Institutional Racism

Section 5: Developing Racial Justice Policies
Racialization and systemic analysis
We’ve seen that racialization runs through all of our social systems (it is systemic),
through all aspects of our society. It is intertwined with economics and with political
power. A vision of a better society, a racially just society, needs therefore to take these
system questions into account.
This graphic depicts racialization as
something like an electric grid running through
our society. It affects and distorts each aspect
of society: education, health, housing, and so
on. It affects our children. Housing and
employment and criminal justice are
interconnected; they are part of the larger
system of society. We can’t expect to fix our
children’s education while leaving everything
else untouched — including racialization itself.
Criminal
Justice
Housing
Education
Children
Health
Employment
Community
Understanding and resisting
racialization/structural racism has to be an
explicit part of our work. As we work to make
race more explicit, here are two things to keep
in mind:
• Talking about racialization, analyzing how every issue we work on is shaped by it,
how every organization we work with is shaped by it, is a crucial part of our work.
• We have to learn how to do this analysis as part of our daily work. We have to
practice putting these questions on the table, on using these issues to frame our
issues, and to put them to work in different situations.
Racialization distorts all parts of the System
Grassroots Policy Project Race, Power and Policy Page 24