The impact of structural racism on black Americans

Many of the disparities between Black and White communities in the United States are an outgrowth of a long history of discriminatory and dehumanizing laws and policies that have created and exacerbated inequality in almost every sphere of life.

These laws and policies are built into the fundamental structures of our societies—our systems of labor, housing, education, voting, healthcare, and justice. They are deeply entrenched, intertwined, and insidious, and they form the foundation for structural racism.

The structural racism they uphold can be defined as the “overarching system of racial bias across institutions and society. These systems give privileges to White people resulting in disadvantages to people of color.”1 Understanding how racism is built into various social structures and quantifying its long-term effects is fundamental to the anti-racist work of dismantling these barriers.2

"Americans have long been trained to see the deficiencies of people rather than policy. It’s a pretty easy mistake to make: People are in our faces. Policies are distant. We are particularly poor at seeing the policies lurking behind the struggles of people."

-Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist