john a. powellWilliams Chair in Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, Moritz College of Law

Director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity

University of Wisconsin, November 9th, 2009

the legacy of race: an introduction to

structural racialization

1. how we commonly view race and racism

2. the two sides of racial discrimination

3. what is structural racialization?

4. applying a structural analysis

5. thinking about systems

6. wrap-up, Q&A

discussion overview:

HATEFUL

INDIVIDUAL

PERSONAL

EXPLICIT

CONSCIOUS

perceptions of racism

POST-RACIAL.

BEYOND RACE.

RACISM=DEAD.

PRE OBAMA POST OBAMA

the location of individual racism

racial attitudes operate in our “unconscious” (also called “subconscious”) mind

usually invisible to us but significantly influences our positions on critical issues

negative unconscious attitudes about race are called “implicit bias” or “symbolic racism.”

talk about race can reinforce our conscious beliefs or challenge our implicit biases.

individual racism, implicit bias

• only 2% of emotional cognition is available to us consciously

• messages can be ‘framed’ to speak to our unconscious

• racial bias tends to reside in the unconscious network

implicit association tests

RACIALIZED OUTCOMES DO NOT REQUIRE RACIST ACTORS.

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Our Unconscious Networks What colors are the following lines of text?

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Our Unconscious Networks What colors are the following lines of text?

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Our Unconscious Networks

What colors are the following lines of text?

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Our Unconscious Networks

What colors are the following lines of text?

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Our Unconscious Networks

What colors are the following lines of text?

one side of racism

individuals structuresRACISM

the other side …

RACISMindividuals structures

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Ongoing Racial Inequalities

Outcomes: Racial Disparities

Racial inequalities in current levels of well-being

Capacity for individual and community improvement is undermined

Current Manifestations: Social and Institutional Dynamics

Processes that maintain racial hierarchiesRacialized public policies and institutional

practices

Context: The Dominant Consensus on Race

White privilege National values Contemporary culture

Structural Racialization

Adapted from the Aspen Roundtable on Community Change. “Structural Racism and Community Building.” June 2004

How does race work today?structural racialization

it is a very different way of looking at race

the practices, cultural norms and institutional arrangements that help create & maintain (disparate) racialized outcomes

structures unevenly distribute benefits, burdens, and racialized meaning.

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put these together, you can imagine a structure

Lower EducationalOutcomes

Increased Flight

of Affluent Families

Neighborhood Segregation

SchoolSegregation &Concentrated

Poverty

opportunity is racialized

• In 1960, African-American families in poverty were 3.8times more likely to be concentrated in high-poverty neighborhoods than poor whites.

• In 2000, they were 7.3 times more likely.

opportunity is spatialized

Structural racialization involves a series of exclusions, often anchored in (and perpetuating) spatial segregation.

Historically marginalized people of color and the very poor have been spatially isolated from opportunity via reservations, Jim Crow, Appalachian mountains, ghettos, barrios, and the culture of incarceration.

did you have a choice where you lived?

we are situated in different environments and contexts

opportunity

We can define opportunity through access

Opportunity includes access to:

Healthcare

Education

Employment

Services

Healthy food

how are we situated to opportunity?

Different communities are situated differently with regards to institutions

Institutions mediate opportunity

segregation from opportunity

not just segregation based on phenotype

Segregation embedded in our institutions and in our geography

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A Tale of High and Low Opportunity Structures

Low Opportunity High Opportunity

Less the 25% of students in Detroit finish high school

More the 60% of the men will spend time in jail

There may soon be no bus service in some areas

It is difficult to attract jobs or private capital

Not safe; very few parks

Difficult to get fresh food

The year my step daughter finished high school, 100% of the students graduated and 100% went to college

Most will not even drive by a jail

Free bus service

Relatively easy to attract capital

Very safe; great parks

Easy to get fresh food

structural inequality

example:a Bird in a cage. Examining one wire cannot explain why a bird cannot fly. But multiple wires, arranged in specific ways, reinforce each other and trap the bird.

structural barriers

Some people ride

the “Up” escalator to

reach opportunity

Others have to run up the “Down” escalator to get there

living in low-opportunity

• living in low-opportunity reduces IQ points of students by 4 points, equivalent to one year of school (Sampson 2007)

• generates unhealthy levels of stress hormones in children, which impairs their neural development

• correlates with children having levels of lead in their blood 9 times above average; high levels of lead linked to ADD and irreversible loss of cognitive functioning

• links to higher levels of violent offending among juveniles

• is highly correlated with childhood aggression and social maladjustment

the g.i. bill In the 7 years following WWII, approximately 8 million veterans received educational benefits.

Approximately 2.3 million attended colleges and universities, 3.5 million received school training, and 3.4 million received on-the-job training

benefits of g.i. bill

Bill provisions included assistance with:•Buying a home•Attending college•Starting new business ventures•Locating a job

From 1946 to 1947, VA mortgages comprised more than 40% of the total.

those left behind …

Despite the bill’s achievements, many barrierswere placed in the path of black soldiers.

Implementation was left to states and localities, including those that practiced Jim Crow racism.

Blacks’ access to primarily white colleges and institutions was limited

95% of black veterans used their education vouchers at historically black colleges (HBCUs) in the South.

These historically black institutions were limited in number and had limited space to admit the influx of black veterans

The education gap widened instead of closed.

The vocational training black veterans received was not held to any standards, thus often proving inadequate.

Job placements reinforced the existing division of labor by race.

Blacks often failed to qualify for loans.

“…despite the assistance that black soldiers received, there was no greater instrument for widening an already huge racial gap in postwar America than the GI Bill.” (Katznelson 2005, p. 121)

the need for systems thinking

AtomisticThe problem: bad apples

Colorblindness as the goal.

SystemicThe problem: poisonous tree

Fix the “soil”.

Housing

Childcare Employment

Education

Health

Transportation

Effective Participation

An analysis of any one area will yield an

incompleteunderstanding.

We must consider how institutions interact with one another to produce racialized

outcomes.

systems thinking

From a systems perspective, causation is cumulative and mutual.

Outcomes are caused by many actors’ and institutions’ actions and inactions over time and across domains

Outcomes are the result of causes that accumulate over time and across domains.

lessons

We must consider how we each stand differently with respect to our opportunities for work, education, parenting, retirement…

We must understand the work our institutions do, not what we wished they would do, in order to make them more equitable and fair

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