Land grab

Once the conquest of Algiers was accomplished, soldier-politician Bertrand Clauzel and others formed a company to acquire agricultural land and, despite official discouragement, to subsidise its settlement by European farmers, which triggered a land rush. He became governor general in 1835 and used his office to make private investments in land by encouraging bureaucrats and army officers in his administration to do the same. The development created a vested interest in government officials for greater French involvement in Algeria. Merchants with influence in the government also saw profit in land speculation, which resulted in expanding the French occupation. Large agricultural tracts were carved out, and factories and businesses began exploiting cheap local labour and also benefited from laws and edicts that gave control to the French. The policy of limited occupation was formally abandoned in 1840 and replaced by one of complete control. By 1843, Tocqueville intended to protect and extend expropriation by the rule of law and so advocated setting up special courts, which were based on what he called "summary" procedure, to carry out a massive expropriation for the benefit of French and other European settlers. French and other European settlers could thus purchase land at attractive prices and live in villages, which the colonial government had equipped with fortifications, churches, schools and even fountains. Tocqueville's belief, which framed his writings and influenced state actions, was that the local people, who had been driven out by the army and robbed of their land by the judges, would gradually die out.^[24]

The French colonial state, as he conceived it and as it took shape in Algeria, was a two-tiered organization, quite unlike the regime in Mainland France. It introduced two different political and legal systems that were based on racial, cultural and religious distinctions. According to Tocqueville, the system that should apply to the Colons would enable them alone to hold property and travel freely but would deprive them of any form of political freedom, which should be suspended in Algeria. "There should therefore be two quite distinct legislations in Africa, for there are two very separate communities. There is absolutely nothing to prevent us treating Europeans as if they were on their own, as the rules established for them will only ever apply to them".^[25]

Following the defeats of the resistance in the 1840s, colonisation continued apace. By 1848, Algeria was populated by 109,400 Europeans, only 42,274 of whom were French.^[26] The leader of the Colons delegation, Auguste Warnier (1810–1875), succeeded in the 1870s in modifying or introducing legislation to facilitate the private transfer of land to settlers and continue Algeria's appropriation of land from the local population and distribution to settlers. Europeans held about 30% of the total arable land, including the bulk of the most fertile land and most of the areas under irrigation.^[27] In 1881, the Code de l'Indigénat made the discrimination official by creating specific penalties for indigenes and by organising the seizure or appropriation of their lands.^[28] By 1900, Europeans produced more than two-thirds of the value of output in agriculture and practically all of the agricultural exports. The colonial government imposed more and higher taxes on Muslims than on Europeans.^[29] The Muslims, in addition to paying traditional taxes dating from before the French conquest, also paid new taxes from which the Colons were normally exempted. In 1909, for instance, Muslims, who made up almost 90% of the population but produced 20% of Algeria's income, paid 70% of direct taxes and 45% of the total taxes collected. Also, Colons controlled how the revenues would be spent and so their towns had handsome municipal buildings, paved streets lined with trees, fountains and statues, but Algerian villages and rural areas benefited little, if at all, from tax revenues.^[30]

In education

The colonial regime proved severely detrimental to overall education for Muslims, who had previously relied on religious schools to learn reading, writing and religion. In 1843, the state appropriated the habus lands, the religious foundations that constituted the main source of income for religious institutions, including schools, but colonial officials refused to allocate enough money to maintain schools and mosques properly and to provide for enough teachers and religious leaders for the growing population. In 1892, more than five times as much was spent for the education of Europeans as for Muslims, who had five times as many children of school age. Because few Muslim teachers were trained, Muslim schools were largely staffed by French teachers. Even a state-operated madrasa often had French faculty members. Attempts to institute bilingual and bicultural schools, intended to bring Muslim and European children together in the classroom, were a conspicuous failure, and were rejected by both communities and phased out after 1870. According to one estimate, fewer than 5% of Algerian children attended any kind of school in 1870. As late as 1954, only one Muslim boy in five and one girl in sixteen received formal schooling.^[31] Efforts were begun by 1890 to educate a small number of Muslims along with European students in the French school system as part of France's "civilising mission" in Algeria. The curriculum was entirely French and allowed no place for Arabic studies, which were deliberately downgraded even in Muslim schools. Within a generation, a class of well-educated, gallicized Muslims, the évolués (literally "evolved ones"), had been created.

Enfranchisement

Following its conquest of Ottoman Algeria in 1830, France maintained for well over a century its colonial rule in the territory that has been described as "quasi-apartheid".^[32] The colonial law of 1865 allowed Arab and Berber Algerians to apply for French citizenship only if they abandoned their Muslim identity; Azzedine Haddour argues that it established "the formal structures of a political apartheid".^[33] Camille Bonora-Waisman writes, "In contrast with the Moroccan and Tunisian protectorates", the "colonial apartheid society" was unique to Algeria.^[34]

Under the French Fourth Republic, Muslim Algerians were accorded the rights of citizenship, but the system of discrimination was maintained in more informal ways. Frederick Cooper writes that Muslim Algerians "were still marginalized in their own territory, notably the separate voter roles of 'French' civil status and of 'Muslim' civil status, to keep their hands on power."^[34] The "internal system of apartheid" was met with considerable resistance by the Algerian Muslims affected by it, and it is cited as one of the causes of the 1954 insurrection.

There was clearly nothing exceptional about the crimes committed by the French army and state in Algeria from 1955 to 1962. On the contrary, they were part of history repeating itself.^[35]

State racism

Following the views of Michel Foucault, the French historian Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison spoke of a "state racism" under the French Third Republic, a notable example being that the 1881 Indigenous Code applied in Algeria. Replying to the question "Isn't it excessive to talk about a state racism under the Third Republic?", he replied:

"No, if we can recognize 'state racism' as the vote and implementation of discriminatory measures, grounded on a combination of racial, religious and cultural criteria, in those territories. The 1881 Indigenous Code is a monument of this genre! Considered by contemporary prestigious jurists as a 'juridical monstruosity', this code^[36] planned special offenses and penalties for 'Arabs'. It was then extended to other territories of the empire. On one hand, a state of rule of law for a minority of French and Europeans located in the colonies. On the other hand, a permanent state of exception for the "indigenous" people. This situation lasted until 1945".^[37]

During a reform effort in 1947, the French created a bicameral legislature with one house for French citizens and another for Muslims, but it made a European's vote worth seven times a Muslim's vote.^[38] Even the events of 1961 show that France had not changed its treatment of the Algerians over the years, as the police took up the institutional racism that the French state had made law in its treatment of Arabs who, as Frenchmen, had moved to Mainland France.^[39]

Land rights, stolen generations, and terra nullius

Torres Strait Islander people are indigenous to the Torres Strait Islands, which are in the Torres Strait between the northernmost tip of Queensland and Papua New Guinea. Institutional racism had its early roots here due to interactions between these islanders, who had Melanesian origins and depended on the sea for sustenance and whose land rights were abrogated, and later the Australian Aboriginal peoples, whose children were removed from their families by Australian federal and state government agencies and church missions, under acts of their respective parliaments.^[42] The removals occurred in the period between approximately 1909 and 1969, resulting in what later became known as the Stolen Generations. An example of the abandonment of mixed-race ("half-caste") children in the 1920s is given in a report by Walter Baldwin Spencer that many mixed-descent children born during construction of The Ghan railway were abandoned at early ages with no one to provide for them. This incident and others spurred the need for state action to provide for and protect such children.^[43] Both were official policy and were coded into law by various acts. They have both been rescinded and restitution for past wrongs addressed at the highest levels of government.

The treatment of the First Nations Australians by the colonisers has been termed cultural genocide.^[44] The earliest introduction of child removal to legislation is recorded in the Victorian Aboriginal Protection Act 1869.^[45] The Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines had been advocating such powers since 1860, and the passage of the Act gave the colony of Victoria a wide suite of powers over Aboriginal and "half-caste" persons, including the forcible removal of children,^[46] especially "at risk" girls.^[47] By 1950, similar policies and legislation had been adopted by other states and territories, such as the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 (Qld),^[48] the Aborigines Ordinance 1918 (NT),^[49] the Aborigines Act 1934 (SA)^[50] and the 1936 Native Administration Act (WA).

The child-removal legislation resulted in widespread removal of children from their parents and exercise of sundry guardianship powers by Protectors of Aborigines up to the age of 16 or 21. Policemen or other agents of the state were given the power to locate and transfer babies and children of mixed descent from their mothers or families or communities into institutions.^[51] In these Australian states and territories, half-caste institutions (both government Aboriginal reserves and church-run mission stations) were established in the early decades of the 20th century for the reception of these separated children. Examples of such institutions include Moore River Native Settlement in Western Australia, Doomadgee Aboriginal Mission in Queensland, Ebenezer Mission in Victoria and Wellington Valley Mission in New South Wales.

In 1911, the Chief Protector of Aborigines in South Australia, William Garnet South, reportedly "lobbied for the power to remove Aboriginal children without a court hearing because the courts sometimes refused to accept that the children were neglected or destitute". South argued that "all children of mixed descent should be treated as neglected". His lobbying reportedly played a part in the enactment of the Aborigines Act 1911; this made him the legal guardian of every Aboriginal child in South Australia, including so-called "half-castes". Bringing Them Home,^[52] a report on the status of the mixed race stated "... the physical infrastructure of missions, government institutions and children's homes was often very poor and resources were insufficient to improve them or to keep the children adequately clothed, fed, and sheltered".

In reality, during this period, removal of the mixed-race children was related to the fact that most were offspring of domestic servants working on pastoral farms,^[53] and their removal allowed the mothers to continue working as help on the farm while at the same time removing the whites from responsibility for fathering them and from social stigma for having mixed-race children visible in the home.^[54] Also, when they were left alone on the farm they became targets of the men who contributed to the rise in the population of mixed-race children.^[55] The institutional racism was government policy gone awry, one that allowed babies to be taken from their mothers at birth, and this continued for most of the 20th century. That it was policy and kept secret for over 60 years is a mystery that no agency has solved to date.^[56]

In the 1930s, the Northern Territory Protector of Natives, Cecil Cook, perceived the continuing rise in numbers of "half-caste" children as a problem. His proposed solution was: "Generally by the fifth and invariably by the sixth generation, all native characteristics of the Australian Aborigine are eradicated. The problem of our half-castes will quickly be eliminated by the complete disappearance of the black race, and the swift submergence of their progeny in the white". He did suggest at one point that they be all sterilised.^[57]

Similarly, the Chief Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia, A. O. Neville, wrote in an article for The West Australian in 1930: "Eliminate in future the full-blood and the white and one common blend will remain. Eliminate the full-blood and permit the white admixture and eventually, the race will become white".^[58]

Official policy then concentrated on removing all black people from the population,^[59] to the extent that the full-blooded Aboriginal people were hunted to extinguish them from society,^[60] and those of mixed race would be assimilated with the white race so that in a few generations they too would become white.^[61]

By 1900, the recorded First Nations Australian population had declined to approximately 93,000.

Western Australia and Queensland specifically excluded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from the electoral rolls. The Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 excluded "Aboriginal natives of Australia, Asia, Africa and Pacific Islands except for New Zealand" from voting unless they were on the roll before 1901.^[62]

Land rights returned

In 1981, a land rights conference was held at James Cook University, where Eddie Mabo,^[63] a Torres Strait Islander, made a speech to the audience in which he explained the land inheritance system on Murray Island.^[64] The significance of this in terms of Australian common law doctrine was taken note of by one of the attendees, a lawyer, who suggested there should be a test case to claim land rights through the court system.^[65] Ten years later, five months after Eddie Mabo died, on 3 June 1992, the High Court announced its historic decision, namely overturning the legal doctrine of terra nullius, which was the term applied by the British relating to the continent of Australia – "empty land".^[66]

Public interest in the Mabo case had the side effect of throwing the media spotlight on all issues related to Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia, and most notably the Stolen Generations. The social impacts of forced removal have been measured and found to be quite severe. Although the stated aim of the "resocialisation" program was to improve the integration of Aboriginal people into modern society, a study conducted in Melbourne and cited in the official report found that there was no tangible improvement in the social position of "removed" Aboriginal people as compared to "non-removed", particularly in the areas of employment and post-secondary education.^[67]

Most notably, the study indicated that removed Aboriginal people were actually less likely to have completed a secondary education, three times as likely to have acquired a police record and were twice as likely to use illicit drugs.^[68] The only notable advantage "removed" Aboriginal people possessed was a higher average income, which the report noted was most likely due to the increased urbanisation of removed individuals, and hence greater access to welfare payments than for Aboriginal people living in remote communities.^[69]

First Nations health and employment

In his 2008 address to the houses of parliament apologising for the treatment of the First Nations population, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a plea to the health services regarding the disparate treatment in health services. He noted the widening gap between the treatment of First Nations and non-Indigenous Australians, and committed the government to a strategy called "Closing the Gap", admitting to past institutional racism in health services that shortened the life expectancy of the Aboriginal people. Committees that followed up on this outlined broad categories to redress the inequities in life expectancy, educational opportunities and employment.^[70] The Australian government also allocated funding to redress the past discrimination. First Nations Australians visit their general practitioners (GPs) and are hospitalised for diabetes, circulatory disease, musculoskeletal conditions, respiratory and kidney disease, mental, ear and eye problems and behavioural problems yet are less likely than non-Indigenous Australians to visit the GP, use a private doctor, or apply for residence in an old age facility. Childhood mortality rates, the gap in educational achievement and lack of employment opportunities were made goals that in a generation should halve the gap. A national "Close the Gap" day was announced for March of each year by the Human Rights Commission.^[71]

In 2011, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reported that life expectancy had increased since 2008 by 11.5 years for women and 9.7 years for men along with a significant decrease in infant mortality, but it was still 2.5 times higher than for the non-indigenous population. Much of the health woes of the First Nations Australians could be traced to the availability of transport. In remote communities, the report cited 71% of the population in those remote Fist Nations communities lacked access to public transport, and 78% of the communities were more than 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the nearest hospital. Although English was the official language of Australia, many First Nations Australians did not speak it as a primary language, and the lack of printed materials that were translated into the Australian Aboriginal languages and the non-availability of translators formed a barrier to adequate health care for Aboriginal people. By 2015, most of the funding promised to achieve the goals of "Closing the Gap" had been cut, and the national group^[72] monitoring the conditions of the First Nations population was not optimistic that the promises of 2008 will be kept.^[73] In 2012, the group complained that institutional racism and overt discrimination continued to be issues, and that, in some sectors of government, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was being treated as an aspirational rather that a binding document.^[74]

Indigenous Canadians

The living standard of indigenous peoples in Canada falls far short of those of the non-indigenous, and they, along with other 'visible minorities' remain, as a group, the poorest in Canada.^[16][75] There continue to be barriers to gaining equality with other Canadians of European ancestry. The life expectancy of First Nations people is lower; they have fewer high school graduates, much higher unemployment rates, nearly double the number of infant deaths and significantly greater contact with law enforcement. Their incomes are lower, they enjoy fewer promotions in the workplace and as a group, the younger members are more likely to work reduced hours or weeks each year.^[75]

Many in Europe during the 19th century (as reflected in the Imperial Report of the Select Committee on Aborigines),^[76] supported the goal put forth by colonial imperialists of 'civilizing' the Native populations. This led to an emphasis on the acquisition of Aboriginal lands in exchange for the putative benefits of European society and their associated Christian religions. British control of Canada (the Crown) began when they exercised jurisdiction over the first nations and it was by Royal Proclamation that the first piece of legislation the British government passed over First Nations citizens assumed control of their lives. It gave recognition to the Indians tribes as First Nations living under Crown protection.

It was after the treaty of Paris in 1763, whereby France ceded all claims in present-day Canada to Britain, that King George III of Great Britain issued a Royal Proclamation specifying how the Indigenous in the crown colony were to be treated. It is the most significant pieces of legislation regarding the Crown's relationship with Aboriginal people. This Royal Proclamation recognized Indian owned lands and reserved to them all use as their hunting grounds. It also established the process by which the Crown could purchase their lands, and also laid out basic principles to guide the Crown when making treaties with the First Nations. The Proclamation made Indian lands transferred by treaty to be Crown property, and stated that indigenous title is a collective or communal rather than a private right so that individuals have no claim to lands where they lived and hunted long prior to European colonization.^[77]

Métis

Main article: Métis people (Canada)

Unlike the effect of those Indian treaties in the North-West, which established the reserves for the Indigenous, the protection of Métis lands was not secured by the scrip policy instituted in the 1870s,^[85] whereby the crown exchanged a scrip^[86] in exchange for a fixed (160–240 acres)^[87] grant of land to those of mixed heritage.^[88]

Minnesota Historical Society Location No. HD2.3 r7 Negative No. 10222 "Mixed blood (Indian and French) fur trader" ca. 1870

Although Section 3 of the 1883 Dominion Lands Act set out this limitation, this was the first mention in the orders-in-council confining the jurisdiction of scrip commissions to ceded Indian territory. However, a reference was first made in 1886 in a draft letter of instructions to Goulet from Burgess. In most cases, the scrip policy did not consider Métis ways of life, did not guarantee their land rights, and did not facilitate any economic or lifestyle transition.^[89]

Metis land scrip

Metis scrip issued to "half-breeds", 1894

Most Métis were illiterate and did not know the value of the scrip, and in most cases sold them for instant gratification due to economic need to speculators who undervalued the paper. Needless to say, the process by which they applied for their land was made deliberately arduous.^[90]

There was no legislation binding scrip land to the Métis who applied for them, Instead, Métis scrip lands could be sold to anyone, hence alienating any Aboriginal title that may have been vested in those lands. Despite the evident detriment to the Métis, speculation was rampant and done in collusion with the distribution of scrip. While this does not necessarily preclude a malicious intent by the federal government to consciously 'cheat' the Métis, it illustrates their apathy towards the welfare of the Métis, their long-term interests, and the recognition of their Aboriginal title. But the point of the policy was to settle land in the North-West with agriculturalists, not keep a land reserve for the Métis. Scrip, then, was a major undertaking in Canadian history, and its importance as both an Aboriginal policy and a land policy should not be overlooked as it was an institutional 'policy' that discriminated against ethnic indigenous to their continued detriment.^[91]

Contemporary situation

Main article: Analysis of Western European colonialism and colonization

The overt institutional racism of the past has clearly had a profoundly devastating and lasting effect on visible minorities and Aboriginal communities throughout Canada.^[109] European cultural norms have imposed themselves on Native populations in Canada, and Aboriginal communities continue to struggle with foreign systems of governance, justice, education, and livelihood. Visible Minorities struggle with education, employment and negative contact with the legal system across Canada.^[110]

Perhaps most palpable is the dysfunction and familial devastation caused by residential schools. Hutchins states;^[103] "Many of those who attended residential schools have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, suffering from such symptoms as panic attacks, insomnia, and uncontrollable or unexplainable anger.^[111] Many also suffer from alcohol or drug abuse, sexual inadequacy or addiction, the inability to form intimate relationships, and eating disorders. Three generations of Native parents lost out on learning important parenting skills usually passed on from parent to child in caring and nurturing home environments,^[112] and the abuse suffered by students of residential schools has begun a distressing cycle of abuse within many Native communities." The lasting legacy of residential schools is but only one facet of the problem.^[113]

The Hutchins report continues: "Aboriginal children continue to struggle with mainstream education in Canada. For some Indian students, English remains a second language, and many lack parents with sufficient education themselves to support them. Moreover, schooling in Canada is based on an English written tradition, which is different from the oral traditions of the Native communities.^[114] For others, it is simply that they are ostracised for their 'otherness'; their manners, their attitudes, their speech, or a hundred other things which mark them out as different. "Aboriginal populations continue to suffer from poor health. They have seven years less life expectancy than the overall Canadian population and almost twice as many infant deaths. While Canada as a nation routinely ranks in the top three on the United Nations Human Development Index,^[115] its on-reserve Aboriginal population, if scored as a nation, would rank a distant and shocking sixty-third."

As Perry Bellegarde National Chief, Assembly of First Nations, points out, racism in Canada today is, for the most part, a covert operation.^[116] Its central and most distinguishing tenet is the vigour with which it is consistently denied.^[117] There are many who argue that Canada's endeavors in the field of human rights and its stance against racism have only resulted in a "more politically correct population who have learnt to better conceal their prejudices".^[118] In effect, the argument is that racism in Canada is not being eliminated, but rather is becoming more covert, more rational, and perhaps more deeply imbedded in our institutions.

That racism is alive is evidenced by the recent referendum in British Columbia by which the provincial government is asking the white majority to decide on a mandate for negotiating treaties with the Indian minority.^[119] The results of the referendum will be binding,^[120] the government having legislatively committed itself to act on these principles if more than 50% of those voting reply in the same way. Moreover, although it has been revised many times, "the Indian Act remains legislation which singles out a segment of society based on race". Under it, the civil rights of First Nations peoples are "dealt with in a different manner than the civil rights of the rest of Canadian citizens".^[103]

Joyce Echaquan, on the lake shore, 1999

The Aboriginal Justice Inquiry in Manitoba,^[121] the Donald Marshall Inquiry in Nova Scotia,^[122] the Cawsey Report in Alberta^[123] and the Royal Commission of Aboriginal People all agree,^[124] as far as Aboriginal people are concerned, racism in Canadian society continues institutionally, systematically, and individually.

In 2020, after the death of Joyce Echaquan, the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, recognized a case of systemic racism.

In 2022, Pope Francis visited Canada for a week-long tour called a “pilgrimage of penance.”^[125] Vatican officials called the trip a “penitential pilgrimage”. The Pope was welcomed in Edmonton, where he apologized for Indigenous abuse which took place in the 20th century at Catholic-run residential schools, which have since closed.^[126] During his stay, he met with Indigenous groups to address the scandal of the residential schools.^[127] “I am sorry,” The Pope said, and asked forgiveness for the church and church members in “projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation” and the systematic abuse and erasure of indigenous culture in the country’s residential schools.^[128]

Anti-Chinese immigration laws

The Canadian government passed the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885, levying a $50 head tax upon all Chinese people immigrating to Canada. When the 1885 act failed to deter Chinese immigration, the Canadian government then passed the Chinese Immigration Act, 1900, increasing the head tax to $100, and, upon that act failing, passed the Chinese Immigration Act, 1904, increasing the head tax (landing fee) to $500, equivalent to $8,000 in 2003^[129] – when compared to the head tax – Right of Landing Fee and Right of Permanent Residence Fee – of $975 per person, paid by new immigrants in 1995–2005 decade, which then was reduced to $490 in 2006.^[130]

The Chinese Immigration Act, 1923, better known as the "Chinese Exclusion Act", replaced prohibitive fees with a ban on ethnic Chinese immigrating to Canada – excepting merchants, diplomats, students, and "special circumstance" cases. The Chinese who entered Canada before 1923 had to register with the local authorities and could leave Canada only for two years or less. Since the Exclusion Act went into effect on 1 July 1923, Chinese-Canadians referred to Canada Day (Dominion Day) as "Humiliation Day",^[131] refusing to celebrate it until the Act's repeal in 1947.^[132]

Black Canadians

Ku Klux Klan members, on foot and horseback, by a cross erected in a field near Kingston, Ontario, in 1927

There are records of slavery in some areas of British North America, which later became Canada, dating from the 17th century. The majority of these slaves were Aboriginal,^[133] and United Empire Loyalists brought slaves with them after leaving the United States.

Local ethnic minorities

Anti-African sentiment

Racism against African people or people perceived to be of African descent has long been documented in China.

Published in 1963, African student Emmanuel Hevi's An African Student in China details "the arrests of Chinese girls for their friendships with Africans, and particularly, Chinese feelings of racial superiority over black Africans."^[159] One notable instance was the Nanjing anti-African protests of 1988, in which African university students were the subject of racist beatings and other attacks. In some cases, Chinese university students shouted racist slogans such as "'Down with the black devils!' and 'Blood for blood!'"^[160] Despite these obvious instances of racism against Africans, the Chinese state media portrayed the attacks as being instigated by the African students.

In modern China, racism remains an issue in certain universities, such as the state-funded Zhejiang Normal University. A black graduate student described how "African students would hear Professors and classmates make xenophobic comments, such as 'Africans are draining our scholarship funds'" and how African students, despite having higher grades, were receiving lower level scholarship funds through the ZJNU's three-tiered scholarship system than their classmates.^[161]

One study noted how Africans were being portrayed as "waste" and "triple illegals" through racial profiling by police in Guangzhou.^[162] In 2007, African nationals were targeted in Beijing's Sanlitun district by police during an anti-drug raid. They were the victims of police brutality and targeted on the basis of their skin color, something which the police later denied.^[163]

State media reports from 2008 referred to Africans in a racist manner, as Cheng explains: "...[the] language often remained demeaning regarding Africans as much less civilized people. Chinese words such as 部落 (buluo, "tribes") or 聚居地/ 群居/群落 (jujudi/qunju/qunluo, habitats), instead of 社区 (shequ, community) were often used to refer to Africans."^[164]

Yinghong Cheng asserts in a 2011 journal article that "Cyber racism against Africans is certainly not the only racial thinking but it is perhaps the most explicit and blatant one."^[164] He details the ubiquity of "manifestations of racial stereotypes, hierarchy perception and insensitivity", in addition to how "systematic discourse of race has developed in much more articulate, sophisticated and explicit ways in education and pop culture to accommodate contemporary Chinese nationalism."^[164] The adoption of a more state capitalist form of government in the PRC has led to the widespread internet popularity of commercialized Chinese singers and songwriters, some of whose material is racial in subject matter. As Cheng notes: "'The Yellow Race' (Huangzhongren 黄种人) and 'Yellow' (Huang 黄), [were] created in 2006 and 2007 respectively and dedicated to China's hosting of the Olympics. The racist language in these songs, such as 'the Yellow Race is now marching on the world,' combined with nationalist claims such as 'After 5,000 years, finally it is the time for us to show up on the stage,' coloured Xie's popularity among his young Chinese fans."^[164]

An anti-Japanese sign at the Guangzhou Higher Education Mega Center in 2007.

