Structural Racism In The United States

Racism has been a part of the U.S. since the beginning. From the colonial era to now, there has been many things that have been done to improve the lives of whites. Throughout the years, many laws and court decisions directly benefit white people. This had led to many generations either benefiting or being hurt by these race driven decisions and events. These decisions and events have led to structural racism.
Structural racism is when racism becomes part of many social institutions like work, school, and politics (Golash-Boza 2015:187). This type of racism, which has developed from events like the legalization of slavery and segregation, has been disadvantaging minorities for generations and it has become cyclical. This means that even today …show more content…
The people who are benefiting from these events are the whites. The benefits for them are also cyclical. Most whites today don’t believe they have more privileges than a minority and they are wary to believe that they have an advantage that dates back all the way to the colonial era. They believe equality should be part of every institution and without it they believe they are being discriminated against. This leads to a color-blind ideology being enacted that causes the already suffering minority to become more disadvantaged (Golash-Boza 2015:66). This is very prevalent in the post-secondary school system. These colleges and trade schools want to increase diversity and bring more minority students that might not have the money or stellar grades to typically get into college. These policies that approve and employ affirmative action have become a topic that is widely debated. Some people believe affirmative action in colleges are reverse discrimination on the students who “truly” deserve to be there. The decisions that outright ban affirmative action can be seen as a way for whites to stay ahead of the minorities who might not have the resources to …show more content…
BAMN, also called Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, was a Supreme Court case that was seeing if the Michigan state constitutional ban on race and sex- based discrimination in public universities was violating the equal protection clause in the fourteenth amendment (2014 1). This ban, called Proposition 2, was approved by Michigan voters in 2006. Proposal 2 made affirmative action illegal in public employment, public education, and public contracting (Constitution of Michigan 2006). In 2008, it was taken to the district court for the eastern district of Michigan to challenge the constitutionality of the proposal (Legal Information Institute 2014 ). The Legal Information Institute website stated that he court decided that the proposal didn't violate the constitution. The websites also said that it was challenged again and brought to the court of appeals for the sixth circuit in 2011 were it was found to violate the constitution and the decision found in 2008 was overturned (2014). After this decision the attorney general of Michigan, Bill Schuette said he would appeal this decision once more to the Supreme Court (Legal Information Institute 2014). He got his appeal, which started in March of 2013, was decided in April of the following year. In a 6 for and 2 against it was found to not violate the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment (OYEZ 2014). In an overview of the case in The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law website,