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Systemic racism explained

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Systemic racism affects every area of life in the US. From incarceration rates to predatory loans, and trying to solve these problems requires changes in major parts of our system. Act.tv takes a closer look at what systemic racism is, and how we can solve it.

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Additional Resources for you to Explore
Learn more about the history of redlining in the United States. 

Explore why differences in public school funding is so detrimental to education in America with this piece from The Atlantic, which takes a closer look at the schools in Connecticut and the broader history of education funding, or this analysis from ASCD Educational Leadership, digging into studies of unequal funding. 

Understand systemic racism with these 9 charts from Vox that highlight longstanding inequalities in every facet of American life.
Avatar for lauren mcalpine
Lesson Creator
What are ways you can identify and confront your own implicit biases?

06/24/2020
Avatar for minseo kim
minseo kim • LESSON IN PROGRESS

increase contact with people who are different from you, be specific in your intent. and Change the way you do things. Take care of yourself.

06/25/2020
Avatar for Pop Iuliana
Pop Iuliana • COMPLETED LESSON

So true! We are all equal!

06/26/2020 • 
IN RESPONSE TO  Show the comment
Avatar for Atharav Gupta
Atharav Gupta • COMPLETED LESSON

We should realise that everyone is purely equal

06/26/2020
Avatar for Anushri Nambiar
Anushri Nambiar • LESSON IN PROGRESS

Its really hard to remove all implicit biases but maybe you can start by seeing multiple perspectives of every race and not just have one image.

06/26/2020
Avatar for Maiko Myzk
Maiko Myzk • COMPLETED LESSON

When issues are not easy to conclude but somehow I have opinions without rational reasons, this means that I used my own implicit biases. Having questioning my opinions in any situation helps improve my ability to avoid such irrational and emotional decisions.

06/27/2020
Avatar for Miriam Perkins
Miriam Perkins  • LESSON IN PROGRESS

The realisation that it is not the first thought that defines me (social belief systems’ but the second (awareness of social customs on my belief systems, analysis of underlying bias, change of underlying bias).

06/27/2020
Avatar for gahyeon jung
gahyeon jung • COMPLETED LESSON

We are all equal!

06/29/2020
Avatar for jonathan havemann-britt
jonathan havemann-britt • LESSON IN PROGRESS

i agree too

07/01/2020
Avatar for eric van den berghe
eric van den berghe • LESSON IN PROGRESS

This is a tough one because the very programs designed to counteract inequalities have just the opposite effect. I would suggest eliminating all mention of race or racial criteria in society. The focus and attention on race just promotes bias. Ironically, blacks in the US are just as racist, if not more so, than whites. The example of systemic racism actually goes the other way under affirmative action leading to the employment of less qualified quota minorities and favoring them over whites in college admissions and in jobs, far from eliminating racism this just causes resentment and promotes racism. In fact, knowing admissions standards are lower for minorities actually works against the truly qualified minorities because we assume they were admitted under affirmative action. Traditionally elitist schools are expected to meet arbitrary quotas of minorities, But black colleges like Howard are not expected to give scholarships to poor whites to fill a quota,

07/19/2020
Avatar for Sumedh Mahangade
Sumedh Mahangade • COMPLETED LESSON

Realize that everybody in the world is equal, no matter what skin color they have.In 2nd grade, I think everybody was taught about Martin Luther King Junior.He wrote a speech along the lines of racism, dealing with implicit bias, and systematic racism.
He dreamed about changing the way humans think.He spread his message about how he wants to see white and black kids in the same school, studying the same thing, equally doing the same curriculum.
Rosa Parks, who never got off of the seat she was sitting on, even though the white person demanded her too.
She didn’t care if she got arrested, because spreading the message that racism is unhealthy for world was enough for her.
Ghandi, who boycotted against the British, and even got assassinated in a speech, still spread the message.There are thousands of figures, such as Jackie Robinson, who are now a model, because of their perseverance while conquering racism.Listen and study one of them, and you’ll realize how to identify racism.Thanks

07/20/2020
Avatar for Brenda Rissmeyer
Brenda Rissmeyer • LESSON IN PROGRESS

As idealistic as this may sound, I have always thought that looking at every person on this planet the same way is what we want to do. Everyone has the right to be treated fairly and the same as others, unless they abuse that right by breaking the law and/or hurting another.

08/10/2020
Avatar for Paul Archibald
Paul Archibald • LESSON IN PROGRESS

I have a mixed marriage and mixed race children. We had recent conversations about systemic racism and implicit bias with them and they feel our mixed race family and friends helped them limit their biases. They see different biases in their friends whose family and friends were limited to a single race. There is not such thing as being socially color blind but if we all have rich diversity in our social relationships, we will effect change.

08/17/2020
Avatar for Amanda Postlethwait
Amanda Postlethwait • COMPLETED LESSON

By calling yourself out or others people will start to become aware of what their doing/saying

08/26/2020
Avatar for Kevin Bridgett
Kevin Bridgett • COMPLETED LESSON

I have seen overall black neighborhoods and they aren’t as wealthy as whites I have seen.

