Structural Racism

00:06 The next definition I want to bring up and you've heard me say this in other segments is structural racism.

00:11 And before I go into the definition, I want to say that there are still people who don't believe that structural racism is real.

00:18 And so part of this work is to bring people to a space where we acknowledge the reality of facts.

00:25 So the definition is that it's a system in which public policies, think about those public policies, we mean from the federal government level, state governments, city governments, within organizations, institutional practices, as well as institutional policies, cultural representations and other norms that reinforce ways to perpetuate racial group identity and also to marginalize people and to maintain power structures at different levels for different sets of people based on many different dynamics.

00:58 So consider this an example for discussion is how did structural racism come to be? Let's think about the Constitution.

01:08 Let's think about when the Constitution was written.

01:11 Let's think about who it was written by.

01:13 Let's think about how it does empower certain people and give certain people advantages.

01:19 Consider how it disempower certain people and give certain people or not gives but put certain people at a disadvantage.

01:28 So those are some things to consider when we talk about structural racism, and then all the corollaries of that structural racism and how that has continued to be an issue over many centuries.

01:40 So until we again can name and acknowledge that this is real, then we can't move forward in the process of transformation.

01:48 That doesn't mean that we're all going to agree.

01:50 We do have to agree to disagree in certain areas.

01:53 And think about it again from a humanitarian perspective.

01:57 And how do we put people at the same place at the starting line.

02:01 And how we finish, we can't necessarily control but if I have, or we all have an equal starting space, we start at the same place.

02:11 And the rules are the same for everybody who's participating and we don't want to call it a game but this life situation.

02:19 And in terms of work, in terms of school, in terms of all of our ways that we exist.

02:24 If we have all the same rules and all the starting place, same starting places.

02:28 we do have the potential to reach a space of equity.