[Post 6] - Art & Activism: Systemic Racism
- Dani Romero
- Oct 23
- 17 min read
Everyone stretch your neck, grab a cup of coffee, and buckle in. This is going to be the longest post of this series so far, because there's no use in even discussing it if we don't properly explore each aspect of how systemic racism continues to cripple the United States. We will never know true progress without the power of sincere dialogue, acts of apology, hard work toward forgiveness, and major societal and institutional changes so that we never repeat our mistakes again.
Right now, I recognize that the timing is poor, to be discussing mistakes that hopefully don't happen again when our country is literally repeating the fascist steps it took to generate the Holocaust of WW2. I mourn so much for the people that are being targeted by these campaigns of hate, by our own government, with the support of so many wayward people who don't or won't understand the pain they're causing. I feel fury for the lack of action from the party of opposition, to continually let these heinous acts go with little more challenge than a slap at the hand and a shrug. But as so many of us share in that jaded sense of futility, I tell you just as I tell myself that we MUST not give up. There are too many good, innocent people, who don't have the power of our voices or our votes to stand up for themselves. We need to be the heroes we want to see. That much is clear.
So not despite, but because of all that is happening at this time, we're going to grab this topic and shake it loose, all the difficult truths we need to face, all the history I can possibly fit into this post, the things we all should consider to better our understanding of our neighbors, friends, family, and colleagues. The problems that such a complex topic as institutional racism covers is wide-ranging, and therefore, when solutions are implemented, we are more often than not blanket-applying those fixes to multiple issues. Sometimes it's not a one-size-fits-all kind of task, though. Sometimes we must be more patient, more considerate to hearing voices that are angry after years of being shut down. Sometimes we're going to have to face really, really difficult, awkward, uncomfortable and guilt-inducing feelings, in order to fully understand the level of pain that people can live in just from societal inequities (If you'd like a perfect example, consider the Jane Elliot 'Blue Eye, Brown Eye' experiments).
It's important to remember that similar to the rough example of helping clean up litter, we may not be the perpetrators of these acts in which we're meant to feel that guilt. But we can be the righteous ones to help people stand up against racism. We can push back against the system that keeps marginalized groups oppressed and refuse to participate in it. Let's look at some of the ways our society currently employs racism, and responses we can use to change these things.
Criminal Justice: Mass Incarceration, the 'War on Drugs' and Biased Algorithms
In the United States, we have a major problem. The rate of incarceration in our country since the 1970s has far exceeded that of any other country, regardless of land mass or population. The privatization of prison facilities has created major profits for private companies, who build and operate prisons in contract with the government. This means there is a major financial incentive for these high incarceration rates to remain high. But how in the world did we get into such a dystopian concept-become-reality?
During the 'tough on crime' era, taking place during the 1970's to the 1990's, public safety initiatives saw huge crackdowns on criminal activity, including longer prison sentences, mandatory minimums, stricter parole conditions, and more. Crime rates were indeed high in the 1970s, with significant jumps in violent crime and homicides caused by a declining economy, new waves of drug abuse and addiction, and the baby boomer generation hitting just the right average age for participating in criminal activity. Rather than responding to this crisis with increased funding for struggling neighborhoods and educational institutions, the United States government decided to simply imprison more people and keep them imprisoned for longer time periods.
Though it seemed an easy solution, it did nothing to address the conditions by which the crime was generated. The program was meant to imprison and rehabilitate, but again, if there's only financial gain to be made by these contractors running these prisons, why would they ever try to rehabilitate the people that keep their system making money?
In contrast, if we look at the prison systems of countries like Norway, Germany, or Denmark, we see two distinct plans cooperating with one another to keep their citizens safe: incarceration programs that measure their success upon rehabilitation AND pragmatic legislation that helps to address poverty, the number one driver for crime worldwide. Norway in particular is a good example to dissect because they too at one point used a punitive justice system, such as the United States uses now. However, what's important to note is that this system ONLY works if it is federally mandated. The power for states to act within their own interests and opinions is intrinsic to the American dream, but this also creates a slippery slope towards infringement on citizen's rights in other states.
Example: Illinois has some of the strictest gun laws in the country. But violence committed with firearms is still something we grapple with because of the immediate access to other nearby states who do NOT share those strict gun laws.
While it's important for our states to each maintain their own systems and autonomy to certain degrees, it is the duty of a country's government to make decisions that afford rights, freedoms and promises of safety to the citizens of its country, not just the state in which they live. Prison systems are one example that I believe the evidence shows would be better managed by one public sector authority, with the resources needed to not only rehabilitate the people already incarcerated, but to also equally address the conditions which lead those people to commit crime. It's the latter of those two pieces that positively affects ALL citizens, whether they've ever committed a crime or not. It is addressing income inequality, removal of racial biases from the systems and tools we have in place, and the creation of communal resources to enrich neighborhoods, schools and workplaces everywhere with equal opportunities.
