The Importance Of Institutional Racism

The factor that has the greatest effect on life outcomes for people is race. In America, society has made race a very important characteristic, to survive in their country. Many authors believe that race should be an irrelevant category that nobody cares about. For example, nobody in American culture cares about eye color. If citizens in the United states looked at race like they looked at eye color there would be no racism. Richard A. Wasserstrom says that, “Race does not function in our culture as does eye color. Eye color is an irrelevant category; nobody cares what color people eyes are; it is not an important cultural fact; nothing turns on what eye color you have. It is important to see that race is not like that at all. And this truth affects what will and will not count ass cases of racism. In our culture to be non-white especially to be black is to be treated and seen to be a member of a group that is different from and inferior to the group of standard fully developed person, the adult white males. To be black is to be a member of what was a despised minority and what is still a disliked and oppressed one. That is simply part of the awful truth of our cultural and social history, and a significant feature of the
There are two types of institutional racism, “The first is the racism of sub-institutions within the legal system such as the jury, or the racism of practices built upon or countenanced by the lwa. These institutions and practices very often, if not always, reflect in important and serious ways a variety of dominant values in the operation of what is apparently a neutral legal mechanism…the second type of institutional racism is what I will call “conceptual” institutional racism. We use concepts. Quite often without realizing it, the concepts used take for granted certain objectionable aspects or racist ideology without our being aware of it” (Wasserstrom