A Systems Analysis Approach to Systemic Racism
By: Bj Campbell
Tags: Culture War, Racism, Politics, Systemic Racism

“That time I got sucked into a local culture war.”

As with most things in July of 2020, the story starts with Covid-19, but I promise it won’t dwell there long. By the end of this tale, I hope to build a framework to talk about systemic racism (which is a real thing) without involving any of the cult-speak that’s infiltrating the conversation, so ordinary rational people can get to ordinary rational policy proposals without having to resort to weaponized racial prejudice, as is being done routinely now within the underlying infrastructure of Black Lives Matter.

Let’s begin the story.

The Covic-19 Culture War Battleground the week of July 6th pivoted to the school boards, both nationally and in my community, after the CDC issued a set of guidelines which were mostly benign, but included a six foot separation rule that was twice as large as the WHO’s three foot recommendation, and is thoroughly unachievable by most school districts in the country. The nations teachers read the rule, and interpreted it to mean that if they can’t get six feet of separation between desks, then they and their students are being marched off to the slaughter, so they started staging protests. One such protest is down the street from me. These are their demands:

Postpone the school start date until a safe, realistic, comprehensive plan is in place.

Allow local school clusters to determine their own phased reopening plans, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach in which everyone returns to school at the same time.

Provide a comprehensive and descriptive plan for how schools will follow CDC guidelines, and support that plan by providing PPE and cleaning products to schools.

Provide a contingency plan for suspected or confirmed exposure to COVID-19 while on school buses or grounds.

Provide a plan and resources to address technology access for low-income families who would prefer virtual schooling but are currently unable to do so.

Devote at least one full workday during pre-planning toward anti-racism and equity training at every school, led by someone with a background in critical race theory who is not a CCSD employee.

Which of these things is not like the others?

As a single parent, the first two bullets of the plan were obviously Trojan horses intended to delay the opening of school even longer, which would do not only tremendous damage to me, but to every other single parent or two income household. And this damage is not scientifically justified. Schools are, scientifically speaking, one of the safest things to reopen because of how little this disease affects children. The final bullet, that of shoe-horning Critical Race Theory (CRT) training into the school system is totally unrelated to Covid-19, has nothing to do with safety, and amounts to teaching a piece of pseudo-religion to my children.

I’ve been public that I don’t mind people believing in CRT, or any of the other bits and pieces of Social Justice dogma. I think belief in that stuff falls under the “freedom of religion” blanket in the United States, and if people choose to believe that, they can, and it doesn’t bother me. Pushing it on my kids in a public school, however, is just as inappropriate as pushing Christianity or Islam on them, so I was forced to write one of these silly letters to the school board, that they normally don’t read.

The letter:

Ladies and gentleman, My name is BJ Campbell. I’m a resident within the (redacted) district, and have two elementary school children at (redacted). I’m a Georgia Tech trained engineer, business owner, and (redacted) resident for decades. I’m also a full custody single parent since my wife passed away in 2019. I have not been active in PTA or school board politics due to time constraints involved with being a single parent, but I wanted to take a moment and share some thoughts related to something I read this morning in the Marietta Daily Journal. https://www.mdjonline.com/news/group-to-protest-cobb-school-districts-reopening-plans/article_426b76ea-c21f-11ea-a0a2-7b8caf279792.html I understand the incredible amount of stress that is on all members of public schools at this time, from teachers to administrators. I understand the CDC policies were late, slow to matriculate, and contained guidance (6 feet separation) that not only contradict the WHO’s recommendations (3 feet) they may be impossible to implement realistically. In this respect, the CDC failed in their duty as an advisory agency, and left all our schools holding the bag, including you. I do not envy your position, and I thank you for your efforts. 1) I have no position on masks, no position on other measures, and don’t care how restrictive schools are with the behavior of students in order to reopen, but schools must reopen. The United States is a world leader in two income households, a world leader in single parent households, and there is nothing that can be done to change that whether we like it or don’t like it. Public schools are essential for the United States to have a functioning economy, and for single parent or two income households to have a functioning life. Delaying the reopening of school any longer than (X) has already chosen to delay it will severely impair, possibly even destroy, the lives of single parents and two income parents. Long delays in reopening schools will severely damage the sub-populations of (X) who struggle the most, personally and financially. And because of the demographics underlying single parenting, this damage will be most pronounced within marginalized ethnic communities. 2) I read the list of demands from the “School ROCS” protest, and saw that it included mandatory “Critical Race Theory” training. Do not do this. Racism remains a present problem in the country, but the path forward is to teach our children to respect and love all individuals equally, regardless of their race, whether this teaching comes from scripture or from the liberties our nation was founded upon. Critical Race Theory teaches the exact opposite — that people should not be treated as individuals, and that prejudice should be encouraged against racial groups it views as dominant. Further, it uses “Spanish Inquisition” style circular reasoning in its indoctrination methods, convincing people that not being racist is evidence of racism. It is a dangerous cult that is making race relations in the country worse instead of better, because in leveraging prejudice as a tool, it puts prejudice back on the table, and makes interracial personal relationships which are the key to the future difficult or impossible. Including “Critical Race Theory” as a hidden rider in a list of demands totally unrelated to COVID-19 is quite honestly disgusting, and (redacted) Schools should either take a vocal stand against it, or at a minimum allow the demand to slide quietly into the night. If (redacted) does delay reopening further, I ask that single parents be granted special dispensation to enter their children into school on time. And I ask that Critical Race Theory training be avoided at all costs, because it is making our racial problems measurably worse instead of better. Thank you for your time.

