I'm a conservative who believes systemic racism is real
The phrase "systemic racism," like "climate change" and "gun control," has been sucked into the vortex of the culture war. The emotional reaction to these words seems to preclude reasoned debate on their meaning.
But a divisive concept can be clarifying. I know it has been for me: I don't think it's possible to be a conservative without believing that racism is, in part, structural.
Most on the American right have dug into a very different position. They tend to view racism as an individual act of immorality. And they regard the progressive imputation of racism to be an attack on their character. In a free society, they reason, the responsibility for success and failure is largely personal. They're proud of the productive life choices they've made and refuse to feel guilty for self-destructive life choices made by others.
I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood of a middle-class suburb in a Midwestern city. I went to a middle-class high school, with middle-class friends, eating middle-class fried bologna sandwiches. And for most of my upbringing, this seemed not only normal but normative. I assumed this was a typical American childhood.
Only later did I begin to see that my normality was actually a social construction. By the time I was growing up in the 1970s, St. Louis no longer had legal segregation. But my suburb, my neighborhood and my private high school were all outcomes of White flight. The systems of policing, zoning and education I grew up with had been created to ensure one result: to keep certain communities safe, orderly and pale.
Was this my fault? Not in the strictest sense. I didn't create these systems. But I wish I had realized earlier that these systems had created me.
This is what I mean by systemic racism. If, on my 13th birthday, all the country's laws had been suddenly, perfectly and equally enforced, my community would still have had a massive hangover of history. The structures and attitudes shaped during decades and centuries of oppression would still have existed. Legal equality in theory does not mean a society is justly constituted.