Structural Racism

STRUCTURAL RACISM IS THE CAUSE OF SYSTEMATIC DISADVANTAGE FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS.

Racism is one of those words that everyone knows about, is afraid to talk about, but it still exists. The meaning of racism is to negatively intentionally target other people because of the color of their skin. People would like to think that racism is a thing of the past or an obsolete phenomenon. As a nation can we really believe this? Racism has shaped our nation, our thinking, and our day to day lives with out us knowing it. This is because Racism is structural. “Structural racism”, is a method of how individuals, structures, and institutions work indirectly for the advantage and disadvantage along racial lines, a way of sorting who's left out of society. This is also a way of separating the “haves and the have not’s”.

Examples of present day impact of structural racism would include government public housing, lending regulations, health and education. The National Housing Act of 1934, which was implemented by Federal Housing Authority (FHA). This act combined with FHA lending practices, which allowed Caucasian whites to enter the housing market by subsidizing home mortgages. At the time, the act benefited one race of people, white people. This caused racially uneven neighborhoods and uneven balance of homeownership.

This made it impossible for blacks to qualify for a mortgage and enter the housing market. In 1948 it was declared that this was unconstitutional this in empted caused for redlining by mortgage companies. The encyclopedia of Chicago explains Redlining is the practice of arbitrarily denying or limiting financial services to specific neighborhoods, generally because its residents are people of color or are poor. African Americans were denied loans and racially segregated by individuals in the housing industry. Many people did not realize that the elimination of policies does not eliminate the act of segregation itself. In fact segregation...