Most people perceive racism as individual bad acts, not structural harm.

Evidence

Amy later explained to me why she took on the project: “Learning how to make a persuasive case for reparations is just the kind of challenging messaging work that we value because it is both important and emotionally complex. We have seen that developing effective, persuasive messaging about racism as systemic or structural—which may be required to build support for policies to address the resulting harms—is particularly challenging because so many people perceive racism to be only the individual bad (racist) actions of individual bad (racist) people. So having the opportunity to dig into how to effectively communicate about systemic and structural racism and appropriate policy and legal responses—like reparations, for example—feels important on a broader level, too.” … The focus group excluded those who identify as conservative and those who strongly disagree that structural racism and race-based discrimination need to be addressed in the United States, because we determined that their minds could not be changed over a few short days. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 491

Categorization

• XREF: This barrier is why Brown’s earlier Whiteness of Wealth genre of structural diagnosis may fail persuasively; the whole book now pivots on finding language for systemic harm.