In 2018, CCTV New Year's Gala, a state media television programme which has in the past been viewed by up to 800 million people included a racist neocolonial skit featuring a Chinese actress who wore blackface makeup. The skit "praises Chinese-African cooperation, showing how much Africans benefit from Chinese investment and how grateful they are to Beijing."^[165] Later the same year, the Daily Monitor reported that citizens of Uganda and Nigeria were discriminated against in Guangzhou by the Chinese government, through incidents such as taxis being halted and passports from African countries being confiscated, as well as hotels and restaurants being ordered to erect notices banning service to Africans.^[166] In addition, some African-owned stores were forcibly shut down.^[166]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple instances of systemic racism against African people were documented, including misinformation and racist stereotyping which portrayed Africans as carriers of the virus. According to The Guardian, Africans were "refused entry by hospitals, hotels, supermarkets, shops and food outlets. At one hospital, even a pregnant woman was denied access. In a McDonald's restaurant, a notice was put up saying 'black people cannot come in.'"^[167] The local government in Guangzhou implemented mass surveillance, compulsory testing, and enforced a 14-day quarantine for all African nationals, regardless of whether they had traveled outside of China in the past two weeks.^[167]

Anti-Japanese sentiment

Anti-Japanese sentiment exists as a modern issue in China, largely due to historical grievances. There have been reports of restaurants and public institutions refusing service or entry to Japanese people, which stems especially due to the Second Sino-Japanese War which had included Japanese war crimes such as the Nanjing massacre and Unit 731.^[168][169]

In recent years, there has been joint communiqués between the leaders of these two countries to try and mend as well as improve relations with each other.^[170][171]

Malay supremacy

However, due to the concept of Ketuanan Melayu (lit. Malay supremacy), a citizen that is not considered to be of Bumiputera status face many roadblocks and discrimination in matters such as economic freedom, education, healthcare and housing.^[173] Opposition groups, government critics and human rights observers has labeled the Malaysian situation as being highly similar to apartheid policies due to their status as de facto second-class citizens.^[174] Such policies has also led to a significant brain drain from the country.^[175]

In 1970, the Malaysian New Economic Policy a program of affirmative action aimed at increasing the share of the economy held by the Malay population, introduced quotas for Malays in areas such as public education, access to housing, vehicle imports, government contracts and share ownership. Initially meant as a measure to curb the poor economic participation of the Malays, aimed to reduce the number of hardcore poor Malays, it is now perceived by most conservative Malays as a form of entitlement or 'birthright'.^[176] In post-modern Malaysia, this entitlement in political, legislative, monarchy, religious, education, social, and economic areas has led to lower productivity and lower competitiveness among the Malays.^[177]

As for the elite Malays, this 'privilege' has been abused to the point where the poor Malays remain poor, while the rich Malays becomes richer; which is the result of Malay cronyism, non-competitive and non-transparent government project tender processes favouring Bumiputera candidates – causing deeper intra-ethnic inequality.^[178] However, the actual indigenous people or better known as Orang Asli remain marginalised and have their rights ignored by the Malaysian government.^[179] Since Article 160 defines a Malay as "professing the religion of Islam", those eligible to benefit from laws assisting bumiputra are, in theory, subject to religious law enforced by the parallel Syariah Court system.

While 179 countries around the world have ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), Malaysia is not one of them. The Pakatan Harapan (PH) government that replaced Barisan Nasional (BN) from 2018 to 2020 had indicated a readiness to ratify ICERD, but has yet to do so due to the convention's conflict with the Malaysian constitution and the race and religious norms in Malaysia established since its independence.^[180] Furthermore, a mass rally was held in 2018 by Malay supremacists at the country's capital to prevent such ratification, threatening racial conflicts if they do so.^[181] The PH government would eventually lose power amid the 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis to BN.^[182]

Indigeneity

Nigeria contains over 250 ethnic groups, but the country is politically dominated by three major ethnic groups – the Hausa-Fulani of the north, the Igbo of the southeast, and the Yoruba of the southwest. National politics in Nigeria have largely revolved around competition between the three dominant ethnic groups, with the minority ethnic groups having less political representation.^[183]

The Nigerian constitution promises equality among all ethnic groups, but in actuality, the concept of "indigeneity" is widespread across local and state governments (and to a lesser extent, the federal government), which has been criticized by Human Rights Watch as a form of discrimination and a violation of international human rights law.^[184] Citizens are recognized as "indigenes" of a particular locality if they belong to an ethnic group that is considered to be indigenous to that locality.^[185] Citizens from other ethnic groups, regardless of how long they or their families have been living in a locality, are legally recognized as non-indigenes and they face discrimination from government laws that limit their socioeconomic mobility.^[185]

Public universities in Nigeria favour indigenes during the admissions process, and non-indigenes are subject to discriminatory admissions policies that attempt to limit the number of non-indigene students.^[185] Non-indigene students are required to pay higher tuition and they are denied academic scholarships.^[185] Non-indigenes are often unable to participate in local politics and they are also excluded from government jobs.^[185] In some cases, non-indigenes have faced mass purges from government jobs in order to create more jobs for indigenes.^[184]

Human Rights Watch has claimed the indigeneity policies relegate "millions of Nigerians to the status of second-class citizens".^[184] Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo compared indigeneity policies to apartheid.^[186]

Niger Delta ethnic minorities

Nigeria is an oil-rich country where much of its oil resources can be found in the Niger Delta region, which is inhabited by ethnic minorities such as the Ogoni and Ijaw. The native inhabitants of the Niger Delta do not receive much of the wealth generated by Nigeria's vast oil industry, and it is, paradoxically, one of Nigeria's poorest regions.^[187] Oil wealth has been used to develop other parts of Nigeria while the Niger Delta region itself remains underdeveloped.^[188] The Niger Delta is constantly polluted and destroyed by the activities of both the Nigerian government and oil companies such as Shell Nigeria and Chevron Nigeria.^[189] Struggle for oil wealth has fueled violence in the Niger Delta, causing the militarization of nearly the entire region by ethnic militia groups and Nigerian military and police forces.^[190]

The Ijaw and Ogoni people have been subject to human rights violations in the form of environmental destruction and pollution.^[191] A 1979 amendment to the Nigerian constitution gave the federal government the authority to seize and distribute Ogoni territory to oil companies without any compensation.^[192] In 1990, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People was founded by Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wiwa to seek self-determination for the Ogoni people, compensation for environmental destruction, and payment of royalties from oil production.^[193] In 1995, he was arrested and executed, along with nine other Ogoni activists, by the regime of the Nigerian military dictator Sani Abacha, which was internationally condemned as a violation of human rights.

While the Nigerian government has become more democratic ever since the death of Sani Abacha, the ethnic groups in the Niger Delta still lack representation and remain excluded from the mainstream of Nigerian politics, economy and society. Government security forces in the Delta region regularly engage in torture, killings and confiscation of property as a result of the Conflict in the Niger Delta.^[194] The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization condemned the Nigerian government for its discrimination against the Ogoni people and failure to clean environmental pollution from the Niger Delta region.^[195]

Osu

The Igbo people traditionally maintain a system of discrimination from the Odinani religion that discriminates against a class of people known as Osu (Igbo: outcast).^[196] Osu are regarded to be spiritually inferior beings, and they are distinguished from Nwadiala or diala (Igbo: real born). They are ostracized from wider society and Igbo are discouraged from marrying them. They were historically either sold into slavery or were delivered to be enslaved to certain deities who were believed to ask for human sacrifice during festivals in order to clean the land from abomination, thus leading to the purchase of a slave by the people.

