Why “I’m Not Racist” Isn’t the Point
The Racism We See — and the Racism We Don’t
We tend to know racism when we see it. It shows up in racial slurs shouted in public. In hate crimes that make the news. In threats, vandalism, or intimidation meant to remind people they are not welcome. In moments where prejudice is spoken plainly, without apology or disguise. In acts meant to humiliate, frighten, or erase someone’s dignity.
This is overt racism. It involves explicit, conscious acts of racial hostility or discrimination. At one point, we thought it was going to be be less and less socially acceptable over time. It still causes real harm, real fear, and real violence. It must be named and confronted whenever it appears.
For many people, this is the version of racism they are most familiar with. It’s the kind we can point to and say, That is wrong. It’s the kind many people mean when they say, I’m not racist.
But there is another form of racism that is harder to see, harder to talk about, and far more enduring.
The Racism That Doesn’t Require Bad Intentions
I came to understand this more clearly while sitting in a lecture by Tricia Rose at the university where I worked. She is a renowned academic, but she didn’t begin with theory or terminology. She looked out at the room and asked a simple question:
“Do you know what keeps me up at night?”
Then she began to peel back layer after layer of data about who gets ahead in this country and who doesn’t.
She talked about how Black Americans are at the same levels or worse than they were during the height of the civil rights era across nearly every measure of how people get ahead.
Education, wealth, home ownership, mental health, income, health
All of them. It made me sick to my stomach. Since the Civil Rights Era Black Americans have fallen behind or stayed the same in EVERY category. How is that even possible??? Something is broken.
Today, the median Black household holds far less wealth than the median white household, even after decades of civil rights legislation. In 2023, white households held more than 80 percent of all U.S. wealth, while Black families accounted for just over 3 percent of total family wealth.
Black Americans are also far more likely than whites to be incarcerated. In 2019, Black people made up about 14 percent of the U.S. population but 33 percent of the prison population. This pattern begins early. In juvenile facilities, Black youth are detained at rates many times higher than white youth.
Homeownership—the traditional engine of intergenerational wealth in the United States—follows the same pattern. In 2022, about 45 percent of Black families owned homes, compared with roughly 75 percent of white families, leaving a 30-point gap that has persisted for decades.
These aren’t isolated failures. They are consistent outcomes. And they point to something deeper than individual prejudice.
Structural Racism
Structural racism refers to the way laws, everyday routines, and shared assumptions quietly shape opportunity over time—creating unequal outcomes even when no one involved believes they are acting with racist intent.
It doesn’t rely on slurs or hate. It doesn’t require cruelty or conscious bias. It operates through accumulation, inheritance, and momentum.
Structural racism lives in how neighborhoods were drawn, how schools were funded, how loans were approved, how laws were enforced, and how opportunity was distributed generation after generation.
You don’t need a room full of overt racists for these patterns to continue. You only need yesterday’s decisions to keep shaping today’s realities. Part of what makes structural racism so difficult to see is that we are often taught to treat history as something that is over.
But racial categories themselves were created for specific purposes, tied to power, belonging, and access. White, in particular, did not emerge as a neutral identity but as a category that conferred protection and advantage.
When advantage is built into the foundation, it compounds. When disadvantage is built in, it does the same. Time doesn’t neutralize that. It amplifies it.
Why We Need to Talk About Both
Overt racism and structural racism are not competing explanations. They are layered on each other. Overt racism is about what people do on purpose. Structural racism is about what continues even when no one claims responsibility.
We need language that can hold both truths at once. A society can make progress on overt racism while leaving the deeper architecture of inequality largely untouched. When that happens, we end up asking the same question again and again:
Why does it feel like nothing has changed? Because in some of the most important ways, the structure hasn’t.
And that, more than anything else, is what should keep us up at night.
An Invitation
If these ideas resonate and you want structured support to understand them, Project 2045 is hosting Skill Building cohorts in 2026 that teach the conversation skills white people need for this moment. It is a space to build capacity, deepen self-awareness, and strengthen the muscles required for a shared multiracial future.
Check out cohort details and apply here.
Conversation and action is how change begins.