Housing and Wealth Inequality: Redlining, the Wealth Gap and Housing Devaluation
The wealth gap is one of the most commonly discussed concerns in elections and their candidate campaigns. We repeat this issue over and over again, using different verbiage or examples, and yet we remain in a cyclical spiral into exacerbated economic disparities. Between the rising cost of living and housing, discriminatory practices like redlining or racist lending policies and intergenerational wealth transfers creating a further divide between renters and owners, it often feels like a nearly impossible issue to tackle.
Admittedly, this is a topic that I find quite difficult to understand, because of the vast wealth our world has accumulated, both in currency that we ourselves created and in literal collateral resources. Our world generates 2.12 billion tons of waste, and the projections for that number will continue to rise with each passing decade. Over 80% of the waste that we produce could be recycled or used to address poverty. United States billionaires alone recently reached an amassed worth of $7.6 trillion as of September 2025 (an increase of $4.7 trillion in less than eight years time) and most of that wealth won't ever be taxed under our existing system. It will be used to generate further waste, it will be handed down to heirs to do more of the same, and meanwhile, the poor will grow poorer, and conditions of living will get worse. Reading all of this, it seems quite obvious what the solution is, no?
Instead of enforcing equal taxation and treating our material possessions and resources as necessary pieces of a comfortable living for all humans on this planet, we allow the richest among us to rob us, particularly communities of color, and we ingest the news they themselves give us through the networks and technology that they own and control. Many will then naturally begin to ask why people don't fight back against this, and the answer is that many people do try to combat these practices, especially people of color.
However, this is where systemic racism plays a devastating and generations-lasting role in quashing those efforts. Aside from other core aspects like voter suppression and redistricting to worry about, there is a commonly known practice called 'redlining'. Redlining is an illegal, discriminatory practice that withholds essential resources from neighborhoods with minority populations. This includes services like mortgages, insurance and loans, essentially marking huge towns as 'ineligible' for federally-backed resources. In the 1930s, the agencies working for the United States government created maps of each state and drew red lines around areas they deemed to be 'hazardous' or 'high-risk' neighborhoods. The vast majority of those redlined areas were areas populated by African American residents. Though redlining was outlawed by the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the three decades worth of historical discrimination continues to have lasting effects, with communities still often treated as less-than, or uninvestable. This creates a highly unstable living situation for these areas, which contributes to less job opportunities within that area, which statistically leads to increased crime, and thus increased violence. The domino effect is extremely difficult to stop as well without sweeping immediate action, despite recent efforts at gradually aiding the towns ravaged by their history.
To this day, neighborhoods predominantly occupied by black families find their homes valued almost 25% less than other areas, including towns that immediately surround them. Despite the legality of this inequality being undisputedly wrong, it doesn't change the selling or asking prices of these homes. Even the most beautiful of newly built homes and apartment complexes is inevitably affected by neglected local schools, removal or closing of neighborhood facilities and community centers like libraries, and lack of maintenance from local leaders and their teams.
There must be a concerted effort by states as well as the federal government to support sweeping initiatives across the country to increase access to affordable credit, down payment assistance like grants and loans, and to invest in affordable homeownership for new generations. Aside from purely monetary solutions, there are also practical policy changes that can be implemented, such as reforming the zones of areas to allow for mixed-income communities and more diverse, but affordable, neighborhoods (the key is affordability, because without that factor, all we achieve is gentrification). When towns are treated with an equal level of monetary investment and manpower behind local resources, there are more opportunities for retirees, young families starting out on their own, or people simply moving to a new place for their own reasons to then create their own local investment by shopping for necessities and pleasures in that area. The final, most important thing we can do as a society to fix these housing issues is to hold institutions accountable for the actions they have either started or perpetuated over time, such as loan companies, banks, and our own local government. These people should be hearing our voices, but also feeling the weight of our wallets searching for assistance elsewhere. A lack of financial investment in their companies means a forced change to treat us, their customers, fairly and equally.
Education: Unequal Funding and the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Research shows that children who are exposed to violence will significantly increase the chance that they will eventually engage in violent behavior themselves. This is why when we create control groups of black and white males in studies related to childhood exposure to violence, both were equally likely or unlikely to engage in violence, including in cases of those people experiencing childhood abuse.
