Part 2 - Systemic racism and entrenched social bias

Author

Kat C.
January 18, 2025

Updated Mar. 17, 2025.

To start, I suggest that you spend a few minutes browsing 26 simple charts to show friends and family who aren't convinced racism is still a problem in America, by Shayanne Gal, Andy Kiersz, Michelle Mark, Ruobing Su, and Marguerite Ward, Insider, Jul. 8, 2020. (This article illuminates racial disparities across the board, including income, home ownership, education, poverty rates, healthcare, imprisonment, and fatal police shootings.)

Project 2025

Contents of this section have been moved to a separate post, Project 2025 is a racist document.

It's important to remember that, while we've lost the ability to stop Project 2025, we still need to understand its implications for Black and POC Americans. We can fully expect to be gaslit about the role of the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 in our immediate- and long-term future, so it's essential that we remember its history — and its openly-avowed intent.

Racism and elections

DEI

Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Intersectionality

In order to keep this list manageable, I've moved this section to a separate post.

Overviews of inequality in America

  • 26 simple charts to show friends and family who aren't convinced racism is still a problem in America, by Shayanne Gal, Andy Kiersz, Michelle Mark, Ruobing Su, and Marguerite Ward, Insider, Jul. 8, 2020. (This article illuminates racial disparities across the board, including income, home ownership, education, poverty rates, healthcare, imprisonment, and fatal police shootings,)

  • Facts are Cool, John C. Hines, posted May 17, 2012, in his blog. A follow-up to John Scalzi's "Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is" (see "White fragility/white privilege, here.")

The demonization of Black men

On 'colorism' and racial discrimination

This section is about more than colorism within racial groups. It's also about the way colorism poses barriers to advancement for people with darker skin — and the health risks they often take in order to lighten their skin. It's about cosmetics companies who capitalize on colorism at the expense of their consumers.

In order to make the rest of "Systemic racism and entrenched social bias" more manageable, I've moved this section to a separate post.

Some of the information presented there is written for Black people, by Black people. But white people who read the articles and watch the videos will gain insights on what it means to be a person of color in America. Likewise, you're likely to learn more about your own attitudes and reactions to darker skin tones.

I urge you to take a brief detour and check it out.

Racism and the beauty industry

Racism and technology

  • Police surveillance and facial recognition: Why data privacy is imperative for communities of color, by Nicol Turner Lee and Caitlin Chin-Rothmann, Brookings, Apr. 12, 2022. (In December 2020, the New York Times reported that Nijeer Parks, Robert Williams, and Michael Oliver—all Black men—were wrongfully arrested due to erroneous matches by facial recognition programs. Recent studies demonstrate that these technical inaccuracies are systemic: in February 2018, MIT and then-Microsoft researchers Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru published an analysis of three commercial algorithms developed by Microsoft, Face++, and IBM, finding that images of women with darker skin had misclassification rates of 20.8%-34.7%, compared to error rates of 0.0%-0.8% for men with lighter skin. Buolamwini and Gebru also discovered bias in training datasets: 53.6%, 79.6%, and 86.2% of the images in the Adience, IJB-A, and PBB datasets respectively contained lighter-skinned individuals. In December 2019, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published a study of 189 commercial facial recognition programs, finding that algorithms developed in the United States were significantly more likely to return false positives or negatives for Black, Asian, and Native American individuals compared to white individuals.38 When disparate accuracy rates in facial recognition technology intersect with the effects of bias in certain policing practices, Black and other people of color are at greater risk of misidentification for a crime that they have no affiliation with.")

  • Light And Dark: The Racial Biases That Remain In Photography, by the Tell Me More staff, NPR, Apr. 16, 2014.

  • A new study finds a potential risk with self-driving cars: failure to detect dark-skinned pedestrians, by Sigal Samuel, Vox, updated Mar 6, 2019.

  • computers are racist, uploaded Dec 10, 2009 to YouTube's wzamen01 channel.
    RE: HP computers are racist, uploaded Dec. 22, 2009 to YouTube's DUMMY - The Grio channel. (The HP response {at 2:17} is almost deliciously oblivious — completely ignoring the fact that in "computers are racist," no additional light is needed for an HP to follow a white face.)
    HP computers are racist and printers too, uploaded Dec. 23, 2009 to YouTube's Adam W. Nelson channel.
    NOTE: Lest you see those dates and conclude that the "computers are racist" links must be woefully outdated, please continue….

