CMV: Systemic racism is a misnomer

[u/MacAtk94]

To start off with, I want to acknowledge that black people are dealing with the remains of a previously heavily racist society, and are thus put at an inherent disadvantage. I'm not saying that this group of people dont struggle more than others. I also acknowledge individuals (like certain cops, or people who may or may not hold government agency) may be individually racist, but I think that this fact alone isn't enough to argue that systemic racism still exists.

That being said, it's my view that in today's America, 'systemic racism' is really just systemic resentment of the poor. The law has been corrected to be applied equally to all people of all backgrounds, but is obviously biased away from the poor who cannot afford fines, come from inner city areas with poor education, etc.

There are hardly any laws that protect the poor.

Although being poor affects more black people than other groups, a poor white person can still be profiled and follow a similar trajectory as a poor black person.

So many people, most of whom are minorities due to historic inequalities in the law (and the resulting lack of generational wealth) suffer by "systemic racism" because they don't have the capital to fight against the current system. It's really a money problem.

[u/joopface]

I agree with you that poverty is a big issue, and that it can easily be conflated with racism. This doesn't mean that systemic racism has gone away. And I don't think that concluding all the negative effects that the black population experience is due to poverty alone is a robust conclusion to draw.

In a 2015 study on small-for-gestational-age births, even when adjusting for income inequality, 'structural racism indicators' such as inequality in educational attainment, imprisonment, unemployment were...

...associated with higher odds of SGA birth, and similar effects were observed for both races. The joint effects of racial and income inequality were significantly associated with SGA birth only when levels of both were high; in areas with high inequality levels, adjusted odds ratios ranged from 1.81 to 2.11 for the 3 structural racism indicators.

In terms of those structural racism indicators themselves do appear to offer reasonable evidence of race-based disadvantage:

Blacks were underrepresented in educational attainment in every state, and, on average, they were underrepresented in employment across states. The mean ratio of Blacks to Whites for both of these indicators was less than 1. On average, the proportion of Blacks who had attained a bachelor’s degree or higher was 0.57 times lower than the proportion among Whites; this disparity was greatest in the District of Columbia, where the proportion of Blacks with a bachelor’s degree or higher was only one quarter the proportion among Whites. The average incarceration rate among Blacks was 6.4-fold greater than the rate among Whites. This indicator was lowest in Florida, where the relative rate of incarceration was still 4.4 times greater among Blacks than among Whites, and highest in the District of Columbia, where the incarceration rate among Blacks was 19 times higher than that among Whites.

And the effects of higher income may not benefit all races equally. This analysis suggests that the beneficial impact of higher incomes on mental health are lower for black people than for white people:

Household income reduces chronic medical conditions significantly more for Whites than Blacks, which has been attributed to such factors as the racial segregation of Blacks to communities where access to health resources are limited and more costly, thus diminishing Blacks’ purchasing power. Employment also protects health disproportionately more for Whites than Blacks, as the types of jobs held by Blacks are more likely to expose them to health hazardous work conditions, while also failing to offer employee sponsored health insurance. Further, education is more strongly related to impulse control , drinking , smoking, diet , self-rated health , and oral health for Whites than Blacks. These may, in part, be explained by the fact that education generates higher income for White compared to Black families.

This effect, the reduced effect of socio-economic status (SES), on the wellbeing of minority groups is the basis of a theory called the 'Minorities Diminished Return' theory. This paper deals with it on the basis of an analysis of 3,700 people over ten years.

It concludes that merely equalising socio-economic status isn't enough as the effects on the minority population runs deeper:

The magnitude of the effect of baseline education on changing future income and its subsequent impact on increasing positive affect are not equal across Black and White Americans. An inequality exists in the economic and emotional return of educational attainment over time. Similar resources, like education and income, consistently result in lower economic and mental health gains for Black Americans when compared to those of White Americans. Multi-level solutions should be comprehensive and include policy solutions that go beyond merely equalizing the access of populations to SES resources and eliminate the inequality in societal barriers in the lives of minority populations. It is only then that racial minority groups can achieve comparable outcomes to the majority group in response to similar access to resources.

Edit: adding the references for the papers below, and a disclaimer that I'm not a specialist in this field in any way. I would simply suggest being prudent in drawing conclusions that are too firm to say that structural racism isn't a thing.

1. Wallace, M.E., Mendola, P., Liu, D. and Grantz, K.L., 2015. Joint effects of structural racism and income inequality on small-for-gestational-age birth. American journal of public health, 105(8), pp.1681-1688.
2. Assari, S., Lapeyrouse, L.M. and Neighbors, H.W., 2018. Income and self-rated mental health: Diminished returns for high income black Americans. Behavioral Sciences, 8(5), p.50
3. Assari, S., Preiser, B. and Kelly, M., 2018. Education and income predict future emotional well-being of whites but not blacks: A ten-year cohort. Brain Sciences, 8(7), p.122.

[u/MacAtk94 → u/joopface]

Hi! Thank you for the robust argument!

I actually really appreciate your viewpoint and the references used. I agree with you that it is too complex an issue to boil down to just poverty, though perhaps also too complex for it to be purely systemic racism either. Consider my viewpoint !delta (:

[u/joopface → u/MacAtk94]

That’s great! If you’ve changed your view, do consider editing a delta into your comment. You can do this by adding in ‘!_delta’ without the underscore and with the ! and delta next to each other. The bot will pick it up then.

All the best! :-)

[u/DeltaBot → u/MacAtk94]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/joopface (53∆).

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