those poor, primarily PoC students having lower-quality schools.

In that way, overt racism from previous eras created a status quo that, through non-overt racism, gets perpetuated going forward.

> ...a PoC can be negatively affected by racism...

> ...that isn't the result of a racist act...

Here, again, the words "racism" and "racist" mean two different things. I'm not sure why there's so much hesitance to just call the different things by different names.

Also, nobody has minimized anything. I don't think clarity in communication promotes injustice or ignorance. On the contrary, actually.

No, they don't mean two different things any more than food means two separate things when describing broccoli and ice cream. It's a broad term that covers many more nuanced concepts. I was attempting to cover the difference between overt racism and systemic racism. There's your two separate terms but both are absolutely forms of racism and to say that systemic racism isn't is just an attempt to rid it of the stigma that rightly gets associated with the term racism.

> ...is just an attempt to rid it of the stigma that rightly gets associated with the term racism.

What am I attempting? Why shut down the conversation like that? We can be more civil and reasonable here.

I do think missing demographic goals in hiring does not deserve the same stigma as sending Jewish families to gas chambers. Both deserve distinct stigmas and should be described with distinct terms.

It's not "nuance" to use the same word in different ways in the same sentence. The problem with the word "racism" is that it clouds nuance, so if communicating nuance is your goal, better descriptive language should be attractive.

Of course the word racist isn't specific...that was my point. It's a generic term that occupies a higher level of abstraction from the more concrete terms like overt racism/racial prejudice, systemic racism and genocide (since you brought up the holocaust). They are, in programming terms, subclasses/implementations of an abstract type. Using the word racism in two different ways in a single sentence is just polymorphism. You're only concerned with the properties of the more abstract concept and not those of the concrete type. Nuance isn't specificity.

I was merely pointing out that it's not wrong to do that, it's just less precise, and often intentionally so. But often times readers demand extra precision under the guise of avoiding terms that are rightly stigmatized. Your "missing demographic goals" obviously can't be equated with the holocaust...that's nonsensical. But by avoiding any connection with the word racism, it doesn't validate the employment discrimination that's felt by PoC. Just because that discrimination may start years earlier during the education process doesn't change the fact that it's still experienced. In fact it may be completely legitimate and entirely not the fault of the business choosing not to hire (or even interview) the diversity candidate. The last link in the chain doesn't have to, on its own, be wrong.

And that's a great example of the original point. Not hiring an under-qualified candidate doesn't feel wrong to most reasonable people. But the fact that that under-qualified candidate didn't have access to the schooling necessary to become qualified can still represent a system that is, overall, discriminatory against PoC. Hence my original statement, "a PoC can be negatively affected by racism that isn't the result of a racist act." The act of not hiring them wasn't discriminatory and yet they still experienced systemic discrimination.

The overall point is that there are a lot of people that want to minimize the effects that PoC feel from racism (generic term encompassing all forms) because either they don't like feeling like racists or they actually are racist. What I think the original poster was trying to get at and what I tried to rephrase was that just because PoC feel those effects is not an indication that anyone is personally responsible. You can validate those experiences without there needing to be someone to blame. And we'll have more productive discussions on how to move forward and diminish the effects of racism if people aren't worried about being blamed.

The problem with that view is that, in such a definition of racism, it quite simply is not an -ism.

Of course it is, it's just systemic, not individualized.

There are lot of systematic "isms" -- capitalism, socialism, fascism, etc.

Those words aren't used the same way as "racism". To wit:

Are communist Americans also capitalist because they part of systemic structural capitalism?

Yes, you might call them anti-capitalist capitalists.

The point isn’t to find an adjective for the communists, but to describe the society they live in, and whether specific actions or policies make it more or less that way.

Or, to put it a different way, "You don't actually need to be racist in order to be racist."

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but that's correct under the explanation of racism given by the parent comment (which is not merely the left-wing view, but the consensus academic view).

The example about divesting from a neighborhood due to concerns about property value is spot-on. In a systematically racist society, it is rational to behave in ways that produce racist outcomes even one does not personally have racist beliefs. Racism ends up being perpetuated even if most people don't think of themselves as racists or believe they are doing anything to promote unfair racial outcomes.

> which is not merely the left-wing view, but the consensus academic view

This follows only because academics (in relevant fields) are a strict subset of the left-wing (and generally the extreme left wing), and the relevant fields are in the middle of a reproducibility crisis largely due to their political confirmation bias. These fields are very open about their commitment to activism over objectivity (and many in these fields consider objectivity and reason to be "tools of white supremacy" or some similar nonsense). We shouldn't confuse "sociologists believe in X" with "X is true or even falsifiable".

> the relevant fields are in the middle of a reproducibility crisis largely due to their political confirmation bias.

As someone who works very closely with academics (specifically sociologists), I would love to see some evidence for this baseless mud-slinging. All of science is having a reproducibility crisis

Do you have a knowledge of the field? Or do you just disagree with their conclusions? I would be happy to be proven wrong so I can let my sociologist friends know that they are doing such a thing.

EDIT: There's also this really neat nature article detailing some of the responses to the current reproducibility crisis in all of science. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-016-0021 Based on this article, it looks like the social sciences are actually the ones spearheading the effort for more reproducible science. One of my colleagues is actually investigating how the typical formulation of ideas with the scientific method can implicitly lead to biases and errors in the science actually performed.

You’re right. Which isn’t to say sociology isn’t a hostile environment for anyone who isn’t avowedly left wing, or that sociologists (or social psychologists, or anthropologists) don’t discriminate against people they know are right wing. But nothing I’ve read suggests that politics before truth is the majority position in sociology. It’s clearly a position, and not a fringe one, but it’s weaker than in the 60’s. Cultural anthropology is a writeoff though.

I would hope the social sciences are leading the charge on reproducibility. If you want to learn more on that topic read Andrew Gelman’s blog.

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