This is the full text of a thesis paper I wrote in the first couple months of 2024. Because it was made for an English Composition class, and not my actual major, it will probably never be published; so for that reason I’ve elected to put it here. Please note that 21 pages of this 39 page paper were written over the course of two days in a sort of frantic fever state (as I have a terrible sense of time and thought it was due the week after when it actually was), so be gentle. Also, I’ve tried my best to maintain adherence to the style of MLA 9, but Discourse unfortunately hates formatting. Without further ado, let’s get into it.
Individual Psychology and Structures of Systemic Discrimination
- Introduction
In 2012, feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian, creator of the website Feminist Frequency, decided to start a kickstarter campaign in order to fund a second series of her mildly successful video series Tropes vs. Women, which applied contemporary feminist thought to popular media. While the first set of videos focused on fairly well-trod ground (sci-fi and fantasy movies and tv shows), the upcoming series would focus on something that was starting to gain legitimacy as a form of media — video games. Pretty quickly, the kickstarter went past its modest $6,000 initial goal, and surpassed all of the stretch goals with an impressive $48,000 dollars raised. Then, sometime around June 11th, 2012, a user on a subforum of the anonymous (and largely extremist) website 4chan decided to post about the campaign, rallying support against Sarkeesian. Within days, her website was DDoSed, her wikipedia page was vandalized with pornography and racial slurs, and she started receiving hundreds of death threats a day. As Sarkeesian used her platform to speak out about the issue, attention to her grew, and so did the hate directed at her. In August of 2014, when the ex-boyfriend of video game developer Zoë Quinn (who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns) alleged, with all evidence to the contrary, that Quinn had traded sexual favors for favorable reviews on their game Depression Quest, the anti-feminist backlash that was still festering against Sarkeesian grew to encompass Quinn as well. When fellow game developer Brianna Wu spoke out against the harassment, threats of death and rape were targeted towards her as well, as well as many other women even tangentially involved with the industry. And as news began to spread, harassers and organizers from other sites such as 8chan (a well known hotbed of neonazi activity (Moskowitz)) began to take up the cause, with it soon spreading to individuals on more well known social media sites such as Twitter (now X) and Facebook. These were the origins of what would come to be known as Gamergate: a massive effort, in parts coordinated and in others individual, to rid video games of the scourge of feminism via death threats, cyber crimes, and eventually, real-life shootings and bombings (Danskin, “Anita Sarkeesian”; Romano, “Zoe Quinn”).
At the time, it was not particularly surprising that a ton of misogynists originating from a platform known for its violent and far-right rhetoric would do something like this, and many if not most people at the time thought it would die naturally — news sites were literally publishing ‘recaps’ as soon as November of 2014. But it didn’t. The bulk of the backlash would continue until late 2015, and would contribute to the rising wave of discriminatory sentiments that would get Donald Trump elected as president in 2016 (Romano, “We haven’t learned from Gamergate.”). What was genuinely surprising about the continued relevance of Gamergate was where it found its traction: not just with internet neonazi trolls and anonymous misogynistic hackers, but with common people. Thousands of ‘gamers,’ mostly young cisgender and heterosexual white men from middle-class backgrounds, started to make similar claims against feminism and the specific targets of the movement — even when they had no background in the extremist corners of the internet where Gamergate started. While they disagreed with the horrific methods of the chan users, and while they claimed (and genuinely believed) that they were not bigoted themselves, they argued that the people who started the movement had a point. Journalistic ethics, scamming accusations, the legitimacy of gaming as a media form, and many, many other explanations were given for their seemingly newfound suspicion of feminism, and minorities in gaming in general. But when it came down to it, these people — egged on by 8chan organizers — were what allowed the harassment to continue. The question this paper attempts to answer is why.
Why would people, who are ostensibly in favor of equality and against discrimination, be so ready to knowingly enable such vile attacks? Why was it so easy for the far right to incite them to its aid? And beyond this specific example, how and why do nondiscriminatory individuals enable and uphold massive systemic oppression, of which phenomena like Gamergate are just a symptom? This paper will attempt to show that systemic discrimination is driven by those in power and upheld by social norms devised to ensure it works, and identifies four reasons that nondiscriminatory individuals may have to — either knowingly or unknowingly — reinforce the complex and powerful structures of systemic discrimination that exist in our modern society. In addition, it will use these findings to attempt to analyze the system as a whole and determine in what ways it can be undermined to secure justice and equality.
1.1 Addressing Counterarguments
The main counterargument involves the intentionality of discrimination itself. One might argue that some claims in this paper verge on conspiratorial, and that individual discrimination can be best explained by theories such as implicit bias instead of through intentional power plays. While implicit cognitive bias is very likely a real factor at play, as the human brain has a tendency to sort things into categories and assign them certain traits which can lead to stereotyping, nowhere is there a neurological basis to assume that these associations are inherently negative or that they would lead to oppression on such a massive scale. Regarding intentionality, this paper should not be construed as saying that ‘all people with power want to create systemic discrimination as a part of a grand power play,’ but rather that some people throughout history and in the modern day have used systemic oppression in order to further their goals (providing examples where necessary), and that they frequently would like to see it continued.
1.2 The Intersectional Approach
Overall, this paper will attempt to take an intersectional approach to discrimination. It’s worth noting that, while not identical, different forms of bigotry are inherently connected, and have often been expressed in similar if not identical ways. For example, the modern panic around trans people’s existence in bathrooms is just a rehashing of the fear in the 1990s about gay people’s existence in bathrooms, which itself originated with the fear of black people’s use of public bathrooms from the early to mid-20th century. For the sake of the reader, many sections will only explore one specific example of the type of logic or discrimination at play, but almost all of them apply universally. Furthermore, anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiment can be categorized as a form of sex discrimination, given that one would not deny privileges to some who is assigned female at birth for loving a man, expressing themselves in a feminine manner, or identifying as female, so it is sexist to deny someone assigned male at birth those privileges for doing the same things. This is the interpretation used by the United States government, which means it should be sufficient for this paper.
1.3 A Note About the Alt-Right
The alt-right is a right-wing political movement currently gaining international traction characterized by its rejection of the political mainstream, its embrace of the internet, and its tactics of being intentionally provocative and offensive to boost engagement. Alt-right movements are a serious threat to equality, but more importantly, they are almost always extremely glad to be considered a serious threat to equality. Many people who back these movements are explicitly and proudly bigoted. They are well aware of systemic discrimination and are actively trying to strengthen it. As such, they are also not who this essay will be focusing on — the focus here is on individuals who often aren’t explicitly or necessarily bigoted, but perpetuate systemic discrimination regardless.