The status of Osu is permanent and inherited at birth.^[197] Despite influence from colonialism and Christianity, discrimination against Osu still persists in the modern day.^[198] In modern times, Osu are often barred from marriage, traditional leadership positions, and running from political office.^[197]

According to some human rights groups who are calling for its abolishment, some of the punishments meted out against the Osu include: parents administering poison to their children, disinheritance, ostracism, denial of membership in social clubs, violent disruption of marriage ceremonies, denial of chieftaincy titles, deprivation of property and expulsion of wives.^[199]

In the Metropolitan Police Service

In the United Kingdom, the inquiry about the murder of the black Briton Stephen Lawrence concluded that the investigating police force was institutionally racist. Sir William Macpherson used the term as a description of "the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin", which "can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes, and behaviour, which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping, which disadvantages minority ethnic people".^[203] Sir William's definition is almost identical to Stokely Carmichael's original definition some forty years earlier. Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton were Black Power activists and first used the term 'institutional racism' in 1967 to describe the consequences of a societal structure that was stratified into a racial hierarchy that resulted in layers of discrimination and inequality for minority ethnic people in housing, income, employment, education and health (Garner 2004:22).^[204]

The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report, and the public's response to it, were among the major factors that forced the Metropolitan Police to address its treatment of ethnic minorities. More recently, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair said that the British news media are institutionally racist,^[205] a comment that offended journalists, provoking angry responses from the media, despite the National Black Police Association welcoming Blair's assessment.^[206]

The report also found that the Metropolitan Police was institutionally racist. A total of 70 recommendations for reform were made. These proposals included abolishing the double jeopardy rule and criminalising racist statements made in private. Macpherson also called for reform in the British Civil Service, local governments, the National Health Service, schools, and the judicial system, to address issues of institutional racism.^[207]

In June 2015, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, said there was some justification in claims that the Metropolitan Police Service is institutionally racist.^[208]

In March 2023, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley said that while he accepted the diagnosis of Louise Casey, Baroness Casey of Blackstock's review, he would not use the term institutional racism, saying that it was ambiguous and politicised.^[209]

In criminal convictions

In the English and Welsh prison system, government data that was compiled in 2020 showed that youths of color are disproportionally subject to punishment that the UN regards as violating the Mandela Rules on the treatment of prisoners. The COVID-19 pandemic had caused some minors being held in pre-trial detention to be placed in solitary confinement indefinitely.^[210][211] Minorities under 18 comprised 50% of the youth inmates held and 27% of the overall prison population. Ethnic minorities made up 14% of the overall population.

In healthcare

Institutional racism exists in various aspects of healthcare, from maternity to psychiatric. Black women are four times more likely to die in pregnancy, labour and up to a year postpartum than whites.^[212]

Asian women are twice as likely as whites to die in pregnancy. Black women are twice as likely to have a stillborn baby than whites.^[213]

According to the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism, scholars have drawn on a 1979 work by social psychologist Michael Billig – "Psychology, Racism, and Fascism" – that identified links between the Institute of Psychiatry and racist/eugenic theories, notably in regard to race and intelligence, as for example promoted by IOP psychologist Hans Eysenck and in a highly publicised talk in August 1970 at the IOP by American psychologist Arthur Jensen. Billig concluded that "racialist presuppositions" intruded into research at the Institute both unintentionally and intentionally.^[214] In 2007, the BBC reported that a "race row" had broken out in the wake of an official inquiry that identified institutional racism in British psychiatry, with psychiatrists, including from the IOP/Maudsley, arguing against the claim,^[215] while the heads of the Mental Health Act Commission accused them of misunderstanding the concept of institutional racism and dismissing the legitimate concerns of the black community in Britain.^[216] Campaigns by voluntary groups seek to address the higher rates of sectioning, overmedication, misdiagnosis and forcible restraint on members of minority groups.^[217] According to 2014 statistics, black adults had the lowest treatment rate of any ethnic group, at 5.2%. The treatment rate for whites is 17.3%.^[218] Figures from March 2019 show that black people were more than four times as likely as white people to be detained under the Mental Health Act in the previous year.^[219]

Black men were 4.2 times more likely, and black women were 4.3 times more likely, to die from COVID-19 than whites during the initial wave of the pandemic.^[220]

In education

In a 2009 report by the Department for Innovations and Business Skills, it was found that black students were the most likely to receive under-predicted grades by their teachers. It was found that 8.1% of black students received higher actual grades compared to 4.6% of white students, 6.5% of Asian students and 6.1% of mixed-race students.^[221]

Critics contend that part of the institutional racism in education in the UK is in the curriculum. Arguments for and against decolonizing the curriculum are outlined on the BBC's Moral Maze podcast.^[222]

In employment

The equality and human rights commission reported that black workers with degrees earned 27.1% less income on average than whites.^[223] This gives some light for the reasons behind the stark inequalities that black people and to a lesser extent, other ethnic minorities face in the UK. For example, 56% of families with a black household head were living in poverty compared to 13% of families led by a white person.^[224]

Standards of employment in the UK, as well as in the United States and other Western European countries, often disregard how certain standards, such as eye contact, have different meanings around the world.^[225] Asian, Latin American and African cultures can consider eye contact as disrespect or as challenging authority, often resulting in them maintaining an on-and-off eye contact to show respect in interviews and employment processes. Opposingly, most people in countries in North America and Western Europe see eye contact as expressing enthusiasm and trust.

Native Americans

Systemic racism towards indigenous people in America has deep historical roots and continues to show up in various forms today. For example, The historical displacement and forced assimilation. This was the forced displacement of native Americans from their ancestral lands, such as the Trail of Tears in the 1830s and policies of forced assimilation, like the Indian Boarding schools, aimed to eradicate Indigenous culture and languages. There was also the Dawes Act of 1887 and subsequent policies led to the division and allotment of Indigenous lands, often resulting in loss of communal land ownership and cultural disruption. This process severely limited economic opportunities for Indigenous communities. Additionally, there are unequal healthcare chances, as Indigenous communities often face disparities when trying to access good quality healthcare facilities. They also face disparities in many aspects of their lives, like economically and educationally.

To effectively address systemic racism towards Indigenous people involves acknowledging historical injustices, honoring treaty rights, and working towards policies that empower Indigenous communities while respecting their sovereignty and self-determination.

In housing and lending

Iberville Housing Projects in New Orleans, Louisiana

Institutional racism in the housing sector could be seen as early as the 1930s with the Home Owners' Loan Corporation. Banks would determine a neighborhood's risk for loan default and redline neighborhoods that were at high risk of crime. These neighborhoods tended to be African-American neighborhoods, whereas whites were able to receive housing loans. Over several decades, as whites left the city to move to nicer houses in the suburbs, predominantly African-American neighborhoods fell apart. Retail stores also started moving to the suburbs to be closer to the customers and to avoid being robbed.^[226] Commencing with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s and through the 1960s, the FHA contributed to the economic growth of the white population by providing loan guarantees to banks, which in turn financed white homeownership and enabled white flight,^[227] and it did not make loans available to black people.^[228] As minorities were not able to get financing and aid from banks, whites pulled ahead in equity gains. Moreover, many college students were then, in turn, financed with the equity in homeownership that was gained by having gotten the earlier government handout, which was not the same accorded to black and other minority families. The institutional racism of the FHA's 1943 model has been tempered after the Great Recession by President Barack Obama's efforts^[229][230] to stabilize the housing losses of 2008 with his Fair Housing Finance (GSE) reform.^[231][232]

These changes, which were brought on by government-funded programs and projects, have led to a significant change in inner-city markets.^[233] Due to robberies, black neighborhoods have been left with fewer food stores, but more liquor stores.^[234] The low-income neighborhoods are left with independently owned smaller grocery stores that tend to have higher prices. Poor consumers are left with the option of traveling to middle-income neighborhoods, or spending more for less.^[235]

The racial segregation and disparities in wealth between European Americans and African-American people include legacies of historical policies. In the Social Security Act of 1935, agricultural workers and servants, who disproportionately were black, were excluded because key whites did not want governmental assistance to change the agrarian system.^[236] In the Wagner Act of 1935, "blacks were blocked by law from challenging the barriers to entry into the newly protected labor unions and securing the right to collective bargaining."^[236] In the National Housing Act of 1939, the property appraisal system tied property value and eligibility for government loans to race.^[236][237] The 1936 Underwriting Manual used by the Federal Housing Administration to guide residential mortgages gave 20% weight to a neighborhood's protection, for example, zoning ordinances, deed restrictions and high-speed traffic arteries, from adverse influences, such as infiltration of inharmonious racial groups.^[238] Thus, white-majority neighborhoods received the government's highest property value ratings, and whites were eligible for government loans and aid. Richard Rothstein, in his book "The Color of Law," tells of a history of residential segregation in America. He noted that government institutions in all branches and at all levels and were complicit in excluding African Americans from home-ownership. "We have created a caste system in this country, with African Americans kept exploited and geographically separate by racially explicit government policies," he wrote.^[239] In covering topics like racial covenants – where loans to developers were contingent on contracts that spelled out specific exclusion of black people, he showed that it was a policy spelled out by the Federal Housing Administration's underwriting manual, which denied any guarantees for a federal bank loan to a developer if they were to sell properties to African Americans in white communities.^[240] Homeowners in one such subdivision, Levittown, Long Island, New York, were forbidden to rent or sell to persons "other than members of the Caucasian race".^[241] Between 1934 and 1962, less than two percent of government-subsidized housing went to non-white people.^[237]

In 1968, the Fair Housing Act (FHA) was signed into law to eliminate the effects of state-sanctioned racial segregation. But it failed to change the status quo as the United States remained nearly segregated as in the 1960s. A newer discriminating lending practice was the subprime lending in the 1990s. Lenders targeted high-interest subprime loans to low-income and minority neighborhoods who might be eligible for fair-interest prime loans. Securitization, mortgage brokers and other non-deposit lenders, and legislative deregulation of the mortgage lending industry all played a role in promoting the subprime lending market.^[238]

