structural racism

Structural racism, also known as systemic or institutional racism, is difficult for white people to see because it has been structured to be the norm for us and is designed to be invisible to us.   Often, we who are classified as white, tend to think about racism only in terms of interpersonal relationships.  It is, however, necessary to look beneath interpersonal relationships to see structural racism at work.  

In the early days of building this new home called America, people of European descent were amassing land and wealth through acts of terror upon other human beings.  The only way to bridge the dissonance they experienced in their consciences was to dehumanize others so that they could justify the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of kidnapped Africans.  
Thus, the classification system of race was created and value was assigned to human life through it.  

As American institutions were designed and built, this social order infected every single system and was laid into the foundation of the American house.  Walls of this home were put up...government, education, religion, transportation, health care, criminal justice, energy, technology, media, financial, housing, etc.  All institutions were centered with whiteness valued as right, superior, normal.  All institutions were infected by racism because racism lived front and center in the mind of the people designing and building the house.  Racism (race prejudice + power) had to be a central mechanism of the mind so that people could live with themselves and for many, with their faith, while at the same time displacing people, selling people, separating people, torturing people, raping people, killing people, and subjugating people.  

Racism cannot be dismantled by rearranging furniture in the home, nor by vacuuming the carpets, nor by cleaning up spills, not even by putting together people of different races in one of the rooms in the house.  Instead, the drywall must be torn off and the very frame and foundation need to be exposed, inspected, dismantled, and restructured.  Tearing the house apart feels painful, scary, messy, mind blowing, life altering for those who are white.  But anyone who has had a home with diseased wood or a faulty foundation knows that it is critically necessary to address these structural problems so that they might then build a solid, firm, healthy home for the whole family.  

I could not see structural racism until I began to read and hear history from a different lens than the one I grew up learning.  I did not start this learning until I was 40 years old.  My mind, conditioned in racism and white superiority, did not and does not want to dismantle the house to see and inspect the foundation and the framework.  In exposing the frame and foundation, I have experienced disorientation, upheaval, guilt, grief, and loss of what I thought I knew to be true.  I have also experienced the path toward life, healing, justice, peace, and the invitation to work together to build a solid, firm, healthy home for the whole family.  In the way of Christ and Good News for ALL people, I believe this is the very path toward abundant life.