- The Discomfort Element
In order to understand why non-discriminatory individuals often perpetuate systemic discrimination, one should first understand where the majority of this discrimination is perpetuated: in the workforce. The idea of ‘the American Dream,’ where the United States operates under a meritocracy in which those with enough merit and grit, no matter who they are, can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and make something of themselves, is a very prevalent notion in the American psyche. In fact, polls of the American public showed that over eighty percent of people not only believed the American dream existed, but that they could achieve it (Smith) — and even despite a significant drop over the COVID-19 pandemic, this percentage has been rapidly increasing back to pre-COVID levels. However, while many believe in the concept of meritocracy behind the American Dream, its execution isn’t so clear-cut.
In 2017, white families were 70% more likely to own their home (McNamee 178), and even as of last year the median wealth of white households was over six times higher than for black households (M. Phillips). And women, despite on average having a higher educational attainment than men, are more likely to end up in ‘dead-end’ low-paying jobs, and be paid less for the same jobs (McNamee 182). There just isn’t evidence for a pure meritocracy, and yet, the concept of the American Dream persists. And as L. Taylor Phillips and Brian S. Lowery write in their study “Ain’t No Fortunate One: On the Motivated Denial of Class Privilege,” “Meritocracy requires that resources are allocated based on internal, relevant factors […] This widespread acceptance of the ideology of meritocracy links self-regard to the belief that to deserve an outcome, individuals must have earned it” (3).
In short, merit is a core value, central to the identity of many Americans. So when some are confronted with the notion that they received a sort of ‘head start’ that they never even asked for, based solely on their color or sex, it can cause significant mental stress - leading many to simply avoid or reject the problem altogether (Case), putting them in a prime position to inadvertently reinforce institutional discrimination.
2.1 Where Merit Fails
The concept of meritocracy is nothing new nor unique to the United States, and like many human institutions, it has its fair share of flaws, the principle among which is the inequitable distribution of the factors that determine ‘merit.’ One of the most common responses put forward by Americans when they attempt to quantify what traits are most important for getting ahead in life and/or business is simply ‘innate talent,’ but social scientists, geneticists, and neurologists are divided on whether such a thing even exists — the classic ‘nature vs. nurture’ argument. However, modern debates take a different path; instead of ‘nature vs. nurture,’ a much more common discussion today is ‘nurture vs. nature and nurture,’ and not if environmental factors play a role, but rather the extent to which they do (McNamee 21–22). Many other factors that are commonly listed as being a core component of merit, such as hard work and experience, are similarly subject to environmental influences — and when it comes to environmental influences, there is nothing more important than education.
Education is one of the most important aspects in preparing people for modern society, and is crucial for early discovery of interests (that often lead to enrichment of any innate talent), development of goal-setting skills, critical thinking, informing children about the world, social skills, and also basic skills in reading, writing, and mathematics, all of which are crucial for success in business environments (Bouchrika) — and with American culture’s heavy emphasis on work achievement as a measure of individual success, education is crucial for simply existing in American society. However, despite the progress made since the 1954 decision made in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, there still exists a severe racial imbalance in American schools. According to a 2016 study by the US Government Accountability Office, for 16% of all schools, over 90% of their enrolled students were black and low-income — and on the opposite end, a significant percentage of schools had student bodies that were overwhelmingly white and upper-middle to upper class. In essence, these schools are still segregated —- nominally by class and income, but more subtly, by race. These majority-minority schools were subject to numerous issues, including higher rates of harsh disciplinary action (even when adjusted for the nature of the offense) and lower funding, especially for math and science programs. It isn’t surprising, then, that students who attend these segregated schools are less likely to graduate, attend college, and attain a higher income than their peers (Graham; McNamee 177). Even beyond the quality of schools is the environment within them, which is often heavily influenced by social factors. Female students are more likely to experience sexual harassment and bullying, including being 3x more likely to experience cyberbullying (Ho; US Dept. of Education) and LGBTQ+ students experience significantly higher rates of violence, sexual assault, and psychological abuse (Tillewein et al.). Considering that there is demonstrated evidence that increases in harassment lead to drastic drops in educational performance and attainment (Wolpert), it’s clear that the American education system confers significant advantages on those with privilege, while beneficial outcomes in education are lower for minority groups. And since education is, as noted earlier, so closely tied to what constitutes many Americans’ conceptions of merit, this imbalance in opportunities and outcomes leads to major benefits for majority groups in the American meritocracy.
Furthermore, even in situations where equal opportunity exists, merit frequently does not lead to equality. While this is often a result of social factors, there are a myriad of organizational and structural barriers in the paths of disenfranchised groups. As noted by Merida L. Johns,
“Gender stereotypes and gender communication differences pose dilemmas for women as well. Gender typecasts create a double bind in which women can be penalized for displaying either too little or too much assertiveness, competitiveness, and independence."
In addition, women are significantly more likely to experience role conflict than men when it comes to balancing work and family. Not only are women usually expected to be their families’ primary caregivers, potentially causing stress when attempting to balance a full time job, employers are also less likely to hire women based solely on the assumption that, even if they are single and childless, they may soon have a family to ‘look after’ and, as a result, will be temporary workers and not a good investment. Add to this the fact that minoritized groups have significantly less social capital, especially with high-level executives who, for all reasons previously discussed and more, tend to be upper-class heterosexual white cisgender men, and as a result usually have very different cultural and social touchstones making the process of forming connections more difficult. Then consider that significant swathes of important business take place in traditionally male-dominated spaces — golf courses, gentlemen’s clubs, et cetera (McNamee 185–187). Add all of this up, and one begins to get a general understanding of the challenges facing the disenfranchised in American business culture.
Of course, these facts alone do not discount the concept of meritocracy. After all, many people in life have challenges to overcome - surely overcoming them is just a sign of greater merit — grit, talent, hard work — than someone in the same position who had to get past fewer obstacles. But perhaps the greatest indictment of the American dream is that, despite the above being true, the greater merit displayed does not correlate with equal rewards. Women are paid on average 83.7% as much as men, a difference of about $10,000 dollars every year (U.S. Dept. of Labor), are relegated to dead-end jobs without room for advancement, and hold approximately a fifth of all elected offices in the United States (McNamee 183-187). Black workers make 79% of what white workers earn (Leonhardt), and continue to face challenges with redlining, lower approval rates for loans, and many more factors affecting cost of living. LGB employees earn an average of 90% what their heterosexual peers do, with transgender and nonbinary workers earning even less than that at around 65% (HRC “Wage Gap Among LGBTQ+ Workers”), and LGBTQ+ people are at greater risk of poverty — even when controlling for other factors — and face frequent harassment and occupational segregation inside and outside of business environments (White et al.).
