The Structure of Racism - How Black Cops can be Racist
TW: Mention of m*rder and police brutality.
The country is again stunned and polarized as another life has been violently taken, on video. The life of a young Black man, Tyre Nichols.
The perpetrators of this violence were police officers. Ostensibly, professionals charged with the duty to “protect and serve.” The apparent failing is itself disheartening and confusing to some.
Then, we have the added wrinkle that, in this case, the police officers were themselves Black.
Half of us shake our heads and go “see, this isn’t about race.”
and
Half of us shake our heads and go “racism affects us all.”
How can we both be right?
The Structure of Racism
My explanation differs slightly from the CoR curriculum version of the Structure of Oppression. Since I first experienced The Culture of Respect in 2005, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and talking about this topic, specifically as it relates to race. So, in the spirit of “using I-statements” I’d like to speak from my own experience, here.
People with different levels of exposure to the scholarly thought on the topic tend to define racism in different ways.
The majority of Americans will define racism as “acts of discrimination between people of different races.”
Scholars will define racism as “a system of advantage and disadvantage based on race.”
The problem is that we’re speaking different dialects of the same language. This problem can be solved by creating a shared language by investigating the structure of racism.
Societal Racism
Societal racism is the historical and cultural practices of a society that perpetuate racist ideals. In America, this largely centers around the longstanding hierarchy in which white people were placed at the top and Black people were placed at the bottom.
If you think of America as a soup, societal racism is the broth and everything else is the ingredients. The ingredients flavor the broth and are in turn flavored by it. None of the pieces floating in the soup are immune to the effects of soaking in the broth.
Institutional Racism
Institutional racism is racism exhibited in the rules, regulations, and practices of the institutions that serve the American people. These institutions include education, jobs, housing, finance, health care, journalism, media, politics, legislature, law enforcement, and the judicial system.
I think of institutional racism as societal racism, codified. These institutions are born of the same racist-flavored soup and actively or passively uphold the hierarchy prescribed therein, either de jure or de facto.
Institutional racism largely perpetuates itself because, once an institution has been created to uphold inequality (as all American institutions have historically been created), it has to be completely changed in order to promote racial equality… and we are loath to completely change our institutions.
This is where the slogan “abolish the police” comes from. Police abolitionists believe that our law enforcement and criminal justice systems are so inherently racist, that they need to be completely dismantled to achieve racial justice.
Interpersonal Racism
Interpersonal racism is racism that occurs between people. It is the outward acts that serve as evidence of the societal racist beliefs we’ve all been socialized to uphold. It can be between individuals or between groups.
Interpersonal racism can look like someone shouting a racist slur. It can also look like one Black kid being singled out by a group of Black kids for not acting or sounding Black enough.
We’re all in the soup.
Internalized Racism
Internalized racism is our personal thoughts and beliefs about race, both conscious and unconscious. It’s the internal dialogue that tells you who is safe and who is a threat, who to trust and who to avoid, who is worthy and who is disposable.
Internalized racism is so insidious because it leads the excluded group to oppress themselves. One bad run-in with the cops (or a video like the one so many of us have been watching recently) and the next Black kid becomes afraid and avoids the police at all costs. They are oppressing themselves.
For the included group, internalized racism often shows up in the form of confirmation bias (I had a violent encounter with a Black person, so all Black people are actually violent), or internalized privilege (if someone who isn’t white is promoted over me, I’m experiencing “reverse racism”).
Internalized racism becomes societal racism. The soup flavors us all, and we all add flavor to the soup.
Speaking the Same Language
Whether you adopt these specific terms and definitions, or any of the related and similar frameworks we use to constructively discuss racial oppression, this examination allows you to have the conversation where we’re both right.
This incident wasn’t just about interpersonal racism. It was about internalized racism and about institutional racism. It was about police officers as a part of an institution that is founded on and upholds codified hierarchical beliefs around race acting on those beliefs.
Those cops were flavored by the soup.
Black people in America have long been fed the same destructive and negative images of ourselves as everyone else has. We are not immune to absorbing those images and, consciously or unconsciously, coming to the conclusion that Black people are dangerous and therefore less worthy.
Those Black men were flavored by the soup.
This incident alone can not prove or disprove racism. Racism is all around us. However, the complexity of what happened can be a vehicle to further education, exposure to a common language, and deeper, more nuanced conversations about the structure of racism in our society and what we can collectively do about it.
Take heart, have patience, and have difficult conversations with the people around you. Look for opportunities to create common understanding as opposed to deepening divisions. The Tyre Nichols of this country need you.
