Effects of Racism Research has shown that racism has wide-reaching adverse effects on individuals, families, communities, and entire societies (Cherry, 2021). Racism impacts areas you may not have considered, including healthcare, education, employment, and housing. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2021, the median pay for White workers was about 23% higher than for Black and Latino workers (Cherry, 2021). Ethnic minorities are less likely to be offered jobs than their White counterparts. Black workers are twice as likely to be unemployed as White workers. Statistics also show that Black employees are more likely to be underemployed than their education and skill levels indicate. Statistics show significant disparities in how the criminal justice and legal system treats White versus non- White defendants. People who belong to an ethnic minority receive longer, harsher sentences. For example, Black men receive almost 20% longer sentences than White defendants for the same crimes (WTKR, 2022). Studies have also found that people of color are less likely to receive adequate healthcare because of reduced access to healthcare. Data reveals that African American patients who visit physicians of the same race rate their medical visits as more satisfying and participatory than those who see physicians of other races (Cooper et al., 2003). When individuals feel appreciated and understood they will be more likely to be satisfied with their treatment experience. Redlining, a process by which banks and other institutions refuse to offer mortgages or offer worse rates to customers in certain neighborhoods based on their racial and ethnic composition, is one of the clearest examples of institutionalized racism in the history of the U.S. Although the practice was formally outlawed in 1968 with the passage of the Fair Housing Act, it continues in various forms to this day. Redlining remains one of the most well-known forms of racism in the U.S. and one early example of the role of race in data-driven urban governance. The term “redlining” may have been expedient at times, but it is only one element in a broader examination of the impact of racism across all facets of society. The utility of data for categorization is powerful. However, to understand spatial racism in an urban setting, one must understand how the data is produced and distributed in both informal decision-making and official policy. Racial minorities are less likely to be offered financial services, including loans and insurance. They are also less likely to be shown available homes for sale. They are less likely to receive job offers and are frequently paid less than their non-racialized counterparts for the same work. The impact of redlining goes beyond the individual families who were denied loans based on the racial composition of their neighborhoods. Many neighborhoods that were labeled “Yellow” (meaning the Home Owner’s Loan Coalition (HOLC) considered these areas risky due to the “threat of infiltration of foreign-born, negro, or lower grade populations) or “Red” (described by the HOLC as having an “undesirable population” and ineligible for FHA backing) by the HOLC in the 1930s are still underdeveloped and underserved compared to nearby “Green” and “Blue” neighborhoods with predominantly White populations. Blocks in these neighborhoods tend to be empty or lined with vacant buildings. The government may have put an end to the redlining policies that it created in the 1930s. However, it has yet to offer adequate resources to help neighborhoods recover from the damage these policies have caused and continue to inflict. Understanding these issues and how systemic racism contributes to such disparities is essential to antiracism.
Antiracism Antiracism is a process of actively identifying and opposing racism. Antiracism aims to challenge racism and actively change the policies, behaviors, and beliefs perpetuating racist ideas and actions. Antiracism is rooted in action and is about eliminating racism at the individual, institutional, and structural levels. It is not a new concept, but the “Black Lives Matter” movement has helped increase the focus on the importance of antiracism. Today, antiracism is perhaps most closely associated with Ibram X. Kendi, the founding director of American University’s Anti-Racist Research Center and who is now moving to Boston University to open an antiracist center there, who popularized the concept with his 2019 book How to Be an Anti-Racist. In it, he wrote, “The only way to undo racism is to identify and describe it consistently, and then dismantle it consistently. To understand what an anti-racist is, one must also understand what an anti-racist is not: a non-racist.” There is no such thing as a nonracist, Kendi (2019) writes, because it signifies neutrality. “One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist or racial equality as an anti-racist,” he says. “One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an anti-racist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist” (Kendi, 2019). One must strive to be actively antiracist instead through one’s thoughts, actions, and engagement with the world. Part of working toward being an antiracist individual is recognizing that we are all racist—it is part of the society in which we all live and participate. It takes conscious thought and engagement to work toward being an antiracist. “Anti-racism is an active and conscious effort to work against multidimensional aspects of racism,” says Georgetown African American studies professor Robert J. Patterson (2020). Patterson, the Georgetown professor, said that people “collapse identity and behavior” when they misconstrue not being racist as being antiracist. In the process, they underappreciate how action signals antiracism and underestimate their own influence in dismantling the systems that support racism. Patterson said Kendi’s view of antiracism highlights the way racism is socialized into behaviors—how racial inequities and disparities are embedded in private and public life. We must unravel those behaviors by thinking about and pulling back assumptions we make about “the naturalness of things,” he said (Hoffower, 2020). If your default thinking is “I am not racist,” a more informed point of view would recognize how you are informed and influenced by the embeddedness of race and institutionalized racism. The problem with racism is that it is all around us. Racism is deeply embedded in our culture and communities, including our schools, the justice system, the government, and hospitals. It is so pervasive that people often do not notice how policies, institutions, and systems disproportionately favor some while disadvantaging others. People mistakenly believe that simply being “not racist” is enough to eliminate racial discrimination. The problem with this perspective is that White people are often unaware of their own unconscious biases. People often do not fully understand the institutional and structural issues that uphold White supremacy and contribute to racist behaviors, attitudes, and policies. Saying “but I’m not racist” also allows people to avoid participating in antiracism. It’s a way of saying “that’s not my problem” while failing to acknowledge that even people who are not racist still reap the benefits of a system that is biased against other people (Cherry, 2021).
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