2.2 Ignorance is Bliss
It is difficult, when faced with such an abundance of evidence, to rationally and statistically dispute the notion that the American meritocracy is at the very best imperfect, and likely to confer significant advantages to the majority. But the concept of meritocracy is baked into the very core of American identity and work culture. It is important to note that Americans, more than people in any other country, tend to identify themselves by their work, with sociology professor Steven Vallas even going so far as to say that, in the U.S., “work is the single most important way of proving your worth” (qtd. in Malinsky). Americans tend to equate their work with their sense of self, rate being a hard worker as one of the most important positive qualities, and most importantly, view their work achievements as positive reflections of themselves as people. It is completely understandable, then, that when presented with statistics and information showing that they have had an advantage in everything they do – that even the smallest portion of their achievements was due to something other than their own effort and skill – total acceptance of this is not exactly the norm. When self-worth is tied to concrete examples of hard work, information that disputes the concreteness of those examples can be psychologically damaging to one’s self-perception.
This discomfort can have several effects on the social psychology of the individual in question. In a study by researchers L. Taylor Phillips and Brian S. Lowery, they found that when exposed to information about class inequities, which conflicted with held ideas about meritocracy and one’s own merit, many people exaggerated their own personal hardships that they had faced in their life, focusing on specific hard times they had overcome that were an anomaly in their life or scenarios that, while they may have seemed difficult (and almost certainly were), didn’t constitute a hardship on the same level of demonstrated social and psychological impacts of institutional discrimination. Phillips and Lowery also posited that this could be in an effort not just to convince themselves that they had not benefited from privilege, but also to convince others:
“For instance, we find that both self-affirmation and system-affirmation reduced individuals’ defensive claims of hardship in response to evidence of their benefitting from class privilege (Experiment 5). These results suggest that defensive claims may serve both self- and system-defense goals: for instance, claiming hardship or effort may be useful for convincing not only the self, but also third parties, that unearned advantage does not exist” (Phillips & Lowery 16).
However, they also note that while it is easy to claim class hardships where none exist - as the very concept of ‘class’ is nebulous and one’s relation to it can change, even several times within the course of one’s life - the negative consequences of systemic discrimination on the basis of race or sex are generally harder for someone who is not part of that minoritized group to mirror. Put plainly, a rich person can claim to have, in the past, fallen on hard times financially; it would be very hard for a white US-born American to convincingly claim they have been the victims of racism (although many if not most still try (Gonyea)). In addition, race and sex tend to engender a significantly stronger feeling of intergroup identification than class does, meaning that not only does information about race- and sex-based inequity create the psychological need for group preservation in addition to self preservation, but it also makes it harder to ignore as what is perceived as an attack on the group as a whole becomes recontextualized as a personal affront (Phillips & Lowery 3-17). This primary difference between class and marginalized groups with a higher entitativity informs many of the average person’s reactions to institutional discrimination.
While there’s a certain fantasy among active members of the political left that everybody wants to be able to acknowledge discrimination and fight back against it, that is not really the case. Being faced with the idea that one has benefitted from institutional discrimination frequently causes cognitive dissonance and a move towards self-preservation, and in most cases that means avoiding the information entirely. People may do this by recontextualizing the situation, avoiding interactions that may lead to this cognitive dissonance, or even simply rejecting the situation as a whole (Case). For example, when faced with the idea that not every achievement is due solely to ability, the information may, essentially, backfire: If one holds it to be true that every achievement is due to talent or hard work, then a group that has less advantages must simply be unskilled or lazy. In fact, it’s been found that many people actually reduced support for redistributive policies such as affirmative action when confronted with inequity (Phillips and Lowery 17), part of a well-documented phenomenon known as belief perseverance. Put simply, it’s easier not to know – it’s more expedient to reject an idea that, due to American cultural factors, causes such massive cognitive dissonance. When it comes to inequity, ignorance is bliss.
2.3 Beyond Business
While this paper has mostly focused on these concepts in a business setting, they are universally applicable. As much as people attribute their advancements in their professional lives to their own merit, and thus their own value as a human being, they do the same thing in their daily lives - and since most people tend to, at the very least, be aware of the concept of systemic discrimination, it doesn’t take much for them to be reminded of it. This concept meshes very effectively with the fior di latte view of identity - the idea that factors that comprise the majority aren’t separate identities, they’re the baseline, and everything else is a variation off of them. As a result, people don’t frequently consider their (in their minds) non-identity and how it affects them. Practically, what this entails is that something as simple as a marginalized person being in a space which has normally only been occupied by the majority may – through no fault of anybody – force that person to reckon with the reason why that space was previously only occupied by men, or whites, or heterosexuals. This can happen in neighborhoods, at grocery stores, at school, on TV, and practically anywhere where there are people. And because whiteness and maleness are treated as a norm, any place where one sees that being challenged can lead to a belief that someone’s presence breaking that norm is fundamentally about that person’s identity. To quote essayist Ian Danskin, “A movie with an all-white cast is widely perceived as being in no way about race – but that’s not true of one with an all-black cast” (“Cost of Doing Business” 10:42). As previously discussed at great length, people being exposed to the idea of systemic injustices can lead to significant consequences, and certainly doesn’t endear them to redistributive policies such as affirmative action.
- Discrimination Works
Over the past section, there was an assumption that people generally had the best of intentions — but as much as one might wish that that were true of all people, it isn’t. A fact that has historically been overlooked when discussing discrimination, both historically and in the modern day, is that it’s useful. When many people are given the opportunity to advance themselves, even at the expense of millions, they will frequently take it. In fact, this paper will argue that modern discriminations as a whole started as an effect of this type of thinking, and not as a result of natural human cognitive bias as has been previously argued by some. This is the type of discrimination that is often seen being reinforced by theoretically non-discriminatory police officers, attorneys, business magnates, politicians, and more — those who have reaped the benefits of systemic racism and sexism and, whether fully cognizant of that fact or not, intend to keep reaping those benefits. And importantly, this form of bias is largely responsible for the culture of systemic bias in the United States, where this paper focuses, and throughout the world at large.
3.1 The Origins of Discrimination
Believe it or not, oppression is not exactly new in the course of human history. It does, however, have a traceable starting point. The very first types of oppression, when people lived mostly in insular societies, was against women — and to quote author and activist Samuel R. Delaney,
“[…] the oppression of women is the model for all other oppressions in the world. It is the model for the oppression of Black people, it is the model for the oppression of children, it is the model for the oppression of workers by their bosses, whenever there is a power differential, people learn how to do that because of the way women are oppressed in this society” (qtd. in Morris).
