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🪵 The Threshold

Segregated space silently perpetuates stratification even with no active racists

Properties2
tagsja-picks, definitional_content, singleton, xref, category/definitional-content
aliases@cole_ground_2001, loc. 343

4 min read

Segregated space silently perpetuates stratification even with no active racists

Evidence

Although “there is no racist actor or racist policy in this model,” racially defined communities “perform the ‘work’ of segregation silently.” Racially stratified space thus, as Ford concludes, becomes “the inert context in which individuals make rational choices” and “a controlling structure in which seemingly innocuous actions lead to racially detrimental consequences.” — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 343 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

A critical analysis of racism takes the form of an integrated, holistic analysis of society and its presuppositions, including the power (and ability) to offend, degrade or transform/modify the worth of individuals and communities, with, but also, more importantly, without the presence of deliberate hatred. — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 125 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Even in the absence of actors who are vulnerable to the effects of bias, institutions themselves can be biased by having policies and structures in place that harm some people and favor others, even in unintended and unanticipated ways. This is what the sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva has referred to as “racism without racists” (2003). For example, policies that specifically apply to people who have criminal records (e.g., probation/ parole searches by police) can seemingly have nothing to do with race. To the extent that Blacks are disproportionately incarcerated in this country (see Alexander, 2010; Western, 2006), however, those policies will have a disparate impact on the Black community. In turn, the institutional actors responsible for carrying out those policies will enact racial disparities, even if unwittingly. In this way, bias can be built into structures and institutions and can contribute to how individuals police and are policed. Though this might sound bleak, the encouraging news is that by changing institutional priorities, norms, practices, and policies, we can mitigate disparities. In the same vein, an underappreciated, and perhaps underutilized, function of institutions is their ability to put into place policies and practices that act as guard rails that curb the expression of potentially problematic individual tendencies, such as implicit bias. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 398 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: Facility siting itself can cause the segregation courts blame on demographics; Segregation can perpetuate itself silently with no active racist actor — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 343; Racism persists even where formal segregation laws have been abolished (+9 more)

Broader Connections

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