That’s some pretty Culture-Warry language, that I usually steer away from in this publication, because I quite honestly don’t dislike folks in the Social Justice tribe any more than I dislike folks in other religious or pseudo-religious tribes. Most people are good people, regardless which indoctrinations they decide to adopt. I just don’t want them pushing their indoctrinations on my kids. I got the usual “thanks for the email” responses from most of the board, but the board member in my district had a more detailed one.

Hi BJ, Thanks for the email. I am the representative for (redacted) which is (redacted) High Schools so nice to meet you, even just through email. There is a whole lot in this email I cannot agree with, but that doesn’t mean we can’t engage in the conversation. One point I would make, particularly about your comments on race, is that we have been trying to “color-blind” our way out of addressing our racist past and present with nothing to show for it. While I am not sure what your race is, I sure hope you are taking the advice of listening to black voices when it comes to matters of race. Thank you again and be well. (redacted) Board Member (redacted) Board of Education, Post (redacted) | Pronouns: she/her/hers

This was a concise, polite reply, and synthesized a really deep schism in the modern discussion on race that I think is going to become very dangerous in the next few years, because of the direction it’s taking. We’ll cover this more below. My response to her was this:

Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I hope my response to you is even handed, courteous, and conscientious, and if it strays from that in any part I ask your forgiveness and help in making my case better understandable. I know lots of people heavily vested in the modern social justice movement. A friend is a black activist who has been featured on CNN. Another friend is a black man who has lived his entire life in and around the projects, and had numerous run-ins with (redacted) County police. I love both of these people. I’m not on an island, and I understand deeply the arguments in and around systemic racism. I am sympathetic, not only intellectually, but personally, with the stated intent of CRT and the wider social justice movement. But by analyzing the problem from the top down in academia, instead of from the bottom up looking at the situation in the streets, academic social justice types have fallen into a trap that will inevitably make things worse instead of better. I’d like to present a few insights into my (and many others in your district) thinking on these topics, which will hopefully help you understand the resistance to things like CRT, to help you better represent the people in your district. Patricia Bivol-Pavda’s re-formulation of a stipulative definition of racism as “prejudice plus power” is harmful to society for two reasons. For one, it’s intellectually inconsistent, as can be shown with cases such as antisemitism. Those within and outside of the social justice sphere of thought both generally agree that antisemitism is racist. Within the social justice sphere, antisemitism is racist because it is prejudice leveraged against a marginalized group. Outside the social justice sphere, it is racist because all prejudice against groups is racist. But if an American anti-semite moves to Israel, where Jews are the power group, that racist would become instantly non-racist by Bivol-Pavda’s formulation. It doesn’t work, and the Jewish community in particular is becoming wise to that, especially as rhetoric within social justice spheres has begun talking about reclassifying them from marginalized to privileged. But the bigger reason it’s harmful is this. The way it is implemented on the ground is to give a free pass to anti-majority prejudice. I understand the lure of using prejudice as a tool to drive equity, but it is a tool doomed to failure because of the reaction it will elicit. You cannot make systemic racism better by making individual racism worse, and that’s what CRT does by putting prejudice back on the table. It empowers white racists, because when they see prejudice against whites, they cheer and say “yay, we’re doing this again!” and we’re stepping backwards as a society instead of forwards. Systemic racism is undeniable when analyzed at a systems level, for things such as New York City’s stop and frisk policy. A nearly unenforceable gun control law is passed, the police are told to enforce it, the police leverage their assets to enforce it in the most efficient manner, and as a result they end up profiling black men and doing so in a racist way. The culprit here is the system, which was the gun law. Eric Garner was a similar case. He wasn’t choked to death for being black, (black men helped choke him) he was choked to death because he had a history of selling untaxed loose cigarettes on a street corner. He was killed by a cigarette tax enforcement goon squad. Again, the culprit is the system, in that case the egregious cigarette taxes which disproportionately affect poorer, more marginalized communities. This systems analysis approach could fix a tremendous amount of systemic racism in the country, but leveraging prejudice as an equity tool will not. I understand your frustrations about “color blinding our way out of a racist past with nothing to show for it.” I know a lot of people feel this way. But I don’t think we have nothing to show for it, I think we have a society, particularly within Metro Atlanta, that is deeply integrated with more even-terms interracial personal relationships than we’ve ever had, historically speaking. This is a net positive. My black activist friends have told me they believe “white privilege” to be 90% economic, and I believe them. But the source of this should be easily traceable to the drug war, the prison industrial complex, the school-to-prison-pipeline, and the destruction of the African American family unit that results from those. This is the continued story of The Trap. Those are fixable, but CRT doesn’t fix them. It likely makes them worse. I understand that this is only my perspective, but I need you to understand that my perspective is shared by a large number of people in your district, probably a majority, although they may not articulate it well. And I understand that this perspective may not align with many elements of yours, but I hope that you consider it, and use that consideration as part of your representation of our district. In particular, I respect others rights to disagree with my views on this topic, but I do not respect educators who would seek to indoctrinate my children in a different way. (redacted) Schools, as a government entity for all, have a duty to respect varying points of view. Thank you very much for your time.

