Systemic racism for people who don't believe in systemic racism

First, a disclaimer: I'm not a white guy trying to "explain racism" to the general public; I'm a white guy trying to explain racism to people like me, or at least people like I used to be: on-paper extremely anti-racist, but… missing some key facts. I know many people like that. I went to highschool with them. I was one of them. I still see them on Facebook. Some are in my family. (If you are not in one of these groups, this is not for you. Yeah, it's much too simplified and maybe a little inaccurate, but that's on purpose.)

As I've talked about before, the people I'm talking about get very upset when some issue or another is attributed "to racism". I think that's because when they hear that, they translate that into "The police/politician/whoever is racist". Which isn't necessarily what is meant.

And when the term "systemic racism" gets used, that gets translated into "Basically the police/government/courts are the Klan", and an entire conspiracy theory is imagined where every white person is an open racist personally involved in keeping down black people.., and then very easily dismissed.

But… that's also not what is meant. There are certainly plenty of capital-R Racists on police forces, rural and urban, and the FBI has repeatedly warned of white nationalists on forces. I don't think that can be overstated: there is a problem with white nationalists on police forces. But the problem is a bit… deeper than that. Even if you somehow magically removed all the consciously-racist police officers, there'd still be racial bias in policing.

Many people know all of this already, but not everyone knows everything. I certainly didn't until a few years ago. Blame my rural upbringing and/or the literal whitewashed history we were all taught, but did you know that black people in the USA were treated extremely poorly in the past? Yes, I know you know about slavery, and yes I know you know about "Jim Crow", but those terms hide a lot of… stuff.

If you only look at only the laws, slavery ended in the 1860s, and most of the last remnants of Jim Crow were finally made illegal circa 1968, so… what's the problem? Well… even if it were true that since 1968 blacks and whites were treated perfectly identically under the law (spoiler alert… they weren't and aren't), there'd still be a racial bias in society and policing.

"How is that possible!?" you exclaim questioningly! Well, because history is not confined to "the past". Things that happened shaped what the world looks like now.

A brief, truncated trip through history…

Immediately after legalized slavery ended, so-called Black Codes were implemented all thoughout the south, under which many former slaves became de-facto slaves by legally limiting occupations they could take and where they could live, etc. The newly-freed slaves were forced into the poorest areas, still working the same "jobs" they had under slavery, with little to no opportunity for exit.

Many of the more severe of these laws were (mostly) legally invalidated with the passage of the 14th and 15th amendments, but southern states (with no little help from the KKK) found "creative" ways around them: the "Jim Crow" era, which used a combination of legal and societal enforcements to limit opportunities for black Americans. Segregation was legal, and even those blacks who fought their way through the racist school systems and managed to receive college degrees had difficulty gaining employment. So, many southern black people (those who were able to, anyway), left for the northern states.

But even there, laws, businesses, and neighborhoods kept the newly-arriving blacks mostly segregated and continued to limit (both legally and practically) the opportunities for employment, home ownership, and education. So once again, black Americans were forced into poor neighborhoods, often forced to rent terrible apartments and houses for high prices.

Yes, yes, many poor white people faced a similar situation in the early 20th century. Generational poverty is not limited to black Americans. But many white poor, even new immigrants, could and did eventually find their way out through education and employment (and loss of immigrant accent in the 2nd generation). But these were options most black Americans were legally denied. And let's not forget the ongoing lynchings, brutal police enforcement of poor black neighborhoods, and just plain, open racism.

"That is all terrible stuff, but that all ended in the 50s and 60s!" I hear you say. But again, all those factors didn't just "go away". They had effectively forced most blacks into low wage employment, bad schools, and poor neighborhoods with heavy policing. Maybe you see the problem?

But I think the biggest issue, and probably least known to the group I'm speaking to, is how the various social programs of the 20th century have led to the current situation.

The Great Depression, "New Deal", and WWII.

The "New Deal" was a series of incentives and projects started by the federal government designed to end the Great Depression by getting Americans working, saving, and owning homes again… but… and I bet you know where this is going… most black people ended up missing out on these opportunities through legal and "other" means. While some black people did find employment in the various New Deal programs, it was usually at a (legally!) lower wage, and only after white workers could not be found for the jobs in an area.

In the same period, the federal government began insuring loans to families to buy homes in the newly developing suburbs. A huge number of poor families became homeowners for the first time, and because of the federal insurance, they had mortgages which were often much lower than the rents they had been paying… however, most black families were excluded from the programs because the developers simply refused to accept them, and the deeds signed by the white families had clauses which prohibited the resale of the homes to black families.

These same programs allowed and even promoted "redlining", where the "racial characteristics" of a neighborhood were used to determine which areas of cities would receive insured loans. So heavily black neighborhoods would be outlined in red and not get loans for new homeownership, and at the same time the black residents were not allowed to migrate to the areas which were eligible for the loan guarantees, so they missed out in large eventual wealth gains many white people received, and also remained trapped in poor areas with high rents.

To add insult to the huge stack of injuries, black veterans returning from WWII with hopes of receiving benefits from the new GI Bill ended up… not. Though not legally distinct in the text of the GI Bill, in practice, many/most black veterans did not gain from the program. Black people were often prohibited from attending non-black colleges, etc. But these same programs did manage to help millions of returning white veterans get college degrees, high-wage jobs, and homes.

And during all of this, please remember that plain ol' open and overt racism, racist laws, racist businesses, and just racism in general prevented most black people from receiving equal educations, getting high-wage jobs, owning homes, accumulating wealth, leaving their neighborhoods, and in many cases even voting. And there was the usual police harassment, brutality, lynchings, and inability to get a fair trial.

(At this point, I feel it necessary to say: if you don't agree that at least before the late 1960s black people were not treated fairly at all levels of government and society, you are either extremely deluded and/or openly racist. Sorry, there is no in-between there.)

This continued, usually completely legally (or at least legally swept under the rug), in various degrees through the 1960s and 70s. And illegally much longer. Even after the various civil rights laws came into effect, overtly racist housing developers continued to either not serve blacks, or "steer" them into designated areas, often under much worse terms than equally-poor whites (which, because of all the previous legal and illegal racism, there were proportionately fewer poor whites than poor blacks).

And the non-overtly-racist white people didn't see most of this. (Then or now.) In the 1950s and 60s they saw news reports of riots in "high-crime" neighborhoods. They had heard of the injustices and lynchings, maybe, but those acts were done by individual racists, right? Get rid of those and the racism problem is gone. Change the laws and the problem is gone. But all that crime? All those riots? At least the police are cracking down…

Oh yeah, the police.

That's why I'm writing this, I remember now. Because of all those overtly racist conditions, the black neighborhoods were intentionally poor. Poor areas tend to have a higher crime rate anyway, and since the police had also been quite openly racist, the neighborhoods were heavily patrolled with brutality and zeal. And if the police are looking for crime in area A and not area B, they will find it in area A and not area B.

(As an aside, growing up, my home county was very rural. We had police, but approximately 99% of teenagers I knew drank alcohol openly and drove drunk all the frickin time, and I remember only a very few DUIs, and those were dealt with lightly. The area was too big, there were too few police, and they largely didn't care about that particular crime at the time. Imagine if 20 or 30% of us had gone to prison with felonies simply because the police had the opportunity and were actively looking for us?)

Also, at each opportunity, various openly- and not-so-openly racist politicians would stoke up racial fears among white voters and we ended up with more laws that specifically targeted black neighborhoods, usually without outright saying so, but targeting them nonetheless. Drug laws, "broken window" laws, etc, weren't (and aren't) always benevolent-if-misguided attempts at law and order…

Today.

So where does all of this leave us? We have generations of black people literally forced into poverty, forced into segregated neighborhoods, forced into poor schools (funded purely by property taxes… in these manufactured poor areas), and very heavily policed.

So, even if all the above systemic racism went away in the mid 1970s (which it certainly did not), We'd still have a huge problem, even today. All those effects didn't "just go away". They were still there.

All of that was only one person ago. I don't think many rural white people appreciate that. I was born in 1972. That's just a few years after "racism legally ended", but didn't really. Those effects are still here.

If you needed to make a prediction about a child's future income, measuring their parents income will get you about 80% of the way. Poor parents mean you have limited education opportunities, which means you have fewer job opportunities, and you are competing against all the other poor people concentrated in your poor area for the few jobs that exist. (And living in a poor, high-crime area means a kid growing up there has many more opportunities to be involved in crime in the first place.)

And all the previous policing statistics showed that these were "high crime areas" and we have to be "tough on crime", so we still have the same poor black neighborhoods policed in mostly the same brutal way. But the overt racism is no longer required. The poor high-crime neighborhoods might just be just "poor high-crime neighborhoods". And those poor people just commit more crimes, gosh darnit!, so we police them more, and we keep finding more crimes!

However…

Of course, racism didn't end in the 1970s. Again, there is a white nationalist problem in the nation's police forces, and there are open racists walking around shouting Nazi slogans who may or may not be "very fine people".

Did you know that 1996 is when surveys show 50% of American white people approved of interracial marriage? 1996! The year of our Lorde 1996. Yeah, that's the year Lorde was born. 50% of American white people still disapproved of black and white people marrying when Alanis Morissette was signing "Ironic" and 2Pac's "California Love" was a smash hit. And this is according to voluntary surveys. So maybe, just maybe, if 50% of white people were OK telling a surveyor that they disapproved of black people marrying white people, widespread racism didn't end in the 70s?

However, even if you take out the active and open racists…

There are many studies where identical resumes are sent out, but some with "black-sounding" names and some with "white-sounding" names and the white names were many times more likely to get a response. Other studies show that black people convicted of a crime get longer sentences than white people for the same crime. Those don't require open racism: that could be jurors and prosecutors just finding that certain people seem more "dangerous", due to anything except race, of course. They just "look scary" in a "non-racial" way…

And there are still plenty of cops who might find that a certain person "looks suspicious". They'd never say, even to themselves, that the person "looks suspicious" because he's black. It's just that the person fits a profile, at least superficially.

On the highway, nearly everyone is driving over the speed limit, many people don't use their signals, and many people drive aggressively, but most aren't pulled over. But then a police officer might find a particular vehicle/driver seems "suspicious", and pull them over "for speeding" or "a lane violation" even though most everyone else is driving the same way. They do this in the hopes of finding something more police-worthy than going 72 in a 65. Do that enough, and you end up with "driving while black” being a de facto crime. And, yes, you will end up finding more black-driven cars with weed in them, even though blacks and whites smoke weed at remarkably similar rates, but again, you find those crimes by looking for them.

"He looks suspicious" is an unconscious racial bias. It's not needed for there to be systemic racism, but it surely exists. And again, this is discounting the very real and well-documented white-nationalism-in-the-police problem. And the "warrior police" problem. And the "good apples" defending the "bad apples" problem, and the "just asshole cops who know that being a bully to black people 'suspected' of a crime won't result in any consequences" problems.

(Yeah, many of the people arrested, beaten, or killed were "no angels", but the police are not "angel detectors". There are not judge, jury, and executioner… but, that's an argument for a different day.)

OK, I've depressed myself enough for now. I doubt this helped, but I gotta try.