  • Can Computers Be Racist?, uploaded Aug. 2019 to YouTube's Ford Foundation channel.

  • Studies Show AI Robots Are Becoming Racist and Sexist, uploaded in 2022 to YouTube's NowThisNews channel.

  • Is AI racist?, uploaded in April 2023 to YouTube's Channel 4 News channel.

  • When computers are racist, The Economist, Feb 10, 2022. ("How to stop building racial bias into the digital future")
    This article links to How to make computers less biased, uploaded Feb. 10, 2022 to The Economist, a YouTube channel. ("You might think technology is the great leveller. But as AI and other data-driven innovations race farther and faster ahead, the automation of racial bias is causing growing concern.")

  • Technology Can’t Predict Crime, It Can Only Weaponize Proximity to Policing, by Matthew Guariglia, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Sept. 3, 2020.

Racism and religion

  • Decolonizing Purity Culture: Gendered Racism and White Idealization in Evangelical Christianity, by Madison Natarajan et al., Psychology of Women Quarterly, 2022, Vol. 46(3), 21 pages. ("Given that white evangelical narratives greatly influence how we discuss race and sexuality in the U.S., centering white women’s experiences within purity culture perpetuates a colorblind racial ideology. This ideology is a modern form of racism that relies on color-evasion (i.e., denial of racial differences and emphasizing sameness) and power-evasion (i.e., denial of racism by emphasizing the belief that everyone has the same opportunities) which has been shown to reinforce racial prejudices and/or inequality. A quick Google search of pure woman illustrates this racial prejudice, revealing the subconscious conditioning of centering white women as the ideal concept of purity and beauty. Further, race, gender, and sexuality converge on this issue of evaluating purity and beauty.")

Racism and the net

Racism and the media

  • The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords, directed and produced by Stanley Nelson, 1999. (Black newspapers began as a direct response to discrimination in American media. Nelson's 83-minute documentary "chronicles 150 years of Black journalists, printers, and Black-owned newspapers in the United States.")
    For an overview, see The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords, a page of the MacArthur Foundation website.

Racism and freedom of movement

  • Travel guides for Black motorists

  • Sundown towns and other jurisdictional restrictions on Black people

  • Loitering laws

  • Other resources

In order to make the rest of "Systemic racism and entrenched social bias" more manageable, I've moved this section to a separate post.

The racist impact of eugenics

  • A Dangerous Idea: Eugenics, Genetics & The American Dream, a 2016 documentary, uploaded to YouTube (1 hr. 48 min.). (The long-discredited "science" of eugenics is still a factor in American society, impacting women of color as recently as the Nixon-era sterilization programs, and Flint, Michigan's children in the ongoing battle over lead-contaminated water. In "A Dangerous Idea," these stories and others are spelled out in horrifying detail. The documentary also details recent discoveries in genetics, their implications for the future of humans -- and the continuing danger of the eugenics movement.)

  • Trump's allusions to eugenics: A harbinger of renewed forced sterilizations?, by Kat C., May 13, 2024.

Racism and the justice system
Racism and law enforcement

These sections have been moved to a separate location.

Racism and elections

Racism and mental health

See "'Racial battle fatigue,' community trauma, and other stress-related issues," here.

Racism and medical treatment

  • ‘That’s Unacceptable!’: Black Woman Confronts Medical Assistant After Seeing ‘King Kong’ on Her Test Kit—Staff Puts the Blame on Her, Video Shows, by Grace Jidoun, The Atlanta Black Star, May 1, 2025.
    RELATED: Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey begins her Apr. 1 YouTube upload with the video, then addresses the broader picture of medical care for Black women.

  • New Research Links Gender, Racial Microaggressions to Higher Postpartum Blood Pressure, by Giuliana Grossi, AMJC, Jan. 9, 2025. ("Maternal mortality rates are highest among Black patients, highlighting significant racial disparities in maternal health outcomes in the US. Gender-based racial microaggressions during obstetrical care are associated with increased postpartum blood pressure, particularly in high-racism areas. A study found 37.5% of surveyed women experienced microaggressions during obstetrical care, correlating with higher blood pressure. Experts call for interventions beyond medication to address the cumulative health impacts of racism and improve maternal health outcomes.")

