Systemic racism isn't about consciously-held beliefs. That's just plain "racism".
Systemic racism is the kind of racism you participate in without realizing it. A really clear example: calling for the end of affirmative action in college applications, but not considering things like legacy admissions. Legacy admissions favor people who were not discriminated against in the past. So by being "not racist", it promotes racism.
You want admissions? Yeah, lots of things I do end up participating in systemic racism. My theater troupe is pasty white, and one reason for it is that we were already pasty white. It doesn't look like a welcoming place for people of color.
We tried to do something about that, and we didn't do a great job of it. We put other things ahead of solving that problem. That's systemic racism. Nobody held explicitly racist beliefs, but the effect was discriminatory.
Systemic racism is the kind of racism you participate in without realizing it. A really clear example: calling for the end of affirmative action in college applications, but not considering things like legacy admissions. Legacy admissions favor people who were not discriminated against in the past. So by being "not racist", it promotes racism.
You want admissions? Yeah, lots of things I do end up participating in systemic racism. My theater troupe is pasty white, and one reason for it is that we were already pasty white. It doesn't look like a welcoming place for people of color.
We tried to do something about that, and we didn't do a great job of it. We put other things ahead of solving that problem. That's systemic racism. Nobody held explicitly racist beliefs, but the effect was discriminatory.