There has been a lot of talk recently about “systemic racism” in the United States. At first, I was skeptical of the term, particularly because those who throw the term around rarely name an example of specific conduct by anyone that intentionally disadvantages blacks. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that there actually are quite a number of instances of major societal institutions engaging in systemic conduct that is clearly known to differentially disadvantage blacks. In every case I can think of, the conduct that systemically disadvantages blacks is a sacred cow of the left promoted for the benefit of some other progressive interest group.

For today, I’ll discuss two of the most clear-cut examples. One has been going on for a long time, while the other is new. Because both involve sacred cows of the political left, the harmful systemic effect on blacks just gets ignored.

Opposition to School Choice

Over the course of the last year or so, the two big national teachers unions (National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers) have been mostly in the news for their advocacy to keep schools closed and kids at home. That’s bad enough, but hopefully will end soon. But then the teachers unions will revert to their previous and perennial priority number one, which is the opposition to school choice — otherwise known as keeping minority kids trapped in failing urban public schools.

Here in New York, charter schools saw major expansion under the strong advocacy of Mayor Michael Bloomberg (2002-2013). But current Mayor de Blasio, who was backed by the teachers union, has done everything in his power to stall and halt the expansion of the charters, and thereby keep as many kids as possible trapped in the failing unionized schools. Moreover, the state legislature, also at the behest of the union, has imposed a cap on the number of charters. That cap has been reached in New York City, meaning that no more charters can open; and the legislature has failed to raise the cap. A charter school advocacy group called the New York City Charter School Center lists 6 new charters ready to open but unable to do so due to the cap. Meanwhile, applications by students to attend the charters exceed available slots by factors of 2:1 in Manhattan and Brooklyn, 3:1 in the Bronx, and 4:1 in Queens.

Data on school performance overwhelming show that the charters wildly outpace the unionized public alternatives. In a post back in 2017 I quoted this statistic from 2016 comparing the regular public schools to Success Academies, one of the top charters:

Test scores released by the state Friday show 94% of Success Academy students passed the 2016 math exam and 82% passed the reading exam. . . . By comparison, 38% of students in traditional public schools met state reading standards this year, up from 30.4% in 2015. And 36.4% of city kids passed math tests in 2016, up from 35.2% in 2015.

In this 2020 post I referred to Thomas Sowell’s new book, Charter Schools and Their Enemies, for reams of more recent data showing impressive outperformance of the charters over the unionized public alternatives. The latest aggregate information I can find today is at the New York Charter School Center site, with data covering 2018-19. Those data show that in math 63.2% of New York City charter school students achieved “proficiency” on the New York State tests versus 45.6% for the public “district” schools; and in English Language Arts, it was 57.3% proficiency for the charters versus 47.4% for the public “district” schools. Those are not small differences. Meanwhile, for the same 2019 test, Success Academies claims a 99% proficiency rate for its students in math, and 90% in ELA.

But the teachers union never quits. In July, after the legislature had failed to raise the cap, one of the chartering organizations, the SUNY Board of Trustees, was about to approve one new school by the device of re-using a charter of another school that had closed. The union called on their friends at the Board of Regents, and the new school was blocked. Here is the statement from NYS United Teachers crowing about their “victory.”

So, here we are in another year with a few hundred thousand young black kids failing to achieve “proficiency” in math and English, and the teachers union bosses celebrating their “success” in keeping the competition out and the dues flowing.

Vaccination Mandates

This one is brand new, but perfectly illustrates the total insensitivity of the progressive left to systemic negative effects on blacks as soon as one of their competing interest groups gets involved. In this case the competing interest group is politicians and bureaucrats looking to increase their power.

Only a few days ago we thought we had dodged a bullet when Mayor de Blasio announced that he was not — at least for now — going to go back to having a mandate for wearing masks in public. But then de Blasio immediately turned around and announced that the city will shortly begin requiring that people show proof of vaccination in order to participate in many indoor activities. From the AP, August 6:

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday that later this month the city will begin requiring anyone dining indoors at a restaurant, working out a gym or grabbing cocktails at a bar to show proof they’ve been inoculated. Workers at such establishments would also have to prove that they’ve had at least one shot of an approved vaccine.

De Blasio pitched this new requirement as simple common sense:

“It’s pretty straightforward,” de Blasio said. “You check their vaccination status. If they have it, great. If they don’t, turn around.”

But it seems that nobody in this super-progressive administration bothered to check that vaccination rates among blacks are significantly lower than the rates among other ethnic groups. Here are the latest data from the New York City government itself. As one striking example, for people aged 18 to 44, the vaccination rate so far for blacks is only 32%, while the rates for whites and Hispanics are 55%, and for Asians 86%.

I can’t speak to why the vaccination rate for blacks is so much lower than for other ethnic groups. As far as I know, at this point the vaccines are widely available and free. Maybe blacks are suspicious about negative side effects of the vaccines. But whatever the reason for their hesitancy to get vaccinated, it is clear that de Blasio’s new order is going to have significant differential adverse impact on them.

The Babylon Bee captures the idiocy in this headline from August 5: “Liberals Praise DeBlasio For Barring 65% Of Black NYC Residents From Society.” It’s satire, but just barely.

Other Examples

Other examples of systemic racism of the progressive project are not difficult to find. The next two on my list would be decreasing police presence in minority neighborhoods — leaving black residents increasingly subject to violent criminal behavior — and attempting to change the world temperature by raising the price of electricity and gasoline — with an economic impact that falls most heavily on low-income people. You may have your own favorite examples.