Aggregated individual worker preferences can produce systemic institutional racism.

Evidence

Closely related is the possibility that biased behavior occurs because a group is regarded as unlikely to respond to intervention. Consider the suit of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People against the New York City Board of Education that charged that black and hispanic problem children were routinely assigned to special schools, yet white children with similar problems were helped in their own schools. … NAACP suggests an instance in which the combined preferences of individual teachers results in institutional racism. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 815

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: how dispersed, individually rational-seeming decisions aggregate into measurable institutional discrimination — a mechanism with deep contemporary resonance.
• XREF: Core evidence supporting the reader’s hypothesis that frontline discretion institutionalizes stereotypes faster than culture shifts. — connects to: Individual racial bias scales into systemic bias through high-stakes interactions — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law: A Definitive Look at…, 264; Structural racism operates beyond individual intentions and prejudice — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 42; Racism operates at a structural level irreducible to interpersonal group rivalry — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1388

Broader Connections

• Individual racial bias scales into systemic bias through high-stakes interactions #expands (0.95) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 264
• Structural racism operates beyond individual intentions and prejudice #complicates (0.85) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 42
• Racism operates at a structural level irreducible to interpersonal group rivalry #complicates (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1388