Systemic and institutional racism propogate through attitudes rather than through laws. As the law is written, all people in this country are equal. It is in how society functions, how the law is carried out and how people interact with each other that systemic and institutional racism rears its head.
The clearest examples I can provide of inequality in the system is through the vast disparity between races in wealth/poverty/wages, in health, in housing, in education, in unemployment and in crime/incarceration rates. We can go into each one individually if you wish, and I'll list a couple statistics at the end of this post, but just to summarize, in every single one of these sectors, whites and asians outperform blacks and hispanics. Why is this the case? If this were a land of completely equal opportunity then why is there such a gap between races?
The fact of the matter is, that unless you believe that certain races are predisposed in America to achieve less (i.e. the problem is in their nature/genetic) - something that some people on this forum ascribe to but I personally outright dismiss, then there must be societal reasons (i.e. nurture) for why such wide disparities occur. It's easy to blame the problems that the black and hispanic communities face squarely on them, their own culture inhibits them. But it's important to recognize that minority cultures develop around and in response to the 'majority' culture. The attitude in poor inner city black areas developed in opposition to oppression they faced, both historically and in the present. This
does not mean to say that ending the poverty/wage/health gap lies solely in the hands of white people. It doesn't. It lies just as much in the hands of Hispanics and Blacks, but it will require acknowledgement of existence by the majority of Americans in order to resolve, and the majority of America is white.
The following numbers come from a variety of studies, many performed by think tanks. I'm sure many of them have a bias in the exact numbers they report, but it's easy to see that the general trends that they report are true, even if some of the numbers reached are situational or take certain data out of context. Such bias is easy to come to in sociological study. I'm also sure many of the numbers are true.
- Black babies are 2.5x more likely to die before their first birthday than white
- Median net worth in the US for a White family: $140,000 - Hispanic family: $14,000 - Black family: $11,000. - White woman: $40,000, Hispanic woman: $140, Black woman: $120
- Black college grads unemployment level is 2x that of white college grads
- Applicants with white or asian sounding names are twice as likely to get a callback as candidates with a black sounding name
- Despite equal usage of marijuana, black people are 3.7x more likely to get arrested for possession than white people
- For every 100,000 American men, 700 are incarcerated. For every 100,000 black men, 4000 are incarcerated.
And each of these issues don't exist in a vacuum. A black mans inability to get a specific housing benefit might impact his families ability to get into a good school. These affects are knock on. Even if things are 'equal' today, there is a long history of knock-on effects that have to be accounted for. A child of a historically poor family is less likely to do well than a child of a historically rich family. This is precisely why affirmative action (something that is inherently racist) exists. (Fyi my position on affirmative action is that in an ideal world we would have candidate 415 vs candidate 897 - no names or races involved - but average general achievement of school/surrounding area should be considered).
If you can adequately explain these disparities in a land of equal opportunity, where all men are created equal, then please be my guest.
(I would also like to add that these differences are in population in general. Systemic racism does not really consider individuals as it is, you guessed it, systemic. Yes I am aware a black man is president. Yes I am aware that there are black lawyers and doctors and neurosurgeons, but in many cases these are the exception to the rules, they exist in a far smaller proportion than their white counterparts.)