United States What systems is systemic racism comprised of? What have systems engineers said about systemic racism solutions?

raharris1973

Well-known member
Things I've seen and read about systemic racism place importance on racism not being an individual prejudice of individuals inflicting harm in individual cases, but racist institutions producing and reproducing racist outcomes.

As one radio host put it, how do you know what business a factory is in? From its outcomes. See what comes out and you'll know what the purpose is.

There has been a lot of at least first level of examination of information in terms of racially disparate, and more specifically, anti-black, outcomes, with dot-connecting of those outcomes with various laws, policies and public and private sector policies, laws, regulations, and so on at various stages in the past that can be chosen freely from a menu from 1619 to the Nixon Administration to some states today.

This has lead to some policy recommendations for policy changes that would yield either less disparate outcomes or more pro black outcomes.

Nevertheless I feel like this discussion is super-soft and the tires have barely been kicked in the sense of looking at the systems and modeling alternate systems, and their costs and benefits.

It seems like if you're going to use a jargon-y, scientific term like 'systemic', you should have some rigorous models of racist systems [Also, why the neologism 'systemic'? What would have the problem been with somewhat more familiar, though slightly longer, 'systematic'?], whether they fit into a grand unified system, what are the sub-systems, components, etc. There should be some engineering approaches to not only examine the problem and 'admire' the problems at their systemic source, but to model them, then propose, select, and enact solutions.

I admit, I am not a trained or qualified systems engineer, also, for me as a white man, concerns about racial inequity are not personal/as personal for me as for black people, other people of color, and a very part-time and amateur concern.

But the major sub-systems involved in systemic racism, if we treat that as synonymous with a range of racially disparate outcomes, seem to be family-based child-rearing and private property and inheritance.

Those systems, can at best, be slightly moderated on their furthest margins. Nearly, everybody uses them or wants to use them, even those with no current family connections and no property. People who have whatever amount of them are loath to have anything impair their ability to use their family connections and property to maximize the benefit for themselves and their families. Extended families tend to fall within racial groups. If the better off are to sacrifice something it usually has to be because they have some survival incentive imposed from the outside, something a bit more compelling than, 'it wasn't fair your ancestors were more wicked or lucky than other people's ancestors]

Is there a major sub-system of systemic racism or colorism I am missing?

The other systems I could think of, like would apply in fashion, real estate, or investing, would be 'the greater fool' theory where the size of the crowd following a premise, right or wrong, shapes a reality that makes it more convenient to conform with the premise and more costly to buck the premise. [So, don't hire hispanics for lead roles in movies, or sell your property before more black people move in, not because you are prejudiced, but because others are, and property values will drop, or sell your stock now, because you want to be ahead of the panic, not behind it]

Another would be the snowflake/snowball theory, although this goes perilously close back to saying that racism is just the prejudiced thoughts and actions of individuals and their sum. Individual snowflakes are small and have their own unique features of, in this case, bigotry, but ball them up and they can form big hard balls that can break windows, or snow boulders that form more destructive societal avalanches.

The lack of definition in the systemic racism framework is problematic. Especially in a majority non-black democracy, composed of fifty states, all majority non-black. It can easily be read by non-blacks (white and non-white) as claim that is the ultimate right of appeal of any outcome any black person wants to object to, that can be elastically used to reverse that outcome. One group of citizens isn't going to feel comfortable with another having a 'reverse UNO card' like this, even if the people using the systemic racism argument can cite plenty of historic examples of white Americans having a deck of UNO reverse cards to use on them.
 

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