Racism can be understood as the belief that humankind can be classified by race, with one group assuming dominance over others. The most common type is individual racism — prejudiced attitudes and behavior based on skin color. In contrast, institutional or systemic racism refers to a societal structure built on established laws, customs, and practices that authorize systematic discrimination based on racial characteristics (Banaji et al., 2021).
In these conditions, aversive racism can form, permitting right-minded people to sustain racism while preserving a positive perception of themselves. Similarly, color-blind racism can be a convenient excuse, allowing people to pretend that race has no meaning despite their deeply embedded implicit racial biases (Banaji et al., 2021). Consequently, internalized racial dominance may develop without these individuals noticing it, leading to White people’s acceptance of insentient beliefs of racial superiority.
Internalized racial oppression may also be a consequence, as it represents the rather unconscious racist beliefs and behaviors associated with such sentiments of those raised in communities that promote White supremacy. A typical example of racist views is associating people with Black skin with animalistic rather than human nature (Banaji et al., 2021). When adapted to a political dimension, this belief system can transform into ethnocentrism — the belief that a single race, nation, or culture is superior to all others.
A typical racist defense mechanism in such circumstances is reverse discrimination, which is a mere assertion of favoritism of people of color in terms of school admission, hiring promotion, and participation. Political racism also often coincides with cultural racism, which is the prioritization of one racial group’s traditions and historical background over that of others.
When some form of these systems arises within a society, various mechanisms that perpetuate everyday institutional segregation emerge. For example, tracking is the process by which students are assigned to classes based on their categories. On the community level, a similar process called steering can occur, in which realtors show people houses in areas with a predominant presence of a certain race. Such conditions can create a strong sociopolitical polarization due to the emergence of so-called at-large candidates who are local office contenders elected not by wards or districts but rather by a whole community. To satisfy their voters, they would likely preserve the status quo and promote practices like steering and tracking.
Reference
Banaji, M. R., Fiske, S. T., & Massey, D. S. (2021). Systemic racism: Individuals and interactions, institutions and society. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 6, 1-21.