Critical race theory, systemic racism, and you

Systemic racism isn’t about you.

It isn’t about the individual person who catcalls someone whose skin color is different; it’s not about the offensive slurs scrawled on someone else’s walls.

Systemic racism is about exactly what it says: systems. Systems we don’t even see, or aren’t consciously aware of (if we’re the folks with the privilege), like redlining, health disparities, the digital divide.

It’s about being on guard against people who have privilege, because we still — STILL — have all the power in society. Those of us with white skin take for granted our place in the world; we can do as we like, say what we like, without fear most of the time because no one is likely to accuse us of something we didn’t do.

Systemic racism is about the delivery driver who brought my groceries the other day, a beautiful, gentle soul with skin the color of pecan wood, who was so deferential it made my heart ache. He couldn’t just be himself, be funny or friendly or even hurried, because I might call the police and report him as doing something he had no notion of doing. Even as we had a conversation about where we were both from — neighboring states in the Midwest — he was on guard, and it was painfully obvious.

As someone who’s worked in the healthcare industry and, now, teaches health communication, I know about the systemic racism that keeps hospitals out of rural areas where people of color predominate.

Systemic racism is about expansion of Medicaid into Southern states after the Affordable Care Act passed (by a Black president; don’t think that isn’t part of Republican objections to the law). Medicaid expansion benefits poor people, and Southerners tend to think all poor people are Black — never mind the statistics that show that, in fact, the majority of folks on food stamps and Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Medicaid are white. People of color are more likely to be uninsured, as well, and have shorter life expectancy than white people do.

I know about the system racism that has encouraged physicians dismiss the symptoms of Black people when they report pain; for decades, generations even, there was a belief that someone of African descent could tolerate more pain than a white person could. Or, conversely, that a person of color would exaggerate symptoms to get narcotics, as if no white person could or would do the same. That systemic racism stubbornly continues in health care, when Black and Hispanic people don’t get the same treatments as white patients do.

Recognition of systemic racism did some good in healthcare; it brought us the human subjects protections that govern all medical research, such that if you join a clinical trial you’ll be presented with a long list of rights and information about the trial so you won’t be taken advantage of. If you don’t know whence those consent forms originated, look up the Tuskegee experiment; one of the worst examples of systemic racism and intentional harm caused to black men by so-called “researchers” in human history.

Systemic racism showed its ugly face this past year, during the CoVid 19 pandemic. It became obvious early on that people of color were affected differently by the virus, that Black men were dying at a much higher rate than white people were, that Hispanic men and women were reporting with more serious illness than white people were. Yet practices, largely, didn’t change; no one advised hospitals or physicians to bring in people of color sooner, or encourage them to be tested even before they showed symptoms. When much of a small Georgia town became deathly ill with CoVid 19 early in the pandemic, and the victims were almost entirely Black people, that still didn’t raise awareness that people of color should be treated with more seriousness and care.

So when someone tries to tell you “systemic racism is racist itself” or “we don’t have problems with racism in this country any more,” please send them this article. And the links in it. And ask them to look up the phrase, and to read more about how critical race theory isn’t about individual racism; it’s about how our past influences our present, and the only way to change that is to know what the problem is, now, and work very very hard to fix it.