Numerous audit studies conducted in the 1980s in the United States found consistent evidence of discrimination against African Americans and Hispanics in metropolitan housing markets.^[242]

The long-outlawed practice of redlining (in which banks choke off lending to minority communities) recently re-emerged as a concern for federal bank regulators in New York and Connecticut. A settlement with the Justice Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was the largest in the history of both agencies, topping $33 million in restitution for the practice from New Jersey's largest savings bank. The bank had been accused of steering clear of higher crime neighborhoods and favoring whites in granting loans and mortgages, finding that, of the approximately 1,900 mortgages made in 2014, only 25 went to black applicants. The banks' executives denied bias, and the settlement came with adjustments to the banks' business practices. This followed other successful efforts by the federal, state and city officials in 2014 to expand lending programs directed at minorities, and in some cases to force banks to pay penalties for patterns of redlining in Providence, Rhode Island; St. Louis, Missouri; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Buffalo and Rochester, New York. The Justice Department also has more active redlining investigations underway,^[243] and officials have stated to reporters that "redlining is not a thing of the past". It has evolved, they explained, into a more politically correct version, where bankers do not talk openly about denying loans to black people. The Justice Department officials noted that some banks quietly had institutionalized bias in their operations.^[244] They have moved their operations out of minority communities entirely, while others have moved in to fill the void and compete for clients. Such management decisions are not the stated intent, it is left unspoken so that even the bank's other customers are unaware that it is occurring. The effect on minority communities can be profound as home ownership, a prime source of neighborhood stability and economic mobility can affect its vulnerability to blight and disrepair. In the 1960s and 1970s, laws were passed banning the practice; its return is far less overt, and while the vast majority of banks operate legally, the practice appears to be more widespread as the investigation revealed a vast disparity in loans approved for black people as compared to whites in similar situations.^[245]

Studies in major cities, such as Los Angeles and Baltimore, show that communities of color have lower levels of access to parks and green space.^[246][247] Parks are considered an environmental amenity and have social, economic, and health benefits. The public spaces allow for social interactions, increase the likelihood of daily exercise in the community and improve mental health. They can also reduce the urban heat island effect, provide wildlife habitat, control floods, and reduce certain air pollutants. Minority groups have less access to decision-making processes that determine the distribution of parks.^[248] A recent study published by Suffolk University found that black renters face discrimination when renting compared to similarly situated white renters.^[249]

Racism in health care and environmental racism

Institutional racism impacts health care accessibility within non-white minority communities by creating health disparities among racial groups.^[250][251] For example, from 1865 to 1906, many black veterans were unfairly denied disability pension by the Union Army disability pension system.^[252] Racism may also account for disproportionate rates of diseases, such as AIDS, among ethnic minorities. In a 1992 article, Janis Hutchinson argues that the federal government has responded slowly to the AIDS epidemic in minority communities and that their attempts have been insensitive to ethnic diversity in preventive medicine, community health maintenance, and AIDS treatment services.^[253] In addition, the mass incarceration of black males along, with vectors for addiction in co-relation to the higher number of minority females found infected with the HIV virus after 2000, has been the subject of study, and findings have shown that previous analyses of the rise incorrectly attributed it to male-on-male sex habits, rather than the causal effects found in current studies.^[254] Public health studies found incarcerated men, when returned to their communities, raise the risk of infection by passing the virus on to heterosexual partners, having acquired it in prison due to higher than average rates of sexual assault and rape, no access to condoms, injectable drugs and lack of clean needles, along with tattooing, and inadequate access to health care and treatment after being released due to poverty and unemployment.^[255] The studies also found that the high rates of incarceration reduced the number of available men in black communities and rupture social relationships, leading each man to have an increase in the number of concurrent sexual partners.^[255]

Institutional racism can affect minority health directly through health-related policies, as well as through other factors indirectly. For example, racial segregation disproportionately exposed black communities to chemical substances such as lead paint, respiratory irritants such as diesel fumes, crowding, litter, and noise. Members of racial minority groups that have a disadvantaged status in education and employment are more likely to be uninsured, which significantly impedes them from accessing preventive, diagnostic, or therapeutic health services.^[251]

Racial minorities in the United States are exposed to greater health and environmental risks than the general population.^[256] In 1982, there was a proposed polychlorinated biphenyl landfill in an African-American community in Warren County, NC. PCBs are toxic chemicals that can leach into the groundwater and contaminate the drinking water supply.^[257] The community resisted and said this was an act of environmental racism.^[258] This incident is considered to be the beginning of the environmental justice movement: a movement to address the injustice that communities of color face. Research shows that there is racial discrimination in the enforcement of environmental laws and regulations. People of color and the poor are more likely to live, work and play in America's most polluted environments.^[257] Communities of color tend to be disproportionately exposed to lead, pesticides, and petrochemical plants.^[256] Unfortunately, race and class is a reliable indicator of where industrial plants and waste facilities are located. Institutional environmental racism encompasses these land use decisions that contribute to health issues such as asthma, obesity and diabetes.^[259]

The opioid epidemic in the United States is overwhelmingly white, sparing African-American and Latino communities because doctors unconsciously prescribe narcotics more cautiously to their non-white patients. "Racial stereotyping is having a protective effect on non-white populations," according to Dr. Andrew Kolodny, the co-director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative at Brandeis.^[260]

The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affected African Americans, with more dying of the disease during its initial wave than other racial groups.^[261] In testifying before Congress, the leading epidemiologist on the U.S. Coronavirus task force, Dr. Anthony Fauci, testified that a combination of factors affect the disproportionate numbers of minorities infected. In responding as to whether institutional racism has played a part in the data gleaned by the CDC, he pointed out the risk of infection along with underlying conditions in certain demographics was a factor, but affirmed his opinion that this was the case.^[262] A Queen's University Belfast study found that there is insufficient evidence to attribute the greater susceptibility of black, Middle-Eastern and Asian individuals to the virus.^[263]

Black women are two and one-half times more likely to die from maternal causes than are white women.^[264] The infant-mortality rate for African Americans is 11 per 1,000 births, which is higher than the 2018 U.S. average of 5.7.^[265][266] There exists a persistent racial gap between black and white Americans in life expectancy; on average this life-expectancy gap is around 4 years.^[267] However, this greatly varies depending on both the state and city level. For example, in Wisconsin, the black-white life expectancy gap is about 6 years for females and 7 years for males, and in Washington D.C this gap is about 12 years for females and greater than 17 years among males.^[268][269]

In criminal conviction

Although approximately one third of crack cocaine users are white or Hispanic people (reported past-year use in 2013 of 0.8%, 0.3% and 0.1% for blacks, whites and Hispanics, respectively),^[270] a large percentage of people convicted of possession of crack cocaine in federal courts in 1994 were black people. In 1994, 86.3% of the defendants convicted of crack cocaine possession were black people, while 10.3% were whites and 5.2% were Hispanics. Possession of powder cocaine was more racially mixed, with 52% of the offenders being whites, 29.7% blacks, and 17% Hispanics. Within the federal judicial system, a person convicted of possession with intent to distribute powder cocaine carries a five-year sentence for quantities of 500 grams or more, while a person convicted of possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine faces a five-year sentence for quantities of 5 grams or more. With the combination of severe and unbalanced drug-possession laws, along with the rates of conviction in terms of race, the judicial system has created a racial disparity.^[271][272] In 2015, sitting President Barack Obama visited a federal prison (a presidential first) to discuss how disparate sentencing affected prisoners and highlight how, in the United States, excessive sentencing was a detrimental outcome of harsh sentencing laws, as well as to discuss the need to change the approach.^[273] In the Senate, top Republican and Democratic senators, in a rare bipartisan effort, negotiated for months to produce concrete fixes to these laws. The law was changed in 2010 to reduce disparity; it affected only new cases. The need, according to Senate, was for a retroactive fix to reduce the thousands serving long sentences after four decades of extreme sentencing policies. Studies have shown it is possible to reduce both prison populations and crime at the same time.^[274][275] The U.S. Sentencing commission announced a retroactive reduction in drug sentences following a year-long review, which will result in a mass release of 6,000 prisoners, all of whom have already served substantial time in prison.^[276] This action was done in an effort to reduce overcrowding and provide comfort to wrongfully accused drug offenders who were sent to jail over the past couple of decades. Some of those to be released will be deported, and all will be subject to further judicial review.^[277][278]

The issue of policies that target minority populations in large cities, also known as stop and frisk and arrest quotas, as practiced by the NYPD, have receded from media coverage due to lawsuits that have altered the practice.^[279] In Floyd vs City of New York, a ruling that created an independent Inspector General's office to oversee the NYPD, the federal judge called a whistle-blower's recordings of superiors' use of "quotas" the 'smoking gun evidence' that police were racially profiling and violating civilians' civil rights.^[280] The police officer at the center of the case settled with the city for $1.1 million and in a separate case won an additional settlement against the hospital where he was involuntarily confined after cops retaliated and unlawfully placed him in a psych ward for reporting fudged stats in his precinct. After taking office in 2014, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio declined to continue litigating stop-and-frisk practices, and the number of minorities stopped under the practice dropped dramatically.^[281] The use of quotas to pad arrest figures also has fallen after lawsuits exposed the practice as carried on by drug enforcement officers.^[282][283]