So by examining the way that the oppression of women began, and specifically by looking at the motives behind those implementing it, one can begin to understand the way that bias is similarly fomented contemporarily.
Conveniently, journalist Angela Saini’s book The Patriarchs explores this exact topic in great detail and provides a simple answer — sexism, at least at its origin, comes from people power. In ancient societies, that was the key to power in general, and so it needed to be strictly controlled. Conflict was common (along with famine, disease, etc.), and so maintaining capable soldiers was extremely difficult and, over generations, put extreme pressure on families to, for lack of a better phrase, pump out children who could grow up to fight. Women, both by virtue of being able to get pregnant and needing to be pregnant constantly in order to maintain population, were relegated to be homemakers and wives. For their part, men were not granted any more of a choice — every man was expected to go to war when the government needed, just as every woman was expected to give birth when the government needed. Sexism didn’t start with patriarchal families or women being seen as ‘inferior’ (in fact, there’s some anthropological evidence to suggest that significant sexual dimorphism among humans evolved as a result of patriarchy), but because maintaining power necessitated everyone being in their place whether they liked it or not. In order to justify their actions, those with power built cultures and formed stereotypes which have survived to the modern day; the idea that women are weak and suited to domestic labor and men are inherently violent and warlike didn’t create the patriarchy, it was created by it (Saini).
When viewed in a context of eschewing traditional gender roles, it makes sense why sexuality- and gender-diverse identities were similarly suppressed. If the system relies on these sets of rigid interactions between the sexes, then any disruption to that is a subversive element that threatens to destabilize the system that leads to those in power having said power in the first place. Same-sex relationships raise serious questions as to the validity of gender dynamics in relationships that have been upheld for so long, and allowing for different gender expressions (regardless of actual identity) destroys the concepts of strict gender roles based on sex. It’s worth noting that even in societies with a traditional third gender - such as the Hindu hijras, Zapotec muxes, Sakalava sekrata, Philippine bakla, Turkish köçekler, Islamic mukhannathun, and to some extent the eunuchs of medieval courts (Britannica) - the dynamic of power flowed one way, with men basically giving up any potential for governmental power and adopting a more stereotypically feminine and effeminate manner and appearance. To utilize, temporarily and solely for the sake of understanding, lesbian feminist and author Monique Wittig’s framework of the sex-class structure, men were giving up their power as members of the oppressor sex to become social members of the oppressed sex. This, of course, was fine for the social elites who wanted as little competition as possible. In the 20th century, with widespread expansion of concepts such as individual liberties, the immediate response to the growth of support for queer identities by those with power was to claim that these identities ran contrary to ‘traditional family values’ and the ‘natural order of things,’ both manufactured (albeit old) concepts that heavily benefited the people that currently held power.
Remembering the Samuel R. Delaney quote from earlier, it shouldn’t be surprising that racism, while significantly newer than sexism, shares an almost identical origin, beginning with the transatlantic slave trade. It’s estimated that, in the mid-19th century, slave labor accounted for just under 25% of total American economic growth (Zickuhr). Similarly as to sexism, elites benefited greatly from being able to have massive production operations with no wages, no limits on working hours, without their laborers being able to leave, and being able to sell and buy their slaves to fully maximize efficiency. In the early days of the American colonies, however, forced labor was not nearly as harsh — and crucially, it wasn’t based on race. Indentured servitude for people of all races was a common and widespread practice, and in some states such as Virginia it even began to approach the brutality of early slavery. However, there would be several developments that would cause a shift towards chattel slavery. First and foremost was availability - by the 1660s, there were simply more forced laborers being imported from Africa than anywhere else, and the number of European laborers was sharply declining. Another crucial shift leading to the chattel system was Bacon’s Rebellion. While it was primarily about anti-indigenous sentiment and an attempt to seize land, a large root cause was anxieties from indentured servants and former forced laborers who wanted land ownership. Furthermore, Nathaniel Bacon received support from slaves, indentured servants, and lower-class free men alike, regardless of race and unified by their socioeconomic status. The increasing militancy of the lower class stoked fear with the wealthy elites, who both desired more control over their laborers. One tactic was to stop importing slaves from the West Indies, who spoke English, and instead import slaves directly from Africa who would be less at risk of revolt. But additionally, plantation owners needed somewhere to focus their discontent that wasn’t directly at said elites. The target, of course, being the African slaves who were now being imported en masse. By offering poor whites land and some power over slaves, plantation owners began to create a sense of racial unity (Alexander 29-31; Wolfe).These early slaveholders weren’t necessarily racist — well, many if not most of them were, but the point is they didn’t have to be. Regardless of their own personal views, supporting societal discrimination helped them gain money and power, and when there is money and power to be found in doing something, it rarely stays undone for long.
What seems, at least in retrospect, to have been the greatest threat to the institution of chattel slavery was the Enlightenment, with its values of liberalism, brotherhood, equality, and liberty for all people. After all, how can one believe that “all [people] were created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life [and] liberty” (Declaration of Independence) — and not abhor slavery in all its forms, especially the brutal and inhuman chattel slavery? Well, as it turns out, colonial elite saw a pretty simple way out of this conundrum, and simultaneously a way to reinforce societal and systemic racism, even as ideas of liberty and equality were rapidly spreading in the colonies. If all people were created equal, then all one had to do was argue that black people weren’t actually people at all. It’s worth noting that it was around this time that the sentiment truly shifted from being pro-slavery in a racist form to being pro-racism, and this was for a few reasons. First and foremost is the elimination of nuance — if freedmen are people, what makes them inherently, biologically, different from a slave? Why are they people when slaves aren’t? Another reason was resource control: claiming racial inferiority justifies not only the use of extremely brutal measures to keep slaves in line, under the guise of somehow ‘helping’ them, but it justifies the existence of laws like the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which de facto allowed freed black men to be kidnapped from and sold in American territory. And lastly, as previously mentioned, the wealthy plantation owners were terrified of the mere possibility of class unity. By perpetuating a racial caste, it allowed poor whites both to see themselves as different from poor blacks and gave them a stake in maintaining the very same caste system — after all, “their own plight had not improved by much, but at least they were not slaves” (Alexander 31). To carry out all these goals, plantation owners funded pseudo-scientific studies into the ‘difference between the races,’ influenced local churches to teach about white saviorism and the sins of miscegenation, and of course made sure to remind poor whites about their alleged ‘superiority,’ all in the name of maintaining their own power and wealth.