This is important to consider when communities in poverty are far more likely to experience criminal activity, domestic violence, and more. We discussed the effects of redlining and housing devaluation in neighborhoods earlier; now let's consider gentrification as an added factor into the mix. Gentrification is the process of wealthier residents moving into low cost communities, thereby increasing the cost of living until the poor are forced into densely packed areas just outside of those towns. The new areas they are moved into are met with minimal or no resources to help them live, causing the rate of violence to increase, which also means police presence increases, feeding tensions between the groups and creating an ingrained bias that those communities are inherently more unruly, less valuable, or in need of supervision and ultimately, increased incarceration.
To see exactly how defunding local schools and libraries ends in increased incarceration, let's consider what we imagine as the average childhood experience during the school year.
A child needs to get to school to learn. Their parent would drive them to school, or the family would pay the school for a bus to come and pick them up from a designated location.
But what if that family can't afford to pay the school to be covered on that bus route because your job underpays? What if the parent has to work multiple jobs just to support their family by affording groceries, clothing and shelter/rent? What if the only option is for the child to walk to school, where they could be exposed to the conditions of poverty in their neighborhood, in particular criminal activity that encourages young people into joining gangs, becoming transporters of illegal materials, or even being taken and forced into slave labor? Let's say the child makes it to school safely: what if the classrooms are so underfunded that they can't afford updated textbooks or supplies? What if there are no after school activities or clubs to enrich those students and keep them in a safe, communal and social space to continue growing? Once again, you come upon a situation where that student is put in danger, at the very least of not receiving a standard level of effective education in order to be a critical thinker, a proficient worker with special talents that have been encouraged, and so many more issues.
The domino effect is not only immediately devastating, it carries long term consequences that can keep children, teens and adults from living on equal footing to their peers who live in safe areas with well funded institutions to back them up and support their growth.
When you hear about the school-to-prison pipeline, these kinds of scenarios are exactly what is being referenced. When kids have nowhere to go because their parents have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, when their schools have no place for them to play and learn after classes let out, the places that teens in particular can go for an emotional and productive outlet become slim pickings, and often become more of a cover for something more nefarious. Countless kids are conscripted into crime without it being very clear in the beginning. The initial condition of belonging to a group, of feeling seen and understood and cared about eventually creates a powerful, convincing pull for these newly young adults to do just about anything that's asked of them, because it's for their 'found family'. This same process happens constantly to adults who become unknowingly enrolled into cults, so imagine how much easier it is to convince young people to do the same things to fulfill the void they feel not receiving basic necessities for a well-lived life of safety.
When redlining forces specific neighborhoods and specific race groups into crumbling societal conditions, it is setting up generations for failure. This is why cities like Chicago are attempting to invest so much time and effort into their public schools, most of which exist in neighborhoods experiencing severe conditions of poverty. When we treat the underlying issues of poverty itself and especially when we start lives off the right way at a young age, we are far more likely to be successful as a society at creating an environment that really embodies the American dream.
Healthcare: Treatment Disparities and Health Outcomes
The last and most important of all these examples of systemic racism is an issue that ultimately affects every single American citizen: healthcare. Our country employs a mixed-model healthcare system, one that's largely dominated by private, market-based insurance companies, as well as a large chunk of government-funded programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Many of you reading this likely have an employer-sponsored plan or private insurance, but we also all likely understand the absolute pain-in-the-ass that is our healthcare system. As of 2024, 69% of the world's population is covered by universal healthcare, a system that guarantees health services without the threat of financial hardship attached to it. Everything that is taxed in a country helps to funnel towards covering the costs of healthcare for every living person in covered regions. The terms of this kind of coverage varies by country, but largely speaking, the sentiment is clear: health care is a human right.
We've achieved so much as science continues to reveal amazing things to us through the hard work of researchers and engineers, and yet in the United States, we decided to capitalize on the suffering that comes with the human condition, rather than create a country that clearly showcases the care its citizens need in order to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. Universal health care is a big bit to chomp on in an already long article, so I'll save a lengthy essay on that for another day. What we need to focus on right now for this article is how our current healthcare system not only harms every person unable to afford the incomprehensibly high costs of care, but actively discriminates against different races to make receiving care even more difficult, if not completely impossible.
Some of the foundational pieces of our healthcare system, before a patient ever imagines a need to see a doctor, include concepts like economic stability, food security, safe communities, and effective education, but a lot of those we've already touched on. So let's skip ahead to the reality of a patient of color needing medical care, from a routine check-up all the way up to a complex, life-threatening surgery. From birth, infants of color are more likely, across the board, to die than white infants, due to a lack of access to proper healthcare or treatment for pregnancy-related complications to the mother. Even in communities that have fully functioning and technologically updated facilities like hospitals and urgent care centers, many companies enforce lower hours and minimum wage jobs so that the benefit of insurance doesn't have to be provided to their workforce. In addition to this, even full time employees who are eligible for insurance coverage often find it prohibitively expensive and completely unwilling to cover even the most basic health issues that the average person faces.
