If race refers to groups of peoples with different histories and cultures, what is racism?

Racism is based on prejudice toward so-called racial groups. But racism goes beyond simple prejudice. What makes racism so powerful and destructive is that the negative prejudice is the basis for discrimination against "racial groups." The discrimination can take place in the job market, housing market, educational system, health care service system, or some other arena.

What this definition of racism implies is that one group has the power to discriminate against another. For example, in the housing market, discrimination against African Americans leads to greater difficulty renting apartments, taking out mortgages, and buying houses in certain areas. In most instances, White people have not sat down and agreed upon a plan about how to exert power and discriminate against African Americans (although this has happened, for example, in some White neighborhoods where there is fear of African Americans moving in). Instead, it is the biases of individual Whites (who are reluctant to rent apartments or sell houses or loan money to African Americans) that lead to individual acts of discrimination.

These individual acts of discrimination, however, add up and become larger patterns, resulting, for example, in racial segregation in housing. And this racial segregation at the neighborhood level prevents people from different groups from getting to know each other. The lack of contact among groups makes it easy for stereotypes to continue, and, thus, prejudice at the individual level is maintained.

This view of racism as emerging from the actions of many individuals is a view of bottom-up racism. But racism can also result from top-down processes, for example, from institutional or corporate policies. Decisions within media corporations about the portrayal of minorities in advertising, television, newspapers, and movies, for example, are top-down decisions that can result in racial stereotypes persisting at the cultural level. Informal corporate policies and procedures that interfere with minority hiring and promotion can lead to racist employment patterns. It is important to note that it is the power of White individuals, both through individual and institutional decisions, that results in the racism that makes it hard for African Americans and other people of color, for example, to obtain equal housing opportunities. The power of White individuals in this respect is not complete power, but relative power. That is, it is Whites rather than African Americans who are more likely to make decisions about mortgages as loan officers in banks; or Whites rather than African Americans who are more likely to own rental property in higher socioeconomic areas.

The relative power of Whites is based, in part, on racial differences in educational systems, job markets, and wealth, which result in Whites' being more likely to attain positions which allow them to have higher incomes and to control corporate and public resources. And, like the housing market, the educational and employment arenas embody their own complex webs of racism: Individual prejudice and acts of discrimination add up to form larger, institutional patterns of racism, which then reinforce the individual level of prejudice.

The point is that racism is a complex, interlocking mechanism at many levels of society. Racism in the different spheres of societyÑwork, home, education, government, media, religionÑis interwoven. Racism in one area cannot be understood without understanding the racist patterns in other areas. In addition, in each area, racism at the individual or micro-level cannot be understood without taking into account the racism at the institutional or macro-level. And, to make it more complex, the specific forms and assumptions of prejudice and bias will vary for different ethnic minority groups based on the history of contact between minority and majority groups. As a result, different ethnic minority groups will vary in their positions of marginality in society.