Over time, the racial caste system became firmly embedded into the American psyche, becoming almost something of a national religion (Alexander 33). The circumstances of the reconstruction-era South didn’t help the matter, as severe economic, political, and racial anxieties caused by over a century of being taught that blacks were ‘primitive’ led many whites to fear, however irrationally, the retribution of the former undercaste, and there was a general worry that former slaves were likely to burn, rape, and pillage now that they were free. Of course, none of that actually happened, but the seeds of distrust had been sown before America had even been independent. American racism continued to evolve through the decades, from sharecropping to Jim Crow to segregation and into the modern day (Alexander 34-41).
Similar circumstances surrounded American racism towards other racial minorities as well. After the Mexican-American war, wealthy white elites who wanted to own more land and build up support among poor whites by giving them land as well leveraged existing racial sentiments and the previous tension with Mexico to swiftly and surely undermine the land rights of white hispanic people and frame them as a separate racial group. Waves of immigration from East Asia caused fears that large, well-knit communities would be able to establish themselves, so elites stoked fears that Asian immigrants were stealing American jobs and polluting American culture, as well as breaking up traditional communities to instill ‘proper’ American values, all tactics which are still used today. Native Americans were, similarly to black Americans, cast as less than human and subject to extreme violence that could in some cases be considered genocide. Even Irish, Italian and other European (usually Catholic) immigrants were not seen as ‘white’ and were subject to harassment until the elites felt their power slipping and decided to do the exact same thing that had worked for impoverished Anglo-Americans in the colonial period — cutting them in; giving them a share of the power so they felt less inclined to rise up against their theoretical ‘benefactors.’
3.2 Law and Order
While it takes different forms, this effect of discrimination simply being expedient for those with power continues to today. More than that, it feeds itself by creating the circumstances where it can thrive. This happens throughout the entirety of American society, but the most evident place is in the American legal and law enforcement system, which serves as a modern version of the same aforementioned social control measures. Crime rates are already higher among people who are living below the poverty line for a number of reasons, including a lack of adequate education, a distrust of authority figures and elites who often, advertently or inadvertently, exploit the lower class, higher rates of divorce and early death, a want of resources that are difficult to access legally, and a culture that encourages people to look after themselves above all else (Holzman-Escareno 15-19) — and this paper has already shown how minoritized groups are often pushed into poverty and denied opportunities, with racial minorities being around 50% more likely to be below the poverty line (Shrider), LGBTQ+ people being approximately 38% more likely to be impoverished (University of Wisconsin), and women being 35% more likely to be in poverty, with single mothers making up a large portion of that population (WLDEF). Unsurprisingly, individuals who are systematically denied resources often turn to crime to obtain those resources.
The overarching theory here is fairly simple: if the powers that be want to control minorities as a method of obtaining more power for themselves, and massive systemic oppression (which originates from other attempts to achieve the exact same goal) forces underprivileged groups into poverty, then adopting a system of strict law and order is key — bonus points if you can make that legal system directly or almost directly impose harsher penalties on minorities, while cultivating a culture of refusing support for criminals, whether convicted or merely accused. Enter 1980s America and the Reagan administration, who decided that in the wake of Jim Crow, it was a great time for the United States to implement this exact type of system with their ‘War on Drugs,’ a plan intended to associate blackness with criminality and ensure that even minor convictions could completely disrupt not only individuals’ lives, but the lives of their families and descendants as well.
It shouldn’t be particularly surprising that it wasn’t difficult to bend the American legal system towards this goal, especially considering that American courts started with a heavy emphasis on property disputes, which included slaves, and that their modern police forces originated from slave patrols in the antebellum south which had the explicit purpose of using however much force they wanted to return escaped slaves to their owners — as well as any other black people they thought might be slaves, which as it turned out, was most of them (NAACP). The actions of the police and courts since the start of the war on drugs have been anything but novel.
To start, it’s worth addressing the most common misconception about the war on drugs — that it was actually about drugs. While Reagan had certainly mastered the art of colorblind rhetoric, claiming his policies were about ‘states’ rights’ and ‘law and order,’ his imagery of subversive welfare queens and vicious ghetto gangsters were not the most subtle racism has ever been, although they were still subtle enough to sway a fair number of liberals. But when Reagan started his war on drugs in October 1982, only 2% of Americans actually believed that drug use was a pressing issue. And the drug which the war on drugs mostly targeted — crack cocaine — wouldn’t hit the streets until 1985, several years after the war on drugs had been started. Interestingly, Reagan’s war on drugs wasn’t actually the first: Nixon had attempted to proclaim the exact same thing during his presidency, but the lack of an actual drug problem made it more of a rhetorical war. In this way, the emergence of crack cocaine was a godsend for republicans, as it was cheap and easy to acquire which made it the drug of choice in impoverished communities that were majority black (not to mention that the CIA’s involvement with certain cartels meant that it was much harder to stop at the border). By being able to effectively associate black communities with criminality, conservatives were able to appeal to the overtly racist far right, people who were not directly racist (or at least did not consider themselves as such) but were still wary of ‘dangerous’ black gangsters infiltrating their communities, and moderates of all races who fell for the law and order messaging either because they were unaware of the unequal implementation and consequences of the law, or because they simply chose not to acknowledge it. For their part, many black community leaders supported the war on drugs, some because they believed it was a genuine issue and that the war would solve it, and others still because they wanted to distance their organizations from the evolving public perception of lower-class people of color as druggies and criminals (Alexander 50-63). This, of course, was the goal of the contemporary conservative movement — to secure power by inciting fear, disenfranchising people of color, and dividing civil rights movements, all in the name of getting more votes. This is not to say that Republicans at the time were not truly and explicitly racist — the overwhelming majority of them were — but to borrow an observation once again from Ian Danskin, the point is that they didn’t have to be, as outlined by conservative strategists such as Kevin Phillips and Robert Stutman (56, 66).
