Institutional Racism - Institutional Racism in The United States

Institutional Racism in The United States

Structural racialization borrows from system theory, which examines the interactions among institutions and entities and rejects reductionist thought; thus, there is a mutual, cumulative causation instead of a single cause. Using the system's approach for structural racialization calls into question whether or not race or social class is more important in the US. Instead, it suggests an interaction, between race and social class, and their consequences upon institutional design and institutional meaning.

The U.S. property appraisal system, created in the 1930s, tied property value and eligibility for government loans to race — thus, white-majority neighborhoods received the government's highest property value ratings, and white people were eligible for government loans, thus, between 1934 and 1962, less than 2 percent of government-subsidized housing went to non-white people.

Governmental, social, and educational policies also have been charged with institutional racism, i.e. it affects general health care and AIDS health intervention and services in non-white minority communities. The over-representation of minorities in disease categories (including AIDS), is partly related to racism, according to J. Hutchinson. In a 1992 article, he describes how the federal government’s national response to the AIDS epidemic in minority communities has been slow, showing insensitivity to ethnic diversity in preventive medicine, community health maintenance, and AIDS treatment services.

Standardized testing has also been considered a form of institutional racism, because it is believed to be biased in favor of people from particular socio-cultural backgrounds. Some minorities (such as blacks and Hispanics) have consistently tested worse than whites on virtually all standardized tests, even after controlling for socioeconomic status. The achievement gap between white and black or Hispanic students mirrors the gap between the two groups in a variety of IQ tests, many of which are designed to be culturally neutral. In any case, the cause of the achievement gap between black, Hispanic, and white students has yet to be fully elucidated.

Although with approximately two thirds of crack cocaine users being white or Hispanic, a large percentage of people convicted of possession of crack cocaine in federal courts in 1994 were black. In 1994 84.5% of the defendants convicted of crack cocaine possession were black while 10.3% were white and 5.2% were Hispanic. While possession for powder cocaine was more racially mixed with 58% of the offenders being white, 26.7% black, and 15% Hispanic. Within the federal judicial system a person convicted of possession with intent to distribute of powder cocaine carries a five year sentence for quantities of 500 grams or more while a person convicted of possession with intent to distribute of crack cocaine faces a five year sentence. With the combination of severe and unbalanced drug possession laws along with the rates of conviction in terms of race, the judicial system has created a huge racial disparity.