A Stanford University study that analyzed 93 million traffic stops in the United States revealed that African Americans are twenty percent more likely to be stopped despite being less likely to be in possession of contraband compared to white people.^[284] In the state of California, 38% of people halted by police officers in Los Angeles were black people, despite accounting for only 9% of the population.^[285] In Washington, D.C., black people make up 46% of the population but composed 72% of the people stopped even though the difference in contraband hit rates between blacks and whites are not statistically significant.^[286] In Boston, blacks made up 64% of those stopped despite making up only 24% of the population; even after controlling for alleged gang involvement and prior arrest records, blacks were more likely to experience repeat police encounters and to be frisked or searched during an encounter.^[287] In Illinois, minority drivers are stopped 1.5 more times than white drivers, and Latino drivers are nearly 2 times more likely to be subjected to dog-sniff searches than are non-Hispanic whites but are found with contraband 1.6 times less often.^[288]

A Harvard University study^[289] found that in Massachusetts's criminal justice system minorities face greater risk to be represented across all parts of the criminal justice system in excess of their proportion of the population in that state. The likelihood that they will get arrested and convicted due to drug or weapons charges is eight times greater than for whites. Black people were found to receive average sentences that were 238 days longer, and Latino people 178 days longer, for the same offences. The study concluded that regarding 'stop and frisk' "The disparity in searches was more consistent with racial bias than with differences in criminal conduct,".^[290] The 24 percent of the city of Boston's population that was black made up 83 percent of those interrogated or frisked by police.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has found that, since 2008, after Barack Obama's election into office, racist hate groups have increased above 400%.^[291] The SPLC asserts that racism at the institutional level dies hard, and is still prevalent in many U.S. institutions, including law enforcement and the criminal justice system.^[291] Frequently these institutions use racial profiling along with greater police brutality.^[291] Another major disparity between race and capital punishment in the United States is that murder cases with white victims were more likely than those with black victims to result in a death sentence.^[292]

A recent report by former Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson found both overt and institutional racism to be a pervasive problem in the NYS court system.^[293] Citing a "Second class system of justice for people of color in NYS", Johnson's report set out recommendations to combat bias and systematic racism in interactions between the court system and people of color, particularly in New York City. Chief administrative Judge Lawrence K. Marks found the reports findings troubling and said the state would attempt to implement all the report's solutions. The report also highlighted intolerant racism among court officers.^[294] The team conducted interviews of over 300 court personnel, including lawyers whom reported instances of discrimination from court officers and Judges.^[295] Judges who were interviewed said that the lack of resources in the busiest courts had a disparate impact on minority clients making up the bulk of cases, and judicial diversity failed to mitigate the effect as few black candidates could pass muster in Upstate New York, where connections mattered in their appointment as judges. One judge said the reluctance to provide funding to New York city courts was "the very definition of institutional bias".^[296]

In immigration

Many other minority groups were also victims of institutional racism. For example, immigration bans were imposed on Chinese people. On the West Coast during the 1870s, the intensifying competition for jobs between Chinese workers and whites motivated some whites to launch an anti-Chinese movement. The first Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was passed to prohibit Chinese from immigrating to the United States, as a result, only ten Chinese immigrants entered the United States in 1887.^[342] The 1917 Asiatic Barred Zone Act, sought to block immigration from Turkey to Indonesia and China, eliminating virtually all new arrivals from the South Asian subcontinent and Southeast Asia.^[343] There were other anti-immigration policies throughout U.S. history against France and Ireland in the late 1700s, and Southern Europeans, Eastern Europeans, Jews, Africans, Arabs, East Asians and Indians with the Immigration Act of 1924. Anti-immigration sentiment can also affect minorities who have been U.S. citizens for many generations, such as the internment of Japanese Americans during the World War 2^[344][345] and Mexican Repatriation of the 1930s. The 1965 Immigration Act reversed the national-origins quota system that had been in place since the 1920s, which had discriminated against certain ethnic minorities,^[346] particularly those originating in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Bracero program

Between 1929 and 1939, during the Great Depression, 355,000 to one million Mexicans and Mexican Americans were repatriated or deported to Mexico, 40 to 60% of whom were U.S. citizens, overwhelmingly children. Voluntary repatriation was more common than formal deportation. The government formally deported at least 82,000 people to Mexico between 1929 and 1935.^[347][348] According to the INS, around 400,000 to 1 million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans moved to Mexico during the 1930s. Few were formally deported, with most going to Mexico from their own towns where officials using threats of deportation coerced them; or were repatriated through voluntary – though often coercive – repatriation programs directed by state and local governments, and charitable aid agencies.^[349]

The repatriation campaign was a response to migration west by the Oakies and housing and wage labor shortages in the United States during the Great Depression.^[350] Until the Great Depression, many American citizens had seen the value of the Mexicans as cheap labor. With increased poverty and fewer jobs, many Americans and officials scapegoated Mexicans.^[351] The Secretary of Labor in the Hoover administration, William N. Doak (Hoovervilles) scapegoated "illegal immigrants" (migrant workers) as taking jobs from Americans. While not specifying Mexicans, repatriation campaigns overwhelmingly targeted Mexicans.^[352][353] In 1931, the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, the Wickersham Commission^[354] found the methods employed by Doak's subordinates to be unconstitutional.^[355] The policy continued into the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

According to Abraham Hoffman,^[356] "from 1931 on, cities and counties across the country intensified and embarked upon repatriation programs, conducted under the auspices of either local welfare bureaus or private charitable agencies". The Los Angeles chairman of the board of supervisors' charities and public welfare committee (and later Los Angeles mayor), Frank L. Shaw had researched the legality of deportation but was advised by that only the federal government was legally allowed to deport people. As a result, the L.A. County supervisors called their campaign "repatriation", which Balderrama^[357] asserts was a euphemism for deportation.^[358]

C.P. Visel,^[359] the spokesman for Los Angeles Citizens Committee for Coordination of Unemployment Relief began his "unemployment relief measure" that would create a "psychological gesture" intended to "scarehead"^[360] Mexicans out of Los Angeles,^[361] through a series of "publicity releases announcing the deportation campaign, a few arrests would be made 'with all publicity possible and pictures', and both police and deputy sheriffs would assist".^[358] The Bureau of Immigration was responsible for many mass raids and deportations,^[362] and the local government was responsible for the media attention given to these raids to "scarehead" immigrants, specifically Mexicans,^[363] provoking many complaints and criticisms from the Mexican Consulate and the Spanish-language magazine La Opinión.^[358]

Interior Azteca Theater, Houston, Texas, 15 July 1927

Numerous books have been written about the repatriations including 'Decade of Betrayal', by social history professor Raymond Rodriguez and Francisco Balderrama.^{[358] [364][365]} In 1995, they wrote a book, which sparked legislative hearings and formal apologies from the state of California and Los Angeles County officials.^[366][367] In 2006, the House of Representatives congresspersons Hilda Solis and Luis Gutierrez called for an apology from the U.S. Government for the Repatriation.^[368] The Mexican repatriation campaign is not widely discussed in U.S. textbooks. In a 2006 survey of the nine most commonly used American history textbooks in the United States, four did not mention the topic, and only one devoted more than half a page to the topic. In total, they devoted four pages to the repatriation.^[369]

The Mexican labor that supplied U.S. agribusiness has cycled between needing workers and calls to repatriate them.^[370] Some calls were by Mexican farmers, because from time to time there were acute labor shortages in Mexico.^[371] With the growing diplomatic and security issues surrounding illegal border crossings, the INS increased its raids and apprehensions beginning in the early 1950s leading up to Operation Wetback in 1954 in cooperation with the Mexican government. While the Bracero program was in force, the INS deported one million Mexicans starting in 1954. Those apprehended were often deported without recovering property or contacting family and were often stranded without food or employment when they entered Mexico. Deported Mexicans often faced extreme conditions, and some were left in the desert; 88 deported workers died in 112-degree heat in July 1955. Most deported were sent by ship to Veracruz or transported by land to southern Mexican cities. During the Operation, recruitment of illegal workers by American growers continued due to the inexpensiveness of illegal labor and desire to avoid the bureaucratic obstacles of the Bracero program.^[372]

In the civil service

U.S. Civil Service Commission Seal EO11096

Merit-based hiring to civil service titles are race-blind in terms of hiring preferences; in practice, however, there are titles that have resisted integration to the present day. Institutions that resist even past the civil right fights of the 1950s and 1960s resulted in court interventions in the 1970s and even up to the last decade. Many of the Consent Decrees that resulted from court intervention came about as a result of the federal government intervening due to EEOC complaints in hiring or attempts to litigate discrimination that was overt.^[373] Until 2007, when the Vulcan Society of the FDNY prevailed in court using the legal theory of disparate impact, many lawsuits resulted in racial quotas being imposed in hiring. Police and Fire Departments across the country have been slow to change the insular culture that kept them lacking in diversity and open to challenges.

