e ssential community
It’s Systemic by Sandy Eichel Welcome back to the “us” in inclUSion. This series discusses how we’re responsible for the culture we live in and for the changes that need to be made. We are in this together, but we all have to do some work individually too. It’s our responsibility, and it will take all of us contributing to make real change. In our first segment, we talked about that very thing—playing our part and being an ally to people and communities that are experiencing oppression. Part of being a good ally is to challenge the biases we have that were programmed into us by society, pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone. In our second segment, we talked about unintentional or unconscious bias and how the patterns of our brains have been trained to think the way that we do. Being uncomfortable is a part of challenging your own biases. A year ago, protests broke out all over the country and all over the world over the violence and oppression that happens 40 | m a d i s o n e s s e n t i a l s
to Black people in this country. The catalytic event was the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis. Many white people in the United States were shocked by these protests and failed to understand the weight of oppression that Black people face in this country every day. Even for white people who protested and supported the protests, their understanding may be incomplete regarding the origin of our country’s system to give advantages to white people and oppress Black people. This is what is called systemic oppression. Systemic oppression refers to the mistreatment of people within a specific group supported and enforced by society and all of its institutions. It permeates every system, from educational to financial to entertainment, and it causes all of us to suffer with unintentional bias. It’s baked into the way we do everything without us realizing it. In Lonnae O’Neal’s article in The Undefeated, Ibram X. Kendi, author, professor, and
historian of race and discriminatory policy in America, says, “You can be someone who has no intention to be racist, but because you’re conditioned in a world that is racist and a country that is structured in anti-Black racism, you yourself can perpetuate those ideas.” Now let’s look at systemic racism versus individual racism. Individual racism is often identifiable because of its overt nature while systemic racism is less perceptible because it’s far more subtle and covert. Systemic racism originates in the operation of established and respected forces in our society and, because of that, receives far less public condemnation than individual racism. Systemic racism is discrimination in all parts of our society, including criminal justice, employment, housing, healthcare, political power, and education. It has prevented people over hundreds of years and multiple generations from having the same advantages and opportunities as others,
