Last month, columnist Sasha Wan wrote an article titled “Don't exaggerate systemic racism” in response to the lead editorial by the Managing Board. The designated title is misleading because it implies she acknowledges the reality of systemic racial bias. She does not admit that it is extant; instead, she repudiates its presence.
Wan explains it would be unfair to characterize the University as suffering from systemic racialism on account of the presence of minorities in our community. But this presence does not prevent whites or other minorities from reinforcing racist systems.
We live in a society that perpetuates a culture that privileges others on the basis of race and, therefore, reinforces the privilege of one race above others through daily behavior that is regularly glossed over. For example, when people of color accomplish great things (i.e., admission into top-tier schools), their efforts become vulnerable to being dismissed on account of affirmative action. This example also extends into the classroom in the form of stereotype threats — which refers to one’s fear of fulfilling a stereotype that is applicable to one’s group identity. In the case of black and Hispanic undergraduates, many of these students often fear performing poorly on exams because of the possibility of unintentionally living up to the stereotypical and ludicrous caricature of being incompetent. The students who anxiously ruminate over the possibility tend to perform worse than those who do not face such an issue. Through our privileging of one group, we suggest this group is more deserving or capable and, therefore, superior. The fact that the University exists in the context of American society and that most of its members — staff, faculty and students — come from various parts of the country make them prone to subconsciously perpetuating systemic racism in some shape or form. Am I saying that people are actively racist? No, I am not. While some people explicitly uphold racist ideals, many others do so by way of subtle behaviors.
These subtle behaviours are what contribute to and maintain systemic racism. Individual acts of racial bigotry do not transpire in a vacuum. In present-day America, the media serve as one of the main institutions that does the work of inculcating racial prejudice within people. For example, when black bodies are relentlessly presented as criminals on TV, our brains begin to associate being black with a predisposition for criminality. The portrait of the black body as a criminal becomes a societal norm through the media’s proliferation of the image. Consequently, this influences many people’s behavior, including the increase in likelihood of police officers shooting black people on the basis of their race. Despite this, most people will never consciously admit to engaging in practices that preserve racial biases.
In its editorial, the Managing Board suggests the passivity of students toward racism is a product of systemic racism. The Managing Board is correct to do so, because the passivity is on account of the normalization of the belittlement, dehumanization and mockery of black people. To combat passivity, the Managing Board calls for a diversity requirement, which Wan counters as unnecessary by virtue of students being obligated to take a non-Western perspective course. This requirement is ineffective because students continue to experience and witness racism within our community, which include racist Yik Yak responses. Though it certainly should not be the administration’s only attempt at fighting discrimination, the University should implement and enforce a diversity requirement, because we cannot combat racism without talking about it. In order to change things at a macrosociological level, we must start at the microsociological level. We do not live in a post-racial society and, therefore, we must do our best to combat systemic racism through the implementation of policies and keep the dialogue on race alive.
Wan’s repudiation of systemic racism on Grounds demonstrates her unfamiliarity with the subject. Considering that University students are a product of American society, which privileges whites over non-whites, like any other members of greater society, they are also prone to perpetuating racialism through their behaviour. I highly encourage Wan and all others who share similar views to enroll in a sociology course (i.e., Systems of Inequality by Sabrina Pendergrass) or brush up on some great studies on race such as “Racism without Racists” by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” by Michelle Alexander. If we are to combat racial prejudice, then we must understand that individual acts of racism are products of systemic racism. Therefore, a diversity requirement is a good first step in attempting to alleviate the inimical impact of systemic racism.
Alexander Adames is a Viewpoint writer.
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