These practices affect communities of color in far more harsh ways. Racial bias has been an ongoing issue for Black people especially. Since the 1840s, the false belief of African Americans being able to feel 'less pain' has continued to unconsciously sway the opinions of major medical institutions, many of which are making enormous efforts to thoroughly clean their slates. Similarly, this effect has also harmed women as a whole, as the standard study of the white, male body as the biological 'norm' has enabled a system that drastically underserves female or other binaried patients. Women might notice this most obviously during dismissals of their voiced concerns.
In addition, studies have found that when faced with an unaffordable treatment for a debilitating health issue, people of color are far more likely to be subjected to experimental medical studies, sometimes even with the promise of a financial incentive for their participation. During these experiments, involuntary sterilizations, preventable long-term symptom suffering and biological theft for research have all coalesced into an inherent distrust of the system as a whole. A lot of these problems might sound incredibly familiar if you're a person who fears seeking treatment. I know the emotion firsthand, and yet the discriminations I've faced absolutely pale in comparison to the literal torture that marginalized groups have experienced throughout history, and continue to live through to this day, even as recent as the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, which showed 81.4% more doses provided to white residents, rather than Black residents, in phase 1 of the federal rollout.
Sadly, this issue is one that is going to take a LOT of time and a LOT of effort from the government to regain the trust of communities of color. Over and over through history, there have been programs that blatantly try to exploit or harm patients, with scientists and doctors treating them as 'less than' based on old falsehoods or internalized prejudices. This has had a generational effect as well, where word-of-mouth through families, friends, classmates and co-workers has discouraged countless people from seeking help in order to avoid the very real threat of being taken advantage of, or given less effective care. Education is the single best tool that we can use, to ensure that all people know about these malpractices and to ensure that any institution of health must establish permanent full transparency of their work and studies.
There have already been so many lives lost because of the effect of treatment disparity, and more will happen as long as this rift exists between doctors and patients. Representation within our healthcare system is also incredibly important in the same way it's crucial for students of color to see teachers of color. That representation has literally paid off in dividends by creating more hopeful outcomes for students across the world, let alone just our nation. Diverse hiring practices is the simplest solution to bridge the gap and begin the difficult conversations we must face as a nation: that our country was built on some good principles, but largely was only possible through the exploitation of people of color.
We are not our ancestors in that we do not have to share their ethical beliefs and practices. Our generations can be the change we wish to see by starting to implement these progressive practices, and in many places we're already seeing the seeds planted and beginning to bud. Now our government and institutions must support that effort as well, both following the example of everyday citizens who have already taken those first steps, and also by leading the charge with even more robust incentives for people to sign on to the effort.
In writing this series of essays, I hope that the domino effect of all these issues paints a more cohesive, digestible picture of the problems we face in our country from a more empathetic, ground-up point of view. Looking at things overhead makes each crack in the foundation feel impossible to address, but the reality is that when you take time to peer into the granular details of each issue, you begin to see just how interconnected they are, and feel how they affect real people, including you. This education takes some time investment, but each person is far more effectively equipped to combat the systems that need corruption excised.
As time goes on, I'll continue every so often to write on these different subjects, but they'll be a bit more interspersed with some examinations of work I'm doing for my portfolio, a deeper look into the kinds of art I love and why, and so many other things. This series is not done, nor is it forgotten. I hope you all have enjoyed what's been written so far, and will continue to look for more in the future, because I'll still be here, blabbing away about it!
HOMEWORK: When it comes to raising the voices of those who have systematically been oppressed throughout history, we all ride a very fine line between lifting people of color up to be even more visible and accidentally shouting over them. If we want to see substantial progress, it's important that we hear the experiences of the people themselves.
Seek out an artist of color whose work you love. Reach out to them via email or if they permit DMs by social media, this is another route you can take. If they have the time and are open to it, ask if you can create a portrait of that artist alongside a small interview.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If your chosen artist does not want to participate in this homework, DO NOT PESTER THEM OR TRY TO CHANGE THEIR MIND. It's extremely important that people have a say over their own representation, especially if it's being interpreted by another artist or author.
If they DO consent to helping with this project, ask these three questions:
1. What does the ideal world look like to you?
2. What are three things/people/etc that influence you or your work?
3. What is one symbol that must be present in a portrait of you?
In learning about the artist's worldviews, their interests and passions, and even just one thing/idea that is very important to them, your representation of that person is more informed and genuine. Before sharing that portrait anywhere, it's also super important to get their permission to share it! This homework is meant to be practice for you anyway, not a finished portfolio piece. Give autonomy to your model!
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