“How Structural Racism Works” – Tricia Rose and Samuel Rosen – recently noted

If you are struggling to get your head around how racism works you will probably find it helpful to have a general framework as a guide. This one hour lecture from 2017 features an overview by Brown University Professor Tricia Rose of the structure of racism and how it works in the US (approx. 29 minutes). Then follows a case study by Samuel Rosen, senior researcher, How Structural Racism Works Project at Brown, of how these structures influenced the murder of Trayvon Martin in Sanford FL in 2012.

The discussion of the structure of racism provides a framework to understand the little known history and present day manifestations of the system level infrastructure that sustains and reproduces white supremacy. The five structures; wealth/jobs, education, housing, media and criminal justice interact and magnify the effects. Professor Rose provides some highlight data points for each element and discusses how widely held ideas about Blacks in America reinforce these structures.

The case study of the killing of Trayvon Martin provides a brief but compelling illustration of how some of the structural elements entered into this event.

There is much of further interest at Brown’s Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America.

 

How Structural Racism Works