  • Trump's allusions to eugenics: A harbinger of renewed forced sterilizations?, by Kat C. (While discussing a possible future of increased forced sterilizations, this article discusses America's historic use of forced sterilization to control reproduction among handicapped people. Inevitably, minority women are the majority of victims. The article also addresses forced sterilization as an international issue, including the sterilization of women living with HIV.)

  • People of color with eating disorders face cultural, medical stigmas, PBS News, Mar. 28, 2022. (Interviews with two women of color who suffer from anorexia and bulimia, Includes a video and a transcript of the news segment.)

  • When it comes to darker skin, pulse oximeters fall short, by Craig LeMoult, NPR, Jul. 11, 2022. (This article, which includes an audio version, is useful for several reasons. I've discussed them in detail here.)

  • Black And Latino Children Are Often Overlooked When It Comes To Autism, by Casey Rentz, NPR, Mar. 19, 2018. ("One of the apparent biases among intake counselors ... stems from the difference in the documentation that arrives with each new child. African-American families tend to arrive ... with lots of documentation detailing behavior issues from their child's school or social services. With all those official papers sitting in front of them, it's much easier for a counselor to think 'behavior disease' rather than 'autism.'")

  • Period Trauma Is Real—And It’s Harming the Health of Millions of Black Menstruators, by Erin Bunch, Well + Good, May 27, 2021. (Among the many problems described in this article, there is a justifiable fear of discussing menstrual issues with doctors, resulting in misdiagnosis of fertility-related issues and the under-diagnosis of endometriosis. These problems are worsened by the common medical professionals' belief that Black people don't feel pain as intensely as white people.)

  • Cystic Fibrosis Screening Often Misses Black, Hispanic Babies, by Cara Murez, US News, Oct. 31, 2022. ("Cystic fibrosis occurs in people of all ethnicities and races, with about 20% of cases seen in minority groups. 'Most white kids with cystic fibrosis nowadays are never hospitalized; for them, it’s an outpatient disease and they will likely live a full life, [Dr. Meghan] McGarry said. 'If you are not white, however, you are more likely to be the one in the hospital all the time with a severe disease.' By way of example, she pointed to one young patient of color who had a normal newborn screening. His cystic fibrosis wasn't diagnosed, McGarry said, until he was on a ventilator and intubated with multiple pneumonias and permanent lung damage.")

  • So medicine's gone woke, has it?, by Kat C, Jan. 17, 2023. (This post is an inverse way of looking at systemic racism in the medical field. There's an unspoken question, prompted by the linked articles: "why wasn't this done a long time ago? Includes links to two AMA PDFs, in which the AMA outlines a new way of addressing the broader problems faced by POC and lower-income Americans as they seek adequate medical treatment. Meanwhile, the right-wing media is reacting in horror, insisting that people can only get adequate care as individuals, without doctors categorizing them as members of racial and socio-economic groups. This right-wing view flies in the face of facts that confronted America during the worst of the COVID pandemic.)

  • Black newborns more likely to die when looked after by white doctors, by By Rob Picheta, CNN, Aug. 20, 2020. (“‘Our study provides the first evidence that the Black-White newborn mortality gap is smaller when Black MDs provide care for Black newborns than when White MDs do, lending support to research examining the importance of racial concordance in addressing health care inequities,’ co-author Rachel Hardeman said on Twitter.”)

  • Infant Mortality and African Americans, Infant Mortality Statistics from the 2017 Period Linked Birth/Infant Death Data Set, National Vital Statistics Reports, U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health.

  • I Was Pregnant and in Crisis. All the Doctors and Nurses Saw Was an Incompetent Black Woman, by Tressie McMillan Cottom, Time, Jan. 8, 2019. This is an excerpt from her book, "Thick: And Other Essays," The New Press, NY, 2019.

  • Black Mothers Keep Dying After Giving Birth. Shalon Irving's Story Explains Why, by Nina Martin, ProPublica and Renee Montagne, NPR, Dec. 7, 2017. (Includes an audio of NPR's "All Things Considered: Black Mothers Keep Dying After Giving Birth, Shalon Irving's Story Explains Why."

  • Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis, By Linda Villarosa, The New York Times, Apr. 11, 2018.\

  • The Majority Of Children Who Die From COVID-19 Are Children Of Color, by Jane Greenhalgh and Patti Neighmond, NPR, Sept. 16, 2020

Racism and housing

The impact of gentrification and eminent domain on minority neighborhoods

Racism and education

  • Mary Frances Berry: 60 Years After Brown, "The students didn't fail us; we failed the students.", by Matthew Harwood, ACLU News & Commentary, May 9, 2014. (Berry discusses our history of segregation in schools, the fight to integrate them, and the results of our continuing failure to give Black children a quality education.)

  • White teachers often talk about Black students in racially coded ways, by Rowhea Elmesky and Olivia Marcucci, The Conversation, Dec. 8, 2022. (The subject of this article is no surprise. Nor are the outcomes for Black students. But this part in particular has broader implications for racism in society at large: "[W]hen teachers used anti-Black stereotypes, they often bonded with each other more quickly and effectively. In the data, teachers often used nonverbal communication or noises like 'uh-huh,' laughter, and conversational rhythm, while stereotyping their students.Certain types of communication—often ones that happen nonverbally—can help individuals bond with each other. These bonds then make individuals feel better about themselves and their community.")

    NOTE: I've rearranged these four sentences in order to get to the point more easily. For the original arrangement, skip down to "A way of bonding" in the article.

  • Nice White Parents, a five-part series from the makers of Serial and The New York Times, July 2020. Hosted by Chana Joffe-Walt. (If you want to understand what’s wrong with our public schools, you have to look at what is arguably the most powerful force in shaping them: white parents.)

  • Segregation by Any Other Name | American Education, uploaded May 31, 2021 to YouTube's Knowing Better Channel. (One of my favorite educators discusses the history of American history, the bias in academic tests, failures of home schooling, the grift in charter schools, and other ways conservatism has derailed our education system. The ultimate impact of alternate education options has been to give American conservatives and evangelicals a wide array of ways to circumvent Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.)

  • Racism in the Dewey Decimal System, by Anna Gooding-Call, Book Riot, Sept. 3, 2021.

  • U.N. Experts Seem Horrified By How American Schools Treat Black Children, by Rebecca Klein, Huffington Post, Feb. 4, 2016.

Racism and education: How American history is taught

Racism and employment

Racism in the arts and entertainment industry

Racism and sports

Transphobia

See also "Transgender issues," under "With regard to other minority groups."

Black feminism

The economic impact of racism

On "Black" vs. "African-American" vs. "POC" vs. "BIPOC"

Understanding so-called "Black-on-Black" crime (proximity crime)

Understanding Ferguson, Watts, etc.

Ferguson

Watts

  • LA 92, uploaded May 4, 2017 to YouTube's National Geographic channel. Keep the closed captions on; the audio is sometimes garbled. (Following 1992's not-guilty verdict in the Rodney King beating trial, riots erupted in Los Angeles. This sometimes brutal documentary consists only of contemporary video footage and is not narrated, which makes the story even more compelling. On the surface, it's a tale of unreasonable violence, which is what the rest of America saw. But if you listen to the voices, from the initial demonstrations through to the aftermath of the riots, you begin to understand why Black frustration boiled over the way it did — and you'll find yourself wondering why it doesn't happen more often.)

Unacknowledged contributions of Black Americans

  • The Forgotten Black Woman Inventor Who Revolutionized Menstrual Pads, by Zing Tsjeng, Vice, Mar. 18, 2018. ("Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner was a self-taught inventor who created the sanitary belt and filed five patents in her lifetime.")

  • George McJunkin, a Wikipedia article. (Born to slaves, McJunkin was a self-taught, multi-talented cowboy, historian and amateur archaeologist. His discovery of prehistoric giant bison included what is now called the Folsom point, a stone tool named for the find's location in New Mexico. "McJunkin's discovery of the Folsom site changed New World archaeology, as it showed that people had inhabited North America since at least 9000 BCE, some 7000 years earlier than previously thought.")

  • William Dorsey Swann, a Wikipedia article. (Swann, a former enslaved person, "was the first person in the United States to lead a queer resistance group and the first known person to self-identify as a 'queen of drag'.")

  • Beyond The Pale: African-Americans in the Fur Trade West, by William W. Gwaltney, Thebuckskinners Forum, Mar. 22, 2012.

  • How an Enslaved African Man in Boston Helped Save Generations from Smallpox, by Erin Blakemore, History.com, Feb. 1, 2019.