I like to concentrate on ways in which are historic legacy of racial beliefs, and practice are interwoven into routine organizational practices of our contemporary, dominant, economic, and political institution. And let's shift the focus away from concerns about overt racism, to the concept of institutional racism. Now, this has been a controversial concept from its creation. But I think is a very useful one, because what it does is to recognize that over a long period of time, racial beliefs and attitudes, as well as stereotypes, get incorporated into our institutions as routine organizational practices. And they actually lose their connection to their original origins, or the original racial beliefs that created them, and become just a way of life, and the way that we actually do things in an organized way. And it also reminds us that, it's not easy to always look at the intent of racism. For example, how you know, how you establish the intent of a school board? How do you establish the intent of a corporation? How do you establish the intent of any complex organization? Usually, that is something that we tend to associate with individuals and so forth. The other thing about this concept and why I think it's useful, I was actually an undergraduate when it was created. And it came out of the social movements of the 1960s, the civil rights movement. One of the leaders of this particular concept was Stokely Carmichael, who later became known as Kwame Ture. But, he was the chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. And he was engaged in voter registration drives in Alabama and other southern states. And he took note of the fact that people tend to become quite outraged at individual acts of racism. Whether it's a church bombing, whether it's a racial slur, or something that just outrageous people, and people began to respond to that. We also see this in contemporary society, particularly on campus, where a student might say something, or a fraternity might say something, and then there is an uprising, protests and marches in response to that. We saw that most recently at the University of Missouri with this hunger strike, in response to remarks that have been made on campus. But the concept of institutional racism, as created by Carmichael, was to say, we should pay a lot more attention to the results of institutions. And so, for example, he said, these other things are important, but what about infant mortality rates? What about educational attainment? Health care, the judicial system, employment, housing? What about the things that happen in these arenas on a day-to-day basis, that are not at all like a racial slur or an epithet, or some kind of public attack? And yet his point of view is well taken, that these things are far more important in determining the outcomes, or the social impact of race on living conditions, on employment conditions, on any number of things that are systemic and more important. And also requires a different kind of examination, and a different kind of response. And partly, it really asks us to look at those things that are more systemic, more institutional, more organizational, than those things that are individual, and in some ways more emotional. And so, I think it's a very useful concept, and we want to take a look at this particular concept, and what it means in terms of race and dominant social institutions. To define institutional racism, it's really a way of looking at routine organizational practices, that may not be rationalized on the basis of race, may not even be compelled on the basis of race, may not even be aimed in a conscious way at racial outcomes. And yet, they have an adverse and disproportionate impact on people, because they belong to a particular racial ethnic groups. Now, the concept of institutional racism was formalized in a book that was later published by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton in 1967, under the title Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. And then following that, social scientists picked it up. Joe Feagin and Clairece Booher Feagin published a book called Institutional Racism and Sexism, and it really became an important social science concept. There were a lot examples in the book where they explain that institutional racism may not willingly, or may not be aimed at a individual or at members of a group because of their race, but yet could have that kind of impact. And one of the examples was the California police regulations at one time in the state of California, they actually had a requirement that police officers should be six feet. And of course, that particular requirement did not have, was not aimed at any particular racial group or gender. But it was also clear that the disproportionate and adverse impact on women, as well as ethnic minority groups that tended to be shorter, in terms of the average height, was the consequence that was actually not justified by the regulation. And when people would ask about the regulation, as to why you have it. And the answer was that, tall people were more likely to command a kind of presence, a kind of demeanor that would help with situations on the street, sometimes to kind of break up mob action, or break up group action, or even to encounter individuals. Somehow there was a feeling that height actually was important in terms of the demeanor or the disposition of the officers. And what came out of this particular case, and when the court struck it down, was to say, if you have a regulation like that, that actually has a disproportionate and adverse impact on individuals, or because of the membership in an ethnic group, or because of their gender, that particular requirement has to be directly and fundamentally related to on-the-job performance. In this case, they realized that it was not related to on-the-job performance. There was no evidence that taller people had any more command over situation than shorter people, and that in fact it was the demeanor of the officer, the attitude, the training, the professionalism that made the difference, not height. And so it was struck down. But it became a classic case of institutional racism and sexism, and that was presented in the book by Joe Feagin and Clairece Feagin, because it was a way to point out that even though something is not justified or rationalized on the basis of race, nonetheless, it could have an impact that is disproportionate to members of certain groups, and also adverse and unfair to those groups. And that is in essence what the concept of institutional racism is trying to get at. Other things within dominant social organisations, social institutions, whether it's employment, housing, politics, education, health care, law enforcement, are there practices that go on in a routine way that result in adverse and disproportionate impact on individuals or on groups, because of their race or ethnicity? Or also in the case of institutional sexism, because of their gender.