Civil Service, as an institution, was traditionally used to prevent nepotism and the influence of politics in appointments to the position. Authorized at the federal level in 1871, it came about due to reforms of the spoils system in place since the 1830s, and abuses of the post-Civil War era, when Congress authorized the president to appoint a Civil Service Commission and prescribe regulations for admission to public service. A dissatisfied office-seeker assassinated President Garfield in 1881, and Congress was motivated to pass the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act in 1883, which firmly established the Civil Service. During Reconstruction, this enabled the federal government to provide jobs for newly freed black people in the South (primarily the Postal Service) where no other employment opportunities existed for them. Since the inception of the merit system in 1881, the numbers of black people in federal Civil Service positions rose from 0.057 to 5.6% by 1910. Since 1883, the majority of federal employees are placed in positions that are classified by Civil Service designations.^[374] (see Also: U.S. Civil Service Reform)

In 1913, with segregation the law of the land, Southern Democrats in Congress under the administration of President Woodrow Wilson had attempted to remove as many minorities as possible from their established position in the federal Civil Service, especially at the Postal Service.^[375] This was accomplished by requiring the race of each applicant to a position be shown by a photograph.^[376]

Kate T. Zeis, photo for U.S. Civil Service Commission card – NARA – 285491

This enabled the administration to demote and eliminate black civil servants from positions held in Civil Service and further prevented any new appointments, thus purposefully exacerbating black exclusion from the federal Civil Service.^[377] Wilson had campaigned promising to elevate blacks in his administration by matching the patronage offered them by past Republican administrations.^[378] Many black newspapers, based on his inaugural speech, supported him, but those Southern Democrats in Congress opposed to integration actively rendered him moot, and patronage appointments fell even lower.^[378] Claiming 'friction' among blacks and whites at the post office, they proposed segregating them.^[379] This was taken up by the Postmaster General and the Secretary of the Treasury, and when the cabinet and the president did not oppose the measure, Jim Crow practices in some departments was taken up with a vengeance.^[380] By 1921, those black postal workers not demoted or fired were behind a wall at the 'Dead Letter Office' in Washington, D.C., or placed behind screens where the other workers did not have to see them.^[381] Without any basis in fact or accumulation of complaints to justify segregation, it became unofficial policy. Signs appeared restricting toilets and lunchrooms, whole offices were segregated by room and workers were paired off by race.^[382] A virtual flood of proposed discriminatory laws were proposed in Congress ranging from 'Jim Crow' streetcars to excluding blacks from military commissions to officer in the Army or Navy and anti-miscegenation bills. There were also bills to restrict black immigration. This spread to the states where more bills passed restricting black people. Federal Civil Service did not fare well under Wilson, as he held that "it was to their advantage" and "likely to remove many of the difficulties which have surrounded the appointment and advancement of colored men and women", espousing the segregation taking place under his administration.^[383][384]

The next chapter was the Hatch Act of 1939, which prevented state and local civil servants from taking part in political activities or running for office. It was a response to conservative forces in Congress who wanted to prevent administration appointments to certain agencies aligned with the WPA and FDR presidential confidante Harry Hopkins, whom they felt were giving jobs to the 'wrong people'. Until the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision and the related cases that ushered in the Civil Rights era, institutional segregation was upheld at the federal level by the Plessy v. Ferguson U.S. Supreme Court case decision, which the court overturned in 1954. Following this, cities consulted with their attorneys and as a result, integration began. This was replaced in turn by institutional racism, the practice of upholding the letter of the law, but not the spirit, in an effort to prevent minority hires from gaining ground in titles where they were disproportionately underrepresented, such as police and fire departments, and in management positions.^[385]

In education

Standardized testing has also been considered a form of institutional racism, because it is believed to be biased in favor of people from particular socio-cultural backgrounds. Some minorities have consistently tested worse than whites on virtually all standardized tests, even after controlling for socioeconomic status, while others have tested consistently better.^[408] The cause of the achievement gaps between black, Hispanic, white and Asian students has yet to be fully elucidated.

Three cases before the SCOTUS have determined whether there is institutional racism in education. Bakke (1978) allowed minorities to gain an edge in university admissions and hiring. Justice Connors swing vote in Grutter (2003) was a rebuke of Proposition 209 and similar initiatives, giving a 25-year timeline where such interventions would no longer be necessary. Schuette (2013) allowed states to ban race-based affirmative action in public university admissions. Through the use of discriminatory ballot initiatives (1997–2008) to bypass the law, gaining public acceptance of anti-affirmative action endeavors, the process of placing undue burdens on minorities seeking advancement has, in this century, become entrenched. In her dissent to Schutte, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the voters of Michigan had "changed the basic rules of the political process in that State in a manner that uniquely disadvantaged racial minorities." Citing reverse-racism after the effects have been proven deleterious to minority admissions is repeating failed policy and furthers this bias.^[409] This offends portions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, where discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin was prohibited.

In politics

Reconstruction

Ad protesting Reconstruction

After slavery was abolished, the government went through a series of changes that reflected the presence of new (black) citizens in the United States. Newly acquired freedom founded a growth in African-American participation in politics. This period of increased African-American participation, from 1867 to 1877, is known as Reconstruction. Despite the increase in African-American participation in politics, Reconstruction is not mentioned as an example of how black politics strive to be. There are very distinct viewpoints concerning this time period. Some believed that corruption had run rampant in the South with the introduction of newly freed slaves into legislatures, and a great deal of attention was given to the negativity that surrounded the introduction of black individuals into government. Reconstruction in South Carolina particularly was under scrutiny as the legislators were predominantly black. The happenings in the South Carolina legislature were described negatively and seen as pro-black and significantly focused on issues that only pertained to black people. Attention was solely focused on the misgivings occurring within the legislature, such as "unethical appropriation of state funds by members of the legislature"^[462] and other unethical or illegal acts committed by both black and white legislators in South Carolina. Another set of issues brought up was the multitude of expensive decorative items and embellishments that were purchased for the refurbishment of the State House. Whites were generally left out of the criticisms, despite their own contributions, and were referred to as victims of corruption due to the influence of black people.

Others believed that Reconstruction was not to blame for all corruption in legislation. This faction of people saw the constructive debates and conversations that flowed within the Southern legislatures. They were also more receptive to the positive aspects and characteristics of black legislators that were displayed during their time in office.

Despite the amount of eager participants, this period eventually led to a decline in black participation in politics. The backlash of those against increase of black participation in politics effectively began to cause the number of participants to stop and then decline. In the mid-20th century, despite past involvement, black participation in politics was low. Black participation was not a common occurrence in comparison to overall participation, and it was often celebrated when black candidates or politicians did particularly well in their political endeavors. This decline was attributed to a white counterattack of the Reconstruction movement. Many methods were used to dissuade black people from taking office. One of the most prominent was violence. An example of that would be the Ku Klux Klan, a secretive group whose members believed in white supremacy. The lynching, beatings, and intimidation of black people helped to hasten the decline of black participation in politics. Coercion was also another method used to dissuade black participation in politics, particularly voting. Threats of loss jobs and refusal of medical care are some of the coercion methods employed. Coercion did not play as big of a role as direct physical violence however it did serve to further hinder the growth of black participation in politics.^[463] These methods helped to forge a political system that has a scarce amount of minorities in office.

In technology

Institutional racism's connections to technology have been an area that has not been sufficiently addressed. In her article "Race and Racism in Internet Studies", Jessie Daniels writes "the role of race in the development of Internet infrastructure and design has largely been obscured. As Sinclair observes, 'The history of race in America has been written as if technologies scarcely existed, and the history of technology as if it were utterly innocent of racial significance.'"^[465] Sociologist Ruha Benjamin writes further in her book Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code that researchers "tend to concentrate on how the Internet perpetuates or mediates racial prejudice at the individual level rather than analyze how racism shapes infrastructure and design."^[466] Benjamin makes connections between institutional racism and racism in technology and notes the importance of future research on institutionalized racism in technology as well as the "technology of structural racism."^[466]

In the military

In June 2020, the U.S. Army instituted changes to its promotion policy to counteract institutional racism as part of its efforts to counter unconscious bias that caused black officer candidates to be passed over more often than were similarly qualified whites. For instance, photographs of candidates will no longer be part of their promotional packages, which had been found to hinder advancement opportunities for black soldiers.^[467]