Racism

Any picture showing people of different appearances together in a positive setting is a strong response.

It is wrong to be unkind to someone because of how they look, because everyone deserves to be treated with kindness and respect.

Racism is when someone is treated unfairly or unkindly because of their race or ethnic background. It can happen between individuals — like when someone is excluded from a group because of how they look — or it can be built into systems, like when people from certain backgrounds are treated less fairly by institutions. One thing a young person can do to challenge racism is to be an upstander: speaking up calmly when they see or hear racist behaviour, rather than staying silent. This matters because racism gets stronger when people do not challenge it, and weaker when people make clear that it is not acceptable.

The view that racism is primarily a problem of individual attitudes — of prejudiced people making bad choices — is intuitively appealing but ultimately insufficient. While individual attitudes matter and cause real harm, racism's most powerful and enduring effects operate through systems and institutions that produce racial inequality regardless of whether any individual intends to discriminate.

The evidence for systemic racism is substantial. Research using matched CV studies has demonstrated that job applicants with minority-sounding names receive fewer interview callbacks than those with majority-sounding names, despite identical qualifications. In criminal justice systems across multiple countries, people from certain racial backgrounds are more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested, and given longer sentences, even when controlling for other factors. In healthcare, research has shown that patients from minority backgrounds receive different pain assessments and treatment recommendations. These outcomes cannot be explained purely by the attitudes of individuals — they reflect biases embedded in procedures, training, data, and institutional culture.

The legacy of colonialism adds historical depth to this argument. The racial hierarchies constructed to justify colonial exploitation did not disappear when empires ended. They persisted in economic inequalities between nations, in the devaluation of non-European cultures and knowledge, and in the racial assumptions embedded in institutions built during the colonial period. Contemporary racial inequality cannot be understood without this history.

However, individual attitudes are not irrelevant. Implicit and explicit biases held by individuals contribute to systemic outcomes — a biased hiring manager, a prejudiced police officer, a teacher with lower expectations of certain students. Individual attitudes and systemic structures are mutually reinforcing: systems reflect and reproduce the attitudes of the people who built and maintain them, while those systems in turn normalise certain attitudes and assumptions.

The practical implication is important. If racism were only a problem of individual attitudes, the solution would be education and persuasion. But if racism is also systemic, the solution requires institutional reform — changing policies, procedures, and structures that produce unequal outcomes, regardless of individual intent.

In conclusion, racism is both an individual and a systemic problem, but the systemic dimension is primary because it operates at scale, affects the most people, and is most resistant to change. Addressing individual attitudes is necessary but not sufficient. Lasting racial justice requires structural change.

Implicit bias refers to unconscious attitudes and stereotypes that influence a person's decisions and behaviour without their awareness. Unlike explicit prejudice, which involves consciously held negative views, implicit bias operates below the level of conscious thought — meaning a person can hold and act on racial biases while sincerely believing they are not racist.

In education, implicit bias can contribute to racial inequality in teacher expectations. Research has shown that teachers sometimes hold lower academic expectations for students from certain racial backgrounds, leading them to provide less challenging work, offer less encouragement, and interpret ambiguous behaviour more negatively. Over time, these small differences in treatment compound into significant gaps in attainment and opportunity — not because any teacher intended to discriminate, but because unconscious assumptions shaped their decisions.

In employment, implicit bias can affect hiring decisions. As demonstrated by CV studies, identical applications are treated differently depending on the apparent ethnic background of the applicant — suggested by their name alone. Interviewers may also unconsciously favour candidates who share their own cultural background or communication style, disadvantaging candidates from minority groups even when their skills are equal or superior.

Both examples illustrate why tackling racial inequality requires more than asking individuals to try harder to be fair. Structural interventions — such as blind recruitment processes and structured interviews — are needed to reduce the impact of bias that individuals may be unable to detect in themselves.