The impacts of this massive emphasis on ‘law and order’ are vast and multifaceted, so this paper will go through the basics. Police officers were allowed to stop and search people for no real reason whatsoever, meaning racial profiling became commonplace, and conservative courts repeatedly whittled away at the Fourth Amendment’s protections from illegitimate search and seizure as systems of funding police departments based on arrest quotas and sales of seized property. And when trying to fill a quota, even egalitarian-minded police were much more likely to patrol poor neighborhoods where crimes couldn’t be concealed to the home and people would be unable to hire lawyers, and if they ‘accidentally’ made an unjust arrest, people quite frankly wouldn’t care as much if they weren’t white. Prosecutors benefitted from laws and interpretations of laws allowing them to select and deny jury members on racial grounds and thus call for harsher punishments based solely on race, protection from being investigated based on case statistics showing a correlation between race and sentencing, and the ability to push plea deals onto innocent people who didn’t have much of a choice. Prison wardens benefitted in general through the capitalization of the US prison system, enabling them to carry out mass incarceration for mass profit. And politicians benefited as, even when people got out of prison, they were unable to vote in the majority of states, and were often denied basic necessities or the ability to work and provide themselves in a system of parole where even a minor violation could lead to them going back to prison and starting the entire process over again. And as this system perpetuated itself, conservative politicians used it for public relations campaigns to ensure the population wouldn’t care what happened to these criminals, whether they were drug kingpins (which they overwhelmingly were not (Alexander 76)), people who were habitual users due to stress and addiction, people who had never tried it but were caught carrying five milligrams and sentenced to decades in prison, and people who were innocent altogether but were strongarmed into plea deals due to a lack of legal prospects. And although people of all races use drugs at similar rates, with white people in many instances being more likely to use drugs (McCabe), media from both government and news sources overwhelmingly portray drug users as black, shaking public trust in civil rights leaders. Overall, the American government and its officers — even to the modern day — often support discriminatory measures, even if they are not explicitly discriminatory themselves, because it works as a method for them to retain their power.
3.3 Additional Thoughts
While this part has so far focused almost exclusively on the role that conservative government officials play in racial discrimination, this section will open up these concepts beyond that narrow field. For starters, the idea of supporting systemic discrimination also applies to the world of business. For reasons discussed throughout this paper, members of minoritized groups are frequently disenfranchised when it comes to starting their own businesses, but it’s worth noting that another reason for this is that business leaders have in the past heavily targeted minority-owned businesses when it comes to both lobbying efforts and corporate actions. Part of this boils down to disparate impact, as businesses in general frequently seek to increase market share by acquiring competitors or running them out of business (Stewart), and minority businesses often take the heaviest hits with lower access to funding and business knowledge. But it’s also worth noting that minority-owned small businesses being more likely to fail means that, by comparison, small businesses started by the majority class are more likely to succeed. This phenomenon creates a sort of ‘safety net’ for those in the majority: even should their business fail, ensuring that businesses owned by others, particularly large groups of others, have a higher failure rate means better chances for your new business venture, or that your business simply won’t take as much of a hit as there will be less competitors.
Another thing to note is that these concepts don’t just apply to systemic racism: LGBTQ+ identities have been similarly targeted with criminalization as well (with similar outcomes), and while the ancient Sumerian methods of population control are no longer extremely popular, women are still forced into the homes and away from power in a variety of ways, the most recent and blatant of which have been restrictions on abortion access and contraceptives. By forcing more women to have children in situations where they are not ready for parenthood, and expecting them to take care of those children no matter what, women are put at a significant disadvantage economically and socially speaking which greatly benefits the mostly male political establishment.
Lastly, it is simultaneously difficult to overstate and explore the severe impacts that white male moderates and even liberals have had on these policies. While it’s easy to see how the racial rhetoric of conservatives has led to the reinforcement of systemic discrimination, non-conservatives have played just as big a role in ensuring they succeed. In his now-famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. lamented the lack of action he saw from white moderates, with the line
“Few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action.”
Majoritized moderates have often been unwilling to support action to actually further equality, taking up the cause of equality and equity with their speeches but not putting in the work to make this happen. Frequently, this is due to a lack of political capital, like with the attempts at bipartisanship that marked much of Barack Obama’s presidency. However, the societal forces of systemic discrimination that work to keep white male conservatives in power also help to keep white male moderates in power, something that some politicians can be deeply aware of. More than that, and going back to some of the earlier reasons discussed for why some people may support institutional discrimination, it can be difficult for ostensibly moderate or even liberal politicians to accept (publicly or privately) that their rise to power was assisted by their demographic. To summarize this section, people in power often co-opt systemic oppression and discrimination because it is personally beneficial to them.
- Power Dynamics
While the promise of literal political or economic power can oftentimes be a driving force for non-discriminatory individuals and groups to support discriminatory practices, the feeling of power can be just as enticing. While section three focused on the influence of power on individuals who had significant power to enact changes, this section will deal with its influence on common people in their everyday lives. It should be noted that the rationale that will be discussed here is often the emotional starting point for people to move towards being explicitly discriminatory, and causes larger political shifts towards alt-right movements and far right political stances as a whole; however as mentioned in its opening, this paper will primarily focus on people who do not consider themselves bigoted in any way, and how even they can willingly or unwillingly help sustain societal discrimination. With that being stated, the claim here is that people are frequently predisposed towards wanting a feeling of being powerful or being in control, and that the will to act on these feelings is often exercised discriminatorily, contributing to the overall system of disenfranchisement.
4.1 Taking Control
Everyday life can often feel extremely difficult and overwhelming for a large portion of people, due to information overload, rising loneliness, social and traditional media, and the general fast pace of modern living, leading many Americans to feel a loss of control over their day-to-day (Van Kessel). The 21st century has brought changes at a much faster pace than at any other point in human history, and even when these changes are beneficial it can lead many to lose a desired sense of stability and like they are losing the power they have to impact their own lives. While not universal, the sentiment is shared by many whose main goal is to maintain their control, even as it feels like everything around them is changing drastically. So to feel like they aren’t losing their place, people often choose to exercise their power and cling to what they do have, often at the expense of disenfranchised groups who by definition have less social and political power.
In the study “Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it,” Barbara Wisse et al. argue that the threat of losing the current benefits associated with having power over others causes people to behave in ways that sabotage the people below them, theoretically with the benefit of furthering their own interests. In a workplace setting, this can mean working against the interests of your subordinates and organization in order to make yourself seem better by comparison, to make your potential competition seem worse, or even just by trying to exercise the power you have before it is lost. As the authors argue, power entails greater access to resources, and “realization that access to current and future resources will be waning […] will prompt leaders to prioritize their personal interest, by harvesting resources and fully enjoying the benefits of (still) being in power” (Wisse et al.). It is quite possible to apply a greater societal lens to these findings if one understands systemic discrimination to have a similar power dynamic, where being a part of the social majority entails a greater access to resources, and social power over those below you on the social hierarchy. When combining these facts with the realization that people often feel a sense of losing their power from social change, it becomes evident how systemic discrimination can corrupt the enfranchised into maintaining the current social order.
