Structural-Institutional Racism

• Pages: 195-203
• Author: Khiara M. Bridges

195

Chapter 8

STRUCTURAL/INSTITUTIONAL

RACISM

Political activist Stokely Carmichael and sociologist Charles

Hamilton usually are credited with coining the term “institutional

racism.” In their 1967 tome, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation

in America, they distinguished individual acts of racism from a

racism that was more covert and subtle. They wrote:

When white terrorists bomb a black church and kill five

black children, that is an act of individual racism, widely

deplored by most segments of society. But when in that

same city—Birmingham, Alabama—five hundred black

babies die each year because of the lack of proper food,

shelter and medical facilities . . . that is a function of

institutional racism.

1

The concept became popular over the course of the next several

decades, as it supplied an explanation for the persistence of racial

inequality in the post-civil rights era—an era that did not feature

pervasive acts of overt racism perpetrated by individuals. Although

widely used, even those on the political left criticized the concept as

not being fully fleshed out and, therefore, deficient in explanatory

power. Indeed, early in the concept’s life, one social theorist “warned

that the term ‘institutional racism’ would forever be a political slogan

lacking in analytical rigour until it could be more precisely

conceptualised, theorised, and subject to empirical investigation.”

2

Interestingly, commentators have made a similar assessment of

the concept in more recent years—decades after it was first critiqued

as being undertheorized. More than thirty years after Carmichael

3

and Hamilton coined the term, critical race theorist Ian Haney López

observed that “ ‘[i]nstitutional racism’ seems to function more often

as a label for a problem than as a theory of social behavior. A theory

of ‘institutional racism’ has been elusive.”

4

1

STOKELY CARMICHAEL & CHARLES V. HAMILTON, BLACK POWER: THE POLITICS

OF LIBERATION IN AMERICA 4 (1967).

2

Coretta Phillips, Institution al Racism and Ethnic Inequalities: An Expanded

Multilevel Framework, 40 J. SOC. POL’Y 173, 173 (2011).

3

Carmichael later changed his name to Kwame Ture. Michael T. Kaufman,

Stokely Carmichael, Rights Leader who Coined ‘ Black Power,’ Dies at 57, N.Y. TIMES,

Nov. 16, 1998, at B10.

4

Ian F. Haney López, Institutional Racism: Judicial Conduct and a New Theory

of Racial Discrimination, 109 YALE L.J. 1717, 1727 (1999).