The Race Discrimination System

TLDR

The limited long‑run success of government social policies to advance racial justice is due in part to the ad hoc nature of policy responses to various forms of racial discrimination. The study aims to understand the persistence of racial disparities across domains and develop remedies by recognizing these domains as an integrated system, showing that race discrimination functions as a system whose emergent properties reinforce its components and requiring better analytic models. Using a systems perspective, the author defines race discrimination as a system whose emergent property, über discrimination, distorts cultural and institutional perceptions, and proposes strategies such as targeting leverage points, simultaneous cross‑subsystem interventions, subsystem isolation, and direct challenges to the processes that reinforce disparities. The study finds that the emergent system of über discrimination makes eliminating racial disparities harder, yet a systems perspective offers actionable strategies to counter the system.

Abstract

To understand the persistence of racial disparities across multiple domains (e.g., residential location, schooling, employment, health, housing, credit, and justice) and to develop effective remedies, we must recognize that these domains are reciprocally related and comprise an integrated system. The limited long-run success of government social policies to advance racial justice is due in part to the ad hoc nature of policy responses to various forms of racial discrimination. Drawing on a systems perspective, I show that race discrimination is a system whose emergent properties reinforce the effects of their components. The emergent property of a system of race-linked disparities is über discrimination—a meta-level phenomenon that shapes our culture, cognitions, and institutions, thereby distorting whether and how we perceive and make sense of racial disparities. Viewing within-domain disparities as part of a discrimination system requires better-specified analytic models. While the existence of an emergent system of über discrimination increases the difficulty of eliminating racial disparities, a systems perspective points to strategies to attack that system. These include identifying and intervening at leverage points, implementing interventions to operate simultaneously across subsystems, isolating subsystems from the larger discrimination system, and directly challenging the processes through which emergent discrimination strengthens within-subsystem disparities.