These societal changes can come at any time and on multiple levels. If somebody lives in a neighborhood that has always looked the same demographically, the beginnings of a shift away from that can lead them to feel like they (or their ingroup) are losing their power over that community, leading to phenomena such as ‘white flight’ and the NIMBYism common in the late 20th century. Large parts of GamerGate, mentioned at the very beginning of this paper, come from this exact sentiment: young men (often with harmful views on violence), who had for decades held substantive power over the gaming industry, began to felt their power slip as more and more companies made way for women, people of different ages, and gamers who just had different interests. In order to regain their power over their community, many young men took to exercising whatever power they had at their disposal in order to discredit their competitors, make themselves seem more necessary to the gaming industry as a whole, and use whatever power they still had — exactly what one sees business leaders doing in Wisse et al.’s study. It is also interesting to point out the irony that often, the feeling of powerlessness these individuals felt was the same feeling of powerlessness they might feel if they were a disenfranchised group in their community, although said irony is likely lost on those it applies to.
4.2 Egocentrism and Idealized Servitude
While many people who act to avoid losing their societal power may do so without even recognizing that that is the case, systemic discrimination engenders another group: those who are fully aware of their power, and believe that they are owed things because of it. When looking for potential recruits to grow their power base, these are also often the individuals whom far right groups look for first and foremost. The most well-known group of this description is ‘incels,’ or ‘involuntary celibates’ who are proudly and openly misogynistic because they feel that due to their traditionally higher social standing as men, they are owed sexual and domestic servitude by all women, which has not been received. But while this and similar openly discriminatory societal groups are the most visible and well-known examples of this type of thinking, the truth is that it is extremely commonplace in American society, especially when looking at relationship dynamics and ‘traditional’ masculinity.
Throughout the majority of human history, heterosexual relationships have been characterized by a severe power imbalance, the origins of which have already been explored earlier in this paper. As a result, it has been generally assumed that the role of men in a relationship is to have power over his partner, providing for the family and receiving ‘benefits’ as a result. However, while expectations for behavior in relationships (and women’s rights as a whole) have changed over the centuries, the societal expectations and roles placed upon men have not changed with them. A large portion of American boys, if not the majority, are raised to believe in a view of relationships where they are the main character and their spouses are mostly just there to support them, a view which is no longer the reality of the situation. The inevitable result of this is that, when men get into relationships, they often feel like they have less power than they should have and that they aren’t getting ‘rewarded’ like they think they should. And while it’s extremely difficult to reject the culture and values that have been instilled with you from a young age, it’s fairly easy to blame the things that have caused those changes, such as feminism and women as a whole. In fact, men who report lower levels of power in their relationships often correlates to an expression of hostile sexism, and the same studies found that not only was the inverse true — that showing signs of sexism correlated with then perceiving lower power in the relationship — and that men who followed these trends were also more likely to use aggressive and dominant dating strategies (Cross et al.). However, further research established a crucial connection between traditional masculine gender expectations and the relationship extrapolated in Cross et al., showing that men who experienced less stress related to their gender role, whether because they fulfilled it or because they didn’t care as much about doing so, were also less likely to show signs of hostile sexism (Harrington et al.). Essentially, without being tied to sexist expectations of relationship dynamics, men were less likely to be advertently or inadvertently sexist themselves, and thus less likely to perpetuate the cycle.
4.3 Cumulative Societal Impact
While individual power dynamics may not seem as critical to the structures of systemic discrimination as other factors discussed so far, those with political and economic capital will never be able to carry out actions to further the cycle of discrimination without the will, or at the very least the acquiescence, of the people. Power dynamics are crucial to this system because, as discussed in the section on the history of discrimination, enfranchising certain groups over others gives them a stake in the process, and it gives people something to lose should the system fall apart. Furthermore, these individual power differentials can exacerbate the pressures faced by minorities and hinder them in moving towards equality in ways that would be unfathomable if done by a government or large business. The government can’t use scare tactics to intimidate black voters, but if the Klan does it and the government conveniently can’t prove anything? The government benefits and white nationalists feel powerful. Trans panic bills, anti-abortion vigilante protections, and willful ignorance of crimes against immigrants are all continuations of this same strategy of inciting and enabling, and oftentimes people wanting to keep their power over minorities are the ones who end up being enabled, leading to a vicious cycle of suppression and disenfranchisement that allows systemic oppression to grow and expand.
- Education and Normalization
There are a lot of reasons why an ostensibly non-discriminatory individual may enable, intentionally or unintentionally, the structures of systemic discrimination, whether for guilt, power, or control. But the simplest reason of all has been left for last: most of the time, people just don’t know any better. The most crucial part of the structure of systemic discrimination starts at the age of about five and goes to eighteen, and it is the American education system. Education is the institution simultaneously most crucial and most threatening to the systems of societal discrimination, as it can be used to further disenfranchise marginalized groups and encourage the youth to respect authority and power, but it can also be used to break entire generations from furthering the vicious cycle of oppression that has plagues the entirety of human history.
5.1 Formative Power and Diversity
One of the main reasons that schools are so important is that they have significant influence over the entire lives of students. Outside of their family, a significant chunk of people’s goals, opinions, and beliefs will be determined by their teachers, their school friends, and the curriculum they learn. More than that, education teaches people about the world around them, critical thinking skills, and how to behave in society at large (Bouchrika). However, our schools often don’t teach about discrimination or even provide students the opportunity to interact with individuals from other backgrounds besides theirs, with the majority of US public school students attending schools where at least half of the school shares their ethnicity, and almost a fifth of all white students attending a school that is more than 90% white (Schaeffer). This kind of insulation is what leads to othering of those who look or act differently from oneself, and a lack of anything to challenge the notion that one’s place in the world is earned on merit and deserved because of who you are is what leads not only to the behaviors discussed in sections two and four, but can lead to the sort of fragility that can cause someone to pivot towards explicit discrimination once they feel like their place is being threatened (Kahn 158).
The political establishment sees a lot of benefits from the current state of the American education system. Minority groups being relegated to underfunded schools with severe issues reduces their chances of being able to have a good education, which in turn reduces their work prospects and increases their likelihood to commit crimes, which in turn reduces their chances to move out of poverty and have their children attend better schools. And the less that members of the majority interact with people from disenfranchised backgrounds, the more likely they are to accept the current system of oppression, and the more likely it is for them to feel that minoritized groups moving upwards is a threat to their way of life. Furthermore, the less diversity there is in schools, the easier it becomes to teach certain events as seen through certain, non-radical lenses, even while portraying yourself as inclusive. Pretty much every elementary schooler learns about Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” Speech, which explores most of his more agreeable ideas, during the four weeks of Black History Month, but his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (cited in this very paper) is often not read until secondary school, if at all. And even what curriculum is set often serves a greater purpose — how many forays into the Civil Rights movement, or the Civil War, have ended at the conclusion ‘and that’s how America fixed discrimination?’ To answer that rhetorical question, a lot of them. The classic saying goes that “knowledge is power” — and when the political establishment wants to consolidate power in as few hands as possible (their own), they have to control that knowledge.
