"Refers specifically to the ways in which institutional policies and practices create different outcomes for different racial groups. The institutional policies may never mention any racial group, but their effect is to create advantages for Whites and oppression and disadvantage for people from groups classified as People of Color."
In other words, systemic racism is anything that creates or exasperated racial disparities. If you believe in this definition of racism, you likely see racism pervading society. But when you think about it, systemic racism is not only common across almost every policy we do have, but every policy we could have.
1. The Coronavirus has disproportionately killed African Americans, so ending the lockdown is systemically racist. But not ending the lockdown is also systemically racist because the economic hardship is more likely to fall on African Americans.
2. Gun rights is systemically racist because whites are more likely to own a gun and African Americans are more likely to get killed by them. Gun control is also systemically racist since African Americans are less likely to pass a background check, and this will keep guns (power) in the hands of white people.
3. Pro-life policies are systemically racist because black women are more likely to get an abortion than white women. Pro-choice policies are also systemically racist because lower birthrates help maintain a white majority and reduce economic and political power.
4. Preventing illegal immigration is systemically racist because it keeps low-income Mexican people from coming here. Allowing illegal immigration is also systemically racist because low-income African Americans are the most harmed by competition with Mexican workers.
5. Harsh punishments for drugs like crack is systemically racist because it's the drug African Americans are more likely to use. Less harsh punishments for drugs like crack is also systemically racist because it would encourage disproportionately African Americans to use the drug.
6. A less generous welfare system is systemically racist because African Americans are more likely to receive the help of welfare. A more generous welfare system is also systemically racist because it encourages "non-achiever values" among disproportionately African Americans.
I'm not saying any of these policies are good or bad, but I do think the effects of them stated above are all true. I don't have to pretend like harsh drug sentencing doesn't discourage use to be against this harsh drug sentencing. I don't have to pretend like Illegal immigration doesn't reduce direct competitor's wages in order to be in favor of illegal immigration. Incentives matter even when I don't want them to. Every policy has a price.
And all you have to do is find one price that falls disproportionately on one minority race in order to claim the policy is systemically racist. That's why this practice of finding systemic racism in everything, even contradictory policies, is so easy to do. There are a handful of races, a ton of dimensions across which it could have an effect (income, crime, population, etc), and several orders of effects to look for the racism. It's going to be really hard to only have policies that aren't systemically racist when the concept is defined broadly enough for a creative mind to find it almost anywhere.
In practice, we only hear one side of systemic racism because the concept is used almost completely by one side of the political spectrum. I hear leftist policies decried for their disproportionate racial impacts by people like Candace Owens, but she doesn't use the term "systemic racism", she's just quick to point out how pro-choice policies have the effect of reducing the black population. The term is used overwhelmingly by leftists to criticize policies they don't' like. And since leftists are as biased as anybody else, they don't realize how the term could be used against their own preferred policies.
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