09/01/2020
Avatar for Hudson Mitchell-Pullman
Hudson Mitchell-Pullman • COMPLETED LESSON

If you catch yourself thinking or saying something like that, you can stop, and change your action

09/02/2020
Avatar for Hudson Mitchell-Pullman
Hudson Mitchell-Pullman • COMPLETED LESSON

So true!!!! #blacklivesmatter

09/02/2020 • 
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Avatar for Regina Castillo
Regina Castillo • COMPLETED LESSON

If we socialize ourselves with other people society will see and be like they are not all bad and they are the same as us. We are all one human race, the way we look shouldn't have to change other peoples biases.

09/03/2020
Avatar for Ivan Petryshyn
Ivan Petryshyn • COMPLETED LESSON

1. we should be realistic:
a. the biases still exist, even within a homogeneous group due to privileges, prejudices, false assumptions;
b. we need an effective education, that would change the situation;
c. we need a social tool to stop the wrong attitudes and practices;
d. we need the circumstances, under which it would be impossible to be a racist, a discriminator, a hater, even, a hidden one.
We need to be equal in power to be equal in reality.

Ivan Petryshyn

09/16/2020
Avatar for Malani Marks
Malani Marks • COMPLETED LESSON

we can continue to protest and fighter all are right and fairness

09/16/2020
Avatar for Damian Farias
Damian Farias • COMPLETED LESSON

is when we realize our biases and show off it

09/16/2020
Avatar for Erion Craine
Erion Craine • COMPLETED LESSON

increase contact with people who are different from you, be specific in your intent. and Change the way you do things. Take care of yourself.

09/17/2020
Avatar for Najae Harris
Najae Harris • COMPLETED LESSON

A way I can identify an implicit bias I have is to try things I've never tried and then if I don't like one of those things ill keep doing it until I get used to it or like it.

09/17/2020
Avatar for DOUSSOU KEITA
DOUSSOU KEITA • COMPLETED LESSON

we need better education in the low income communities

09/20/2020
Avatar for Chaunel Kitson
Chaunel Kitson • COMPLETED LESSON

One way to identify and confront your own implicit biases is by first knowing what they are and from then you could try to see both sides of the fences.

09/30/2020
Avatar for Tawanna Davis
Tawanna Davis • COMPLETED LESSON

We should all understand that people are people, No matter what Race.

10/04/2020
Avatar for Chaunel Kitson
Chaunel Kitson • COMPLETED LESSON

I think that if you put yourself in more diverse situations then you can see things from different perspectives and start to confront your implicit biases. For example if you are one of those people who say "Hispanics love tacos" try to hang around more Hispanics so you can get to know there culture and understand how those type of comments make them feel. What this means is that if you put yourself in positions where you can identify your implicit biases then you can work on confronting them.

10/04/2020
Avatar for Aaheli Ghosh
Aaheli Ghosh • LESSON IN PROGRESS

To be honest we are all human with different racial colours and identity and we should talk to people with their opinion not not by colours

11/28/2020
Avatar for Karl Fragrance
Karl Fragrance • LESSON IN PROGRESS

Defer to the most objective standards. Treat people as individuals who share a common humanity. Don't assume racism and then go looking for it. Learn enough Critical Race Theory to reject it. Be colourblind, even in your criticism. Colourblindness does not imply “racism blindness,” - we can be colourblind by only acknowledging the minimum amount of social significance in racial categories. For example, claiming that “the system” is intrinsically anti-Black and privileging of whites implicitly assigns social significance that is very likely to be both prejudicial and discriminatory to both groups. Reject racist assumptions made about any group, individual, or system, especially when these are made in terms that are associated with racial groups (e.g., “whiteness,” “acting white,” “white” or “brown fragility,” or “white-adjacency”). Finally and most importantly, don’t put actionable social significance into racial categories for the purposes of prejudice or discrimination.

01/27/2021
Avatar for David Velasquez Orozco
David Velasquez Orozco • COMPLETED LESSON

is trying to accept and met anyone who is infront of you

02/14/2021
Avatar for Angela Rodriguez
Angela Rodriguez • COMPLETED LESSON

try to understand the cultures around you since there's a lot I don't think you'll grow tired

03/17/2021
Avatar for Shofy Chairunnisa
Shofy Chairunnisa • COMPLETED LESSON

learning past histories and looking for more information would help me get a better understanding of the problem. then I will be able to identify my implicit biases

04/16/2021
Avatar for elif erkuş
elif erkuş • COMPLETED LESSON

I think implicit biases come from our culture and the environment we live in. We cannot not have them, everyone has them because we cannot possibly control the ideas we are exposed to starting from our childhood. However, I believe we can get ahead of these biases. I see these biases as kinda overgeneralization and I always try to be aware of what I think about people/communities in terms of overgeneralization. I always try to see people as they are, not where they come from. It is hard sometimes but this is the only way to recognize people as they are. I hope I am able to make myself clear and I hope this helps.

04/17/2021
Avatar for Joseph Makos
Joseph Makos • LESSON IN PROGRESS

There is no such thing as systematic racism. I have never said to myself I’m not going to be friends with someone because of there skin color. Either they are a good person to hangout with or they are not. Its hard because certain people are judging if other people are racist or not because of the color of there skin. Which is racist

05/13/2021
Avatar for silvia chaverra
silvia chaverra • LESSON IN PROGRESS

very sad that people do not have the same rights and have to go through such humiliation.

09/05/2021
Avatar for ZYSHAWN WILLIAMS
ZYSHAWN WILLIAMS • COMPLETED LESSON

You can become more aware of your own implicit bias.

09/27/2021

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