5.2 Systemic Complacency
In a democratic environment, education has another crucial role in preparing students to be informed and active members of society by cultivating critical thinking skills and influencing their understandings of what it means to live in a democracy (Brezicha et al.). By encouraging students to think for themselves, understand things rather than just memorizing facts, and question authority, schools and teachers have the power to create forward-thinking individuals who work towards the betterment of society. It should be relatively unsurprising at this point, then, that those in power — especially conservative politicians, who stand to gain the most — have fought hard to prevent any of these things from showing up in schools.
Because American society tends to, somewhat ironically, disavow discrimination in all its forms, it is very difficult (both from a psychological perspective and a logistical perspective) to directly promote discrimination in schools. But one doesn’t always need people to be actively or even passively discriminatory — they just need the masses to ignore it when it happens. If they can prevent people from being able to see the bigger picture, and stop them from visualizing the structures of systemic oppression in their entirety, then there will be a lot less backlash whenever a cop murders an unarmed black man. If somebody has been taught to avoid bigger questions and deeper thinking, then of course they’ll say that it was one bad apple, because for them the rest of the barrel might not even be a consideration. One of the largest ways that everyday people reinforce the structures of systemic discrimination is by not being able to acknowledge or confront their existence.
5.3 The Front Lines
Out of every example given in this paper for how the systems of power and oppression are maintained, education is the one where it is easiest to see it happening in plain view, because the silent conflict over how to run American schools has become extremely not silent as of recently as conservatives, slowly losing ground — in part due to the fact that, while fixing systemic discrimination isn’t very popular, improving education is — have been attempting to maintain their power in schools. And while it is working, as sweeping education laws are actively being enacted in conservative states, it is also extremely public. And with publicity comes clarity, as conservative think tank owners like Dennis Prager openly admit to indoctrinating children and ask “but what is the bad of our indoctrination?” (qtd. in Vazquez) and self-proclaimed education activist groups such as Moms for Liberty rail against American youth receiving social-emotional education and learning about black history (Gilreath). The majority of the time, this is not how systemic discrimination works — especially not in the modern day. So why is this different?
The answer is simple: times have changed. Education reform and, much more crucially, the explosion in popularity of social media and the internet over the past decade have made American youth significantly more self-aware and more well-informed than ever before. And as previously discussed, those things pose a significant threat to systemic discrimination as a whole. To quote columnist Paul Waldman,
“If you’re 50 years old, you might have gone through school never meeting someone who was openly gay, or who wasn’t Christian, or who didn’t think the Civil War was about state’s rights. But if your kids have an internet connection, they have all kinds of exposure to different people and different ideas. And the more conservative you are, the more likely it is that education will lead your kids toward experiences and beliefs that differ from yours — not because your kids are being victimized by propaganda, but just because of the nature of becoming educated.”
Members of the political establishment who have benefited from systemic discrimination are worried about losing their power or having their group lose power, and with good reason. As increasing amounts of information become more and more available to the general public, the obscurity which so often allows systemic oppression to flourish is starting to disappear, at least partially. So as this is happening, many of those with power move to rally their bases against it, while still others see an opportunity to embrace this change and hopefully preserve themselves with it. And while there’s certainly an argument that some politicians and business leaders are doing what they truly believe is right (on all sides), that is not mutually exclusive with using it to further their own ambitions. Slowly but surely, battle lines are being drawn — but instead of being fought with conventional weapons, this conflict has been, is being, and will continue to be fought with words and trying to win hearts and minds.
- Conclusion
The structures of systemic discrimination are ever-present in people’s daily lives. They are there when they go to school, when they go to work, and when they turn on their TVs at the end of the day. Some of them are aware of it, and some are not, but it is there. And beyond just existing, a major goal of this paper has been to show that it isn’t there by chance, or because of something hidden deep in human neurology, or because of some shadowy cabal. The structures of systemic discrimination are there because, realize it or not, many people want it to be there — whether because it’s comfortable, because it will give them some sort of benefit, because they want to feel powerful and in control, or simply because they don’t know that there’s anything better. It’s the basest human emotions; fearing change, seeking comfort, and wanting more that drive systemic discrimination and that help to maintain the very fabric of oppression that interlaces modern American society. So, with that being said — how would one go about breaking it down?
Discrimination is a vicious cycle, and as such it relies on itself to support itself. By marginalizing certain groups of people, and giving other members of their groups a stake in ensuring they stay marginalized, individuals with economic and political power can essentially force these minoritized peoples out of the mainstream. This makes it simultaneously difficult and simple to destroy. On the one hand, most of the damage done will be repaired as the system adjusts to cover up the gaps. But if the weakest link could be found, then the entire system might just be able to be dismantled. This paper has, throughout its course, proposed four of these links in an attempt to sufficiently generalize these structures for this purpose, as well as better understanding the structure as a whole; these being that individuals will intentionally and unintentionally reinforce systemic discrimination because it is uncomfortable to work against it, which would require admitting they have benefited, because they want the very real benefits that may come from discriminatory actions, because they wish to exert control over other people and minorities are often the ones below them on the social ladder, and because people simply don’t know any better and have been taught not to care.
The conclusion this paper draws is that the place where efforts to counteract systemic discrimination must be focused is in the education system, for a few reasons. A simple (but significant) one of these is that it is the closest to changing so far, and it is the most likely to be able to change. While it has historically been difficult to convince people of complex power structures and their significance, improving the education system in one way or another is widely popular across the political spectrum and the majority of people (Saad). Education is also the most crucial in maintaining the other links in the chain of systemic oppression — if people can be taught to embrace discomfort and change, then discrimination for the sake of avoiding those things becomes less of a problem. If people are no longer taught to be complacent within the system, then those in power who do not work towards everyone’s interests will begin to lose their support. Lastly, it is difficult if not impossible to significantly change people’s values, goals, and associations once they reach adulthood; only by establishing a robust democratic education system can the values of the American people truly start to shift.
Education is just one piece of the puzzle, one brick in a massive wall built to ensure the powerful keep their power at the expense of whoever it’s necessary to hurt. There are other pieces — some that are known, and almost certainly some that will not become evident for decades or centuries. It’s quite possible (probable, even) that simply solving educational problems will not magically cure the problem of systemic and societal disenfranchisement and minoritization, a system as old as written history itself and likely as firmly entrenched. But to once again quote King, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice” (“Awake Through a Revolution”). For this portion of that arc, the focus of advocates for justice must be on education, to make the foundation of this wall even weaker than it was before.
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