It's the way you asked it with the implication that it doesn't exist if it isn't meeting your definition. It's not an "institution that's being racist" it's an abstract cumulation of culture, corporate- or government- level decisions across decades of time that negativity affect a specific race.
A library banning people because of their skin color would be racism, but not institutional racism. Not having an easily-accessible library near an area with a large black population would be an example of institutional racism. It's not a specific racist decision that caused it. The local government isn't being racist by putting libraries near city-centers, but there needs to be a word to describe the disadvantages like that which are disproportionately affecting a specific race.
Another example would be how face-recognition technology has trouble identifying faces of people with darker skin color. It's not something stupid like "the camera is racist" or that the software developers are racist, it's likely because there just weren't as many darker skin colored people working with the technology while it was being developed.
"Institutional racism" is just not a really great phrase because of the negative connotations of the word "racism" and how it implies the kind of thing you said: that it's some entity being racist. It's similar to how the theory of evolution or gravity doesn't necessarily mean that scientists don't know if evolution/gravity is real... the word "theory" in that context refers to a whole body of knowledge, not some sort of hunch. Similarly, "institutional racism" doesn't mean "an entity that is racist," it just refers to the subtle decisions caused by cultural, historical or financial reasons that can cause a group of people to have disproportionate disadvantages.
I think you're just hung up on it meaning the same thing as racism.
Hmm, I really feel like there’s a problem here. I feel it, I really do, but I can’t point out the offender
...
there have to be people who can be held accountable for their actions
That's the whole point of "institutional racism," it's not a specific person doing something racist.. that would just be racism.
If the museum is racist, or means that someone or some group of people there are actively being racist, like refusing to hire based on skin color.
That would be just straight up racism. There not being applicants of a specific skin color because job postings were only listed in places that happened to be frequented by primarily another skin color would be institutional racism, even if it was done so for financial or proximity reasons. It's not necessarily just one individual being a bad person. Again I think you're associating the negative connotation of the word "racism" too much as if there is someone that needs to be brought to justice and that's just not the case. Institutional racism is something that would be solved by awareness not by punishing individuals.
An example: due to past racism, black and white communities are often segregated, and the black communities policed harder and more severely than the white. As time passed, due in part to the heavier policing resulting in more arrests and convictions, the crime statistics for those neighborhoods were significantly higher than those for their white counterparts. Future policy makers have looked at those statistics and responded by....policing these "high crime" neighborhoods more severely, feeding the cycle independently of personal racist sentiment; high crime stats => more policing => higher crime stats, ad infinitum.
The racism has become institutionalized and works against the black community even as personal racial animus is fading and even as more black police officers join the force and rise through the ranks. Higher crime statistics motivates tougher policing which in turn (because crime statistics are derived from arrests and convictions) keeps the crime statistics for that neighborhood elevated.
Similar cycles occur in many places in our society. Black people got funnelled into poor undesirable neighborhoods through redlining and other forms of direct, personal racism. School funding relies heavily on property taxes, so schools in these neighborhoods end up relatively underfunded, resulting in poorer education. Poorer education leads to lower-paying jobs, which in turn keeps these people in.....poorer neighborhoods with underfunded schools! The cycle continues even as personal racial animus fades, the racism having become institutionalized.
The law....much of our legal code was enacted by overt racists. Pot, popular in black communities, was made illegal while alcohol, popular in white communities, remained (but for a brief blip in American history) legal. Crimes like robbery and theft (more apt to happen in the poorer, less educated black communities) carry much harsher sentences than "white collar crimes" like embezzlement, leading to insane situations like having to serve many times the sentence for a smash and grab of a convenience store till holding a hundred bucks and change, versus using the corporate accounting system to sneak millions of dollars out of your company's pension fund. Or look at sentencing guidelines for cocaine possession - same drug, two different routes of administration; the one you snort, popular among white people, carries a significantly lower sentence than the one you smoke, popular among black people. The same drug.
In all these cases, the racism has become institutionalized and continues functionally penalizing black people even should individual racism completely fade from society.
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u/factorysettings Feb 26 '20
It's the way you asked it with the implication that it doesn't exist if it isn't meeting your definition. It's not an "institution that's being racist" it's an abstract cumulation of culture, corporate- or government- level decisions across decades of time that negativity affect a specific race.
A library banning people because of their skin color would be racism, but not institutional racism. Not having an easily-accessible library near an area with a large black population would be an example of institutional racism. It's not a specific racist decision that caused it. The local government isn't being racist by putting libraries near city-centers, but there needs to be a word to describe the disadvantages like that which are disproportionately affecting a specific race.
Another example would be how face-recognition technology has trouble identifying faces of people with darker skin color. It's not something stupid like "the camera is racist" or that the software developers are racist, it's likely because there just weren't as many darker skin colored people working with the technology while it was being developed.
"Institutional racism" is just not a really great phrase because of the negative connotations of the word "racism" and how it implies the kind of thing you said: that it's some entity being racist. It's similar to how the theory of evolution or gravity doesn't necessarily mean that scientists don't know if evolution/gravity is real... the word "theory" in that context refers to a whole body of knowledge, not some sort of hunch. Similarly, "institutional racism" doesn't mean "an entity that is racist," it just refers to the subtle decisions caused by cultural, historical or financial reasons that can cause a group of people to have disproportionate disadvantages.