Institutionalized Racism in America: Causes and Effects
This paper examines why racism against Black Americans has persisted in the United States despite landmark civil rights legislation and social progress. Arguing that racism has become deeply institutionalized, the paper draws on peer-reviewed research to document racial disparities across multiple domains: income inequality, unequal school discipline practices, inequitable healthcare access, and racially biased historical narratives in textbooks. Through sources spanning sociology, public health, and educational history, the paper demonstrates that modern racism is less often overt and more often embedded in systemic structures that perpetuate inequality across generations.
- Introduction: Racism's Persistence in America: Framing racism as ongoing despite civil rights progress
- Economic Inequality and Systemic Racism: Income gaps and urban infrastructure reflect racial bias
- Racial Bias in School Discipline: Black students face harsher, more frequent school discipline
- Institutional Racism in Healthcare: Black Americans receive inferior medical care systemically
- Racism in History Textbooks: Textbooks distorted John Brown's legacy by race era
- Conclusion: Confronting Institutionalized Racism: Calls for social values change to end systemic racism
✍️ How to write this paper — guide, tools & examples ▾
What makes this paper effective
- Uses peer-reviewed sources across multiple disciplines — sociology, public health, and educational history — to build a consistent, multi-domain argument for institutionalized racism.
- Grounds abstract claims in concrete statistics (e.g., median income gaps, suspension rates, kidney transplant waiting lists), giving the argument empirical weight.
- Maintains a clear thesis throughout, returning to the institutionalization framework in each section to create coherence.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective thematic synthesis: rather than treating each source in isolation, the author uses evidence from economics, education, healthcare, and historiography to converge on a single overarching claim. This shows how a focused thesis can organize diverse evidence into a unified argument.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a framing introduction that acknowledges apparent social progress before asserting the persistence of racism. The body is organized thematically — economic inequality, school discipline, healthcare, and textbook bias — each section supported by a distinct peer-reviewed source. The conclusion restates the thesis and calls for social action, rounding out a clear introduction–body–conclusion structure appropriate for an undergraduate argumentative essay.
Introduction: Racism's Persistence in America
Why has the ugly social scar of racism — whites demonstrating racially biased attitudes and actions against African Americans — continued in the United States through the years? What causes people to look down on those of another race, or to otherwise hold people of another ethnicity in contempt? Given that the U.S. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965), and that Americans elected and re-elected a biracial president (Barack Obama), an objective observer from another country might imagine that racist attitudes have subsided — and in some ways things have improved on racial issues.
There is still today — and may always be — white racism against Black Americans. This paper argues that racism has continued to be a social and moral blemish in the United States because it has become institutionalized and carried from generation to generation.
Economic Inequality and Systemic Racism
Jim Wallis writes in the peer-reviewed journal Crosscurrents that the most visible "…and painful sign of racism's continuation is the economic inequality between blacks and whites" (Wallis, 2007, 199). This is a classic example of the cause and effect of institutionalized racism: the median income for white Americans in 2007 was $48,500, while the median income for Black Americans was about $31,000 (Wallis, 199). The unemployment rate for Black teenagers is "…twice that of white teenagers," and this has become an institutionalized reality for Black youths in the inner city (Wallis, 199).
Other examples of the institutionalization of racial bias can be found in the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., which has traditionally had African American mayors. Wallis points out that the subway routes follow class and racial lines; middle-class commuters are carried through "gentrified areas…into the suburbs…avoiding black ghettos" (200). Additionally, the buses that ran through the more affluent areas of Washington, D.C. (16th Street) have typically been newer and air-conditioned, while the buses that run on the 14th Street corridor — "…just two blocks away" from the "gold coast" upscale neighborhoods of 16th Street — are typically "…old, hot, and broken-down" (Wallis, 200). Wallis concludes his essay by explaining that racism has much to do with who has the power to "…dominate and enforce oppression," and that currently that power in America is "…in white hands" (202).
Racial Bias in School Discipline
In the peer-reviewed journal Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, there is further evidence of the institutionalization of white racism. The article points to a survey of 294 public schools in America, in which it was discovered that when Black students are disciplined for rule-breaking, they "…tend not to receive more benign sanctions" — such as counseling or parent-teacher meetings — that misbehaving white students often receive. In fact, Black students — a group that makes up 33% of the student body in some schools — served "…53% of the suspensions over the last 10 years" (Nagel, 2011).
The studies referenced by Nagel show that Black girls in middle school are "…suspended at four times the rate of white girls" (Nagel, 304). The survey also shows that Black students tend to serve "…longer suspensions on average" and are more likely to receive suspensions for "…subjective misconduct like profanity and insubordination" (304). These trends illustrate that institutional racism is not always overt or blatant — such as someone shouting racist slurs at a Black student or attacking a Black student because of their skin color — but is more often subtle and structural.
Conclusion: Confronting Institutionalized Racism
The thesis of this paper is that racism continues to be a blemish on American society because it has been institutionalized. The eras of lynching in the South and the Jim Crow laws are gone, but racism is still in existence, as demonstrated by the data presented here: Black students tend to be treated differently than white students in school discipline; Black Americans do not receive the same quality of healthcare as whites; and Black workers do not earn as much as white workers. Until the institutionalization of racism is genuinely confronted through better social values and a meaningful commitment to justice, racism will continue to persist.
Works Cited
Callender, Clive O., and Patrice V. Miles. "Institutionalized Racism and End-Stage Renal Disease: Is Its Impact Real or Illusionary?" Seminars in Dialysis, 17.3. 2004.
Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: The New Press, 2008.
Nagel, Mechthild. "Anti-Black Racism, Gender, and Abolitionist Politics." Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 23.3, 304–312. 2011.
Wallis, Jim. "America's Original Sin: The Legacy of White Racism." Crosscurrents, 57.2. 197–202. 2007.
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.