She didn’t reply, and that’s fine. I didn’t expect one. I’ve watched CRT infiltrate corporate human resource departments, social media censorship departments, and higher education for a while. I always expected it would hit the public grade school systems eventually, and it probably has in many places in the country already. We’ve seen its results crop up several times very recently. Here are some examples.

The Reddit policy on hate speech was recently rewritten to provide a carve-out so that hate speech against the “majority group” (whites, men) is allowable.

During pride month, Facebook censors did the same thing — created a carve out so that hate speech against white males is allowed.

At the government level, the State of California is going to have a ballot initiative in the fall to literally strip all anti-discrimination language from their state constitution. They are going to attempt to put prejudice back on the table as a weapon at the government level. Defenders of this ballot initiative default to the same language in the email I received from the school board member. “Being blind to race has not achieved equity, therefore we must abandon treating people equally in order to drive equity.”

The entire drive of Critical Race Theory, and of the larger Social Justice movement today, is to re-introduce racial prejudice as a weapon to seek equity. I don’t object to the ideal of equity. It seems to me, at a national level, there are two problems with the discussion right now that I wish more people would understand.

1) Putting prejudice back on the table is going to do more harm than good to interpersonal relationships between people of different races, which is going to make equity worse instead of better,

2) Nobody who opposes CRT seems to be laying out an alternative approach to achieve equity, when that alternative approach seems easy and obvious to me.

Let’s focus on #2.

The Motte and Bailey of Systemic Racism

“Systemic Racism” is hard to discuss, because there are several different definitions of it floating around, and the folks within CRT and Social Justice swap the definitions around conversationally. Let’s examine two different definitions of the word.

Systemic Racism [1]: A group of corporate, government, or economic systems that when applied together unintentionally impede racial equity. Systemic Racism [2]: A culture wide subconscious bias against a race that impedes racial equity.

First off, we need to acknowledge that these are two completely different things. Examples of [1] are not examples of [2], and visa versa. And examples of [1] are easily pointed out, and easily fixable, yet all the dialogue from the Social Justice camp focuses on [2]. Let’s run through examples of [1] and how to fix them.

The Systemic Racism of New York City Gun Laws

New York City passes an egregious handgun law, with which it is almost impossible to comply. Mayors get elected to “get guns off our streets.” Police allocate resources to follow the mayor’s commands in the most efficient way possible. The result is racial profiling, and the NYPD throwing black men up against the wall frisking them, because they get a higher return on their effort when they racially profile. Systemic racism, in this case, flows from the gun law, and would be eradicated by the repeal of that gun law.

The Systemic Racism of New York Cigarette Taxes

New York City passes an egregious cigarette tax, which only rich people can afford, ostensibly to improve public health.

Because smokers smoke about the same amount regardless of their income bracket, but the cost of heavily taxed cigarettes is a larger portion of a poor person’s income than a rich person’s income, the cigarette tax becomes heavily regressive.

Every smoker I know in NYC asks their friends visiting from the southeastern US to stop off in North Carolina and buy cartons of cigarettes to bring with them and keep in a freezer. Organized crime also gets in on the racket, because it’s a racket, and that’s what organized crime does. Rackets.

Then the NYPD creates a cigarette tax enforcement wing, supposedly to combat the mob, but combating the mob is hard and leaning on poor people who are doing whatever they can to bypass the regressive tax is much easier. So they choke Eric Garner to death.

Eric Garner was not choked to death for being a black man. He was choked to death by black men. Eric Garner was assaulted by police because Eric had a history of selling “loosies” — loose single untaxed cigarettes — on the street to other poor people who couldn’t afford to buy taxed cigarettes. Systemic racism in this case flows from the cigarette tax, and would be eradicated by the repeal of that tax.

It’s worth noting at this point, that two of the “racist systems” we’ve identified were built by liberals.

The Systemic Racism of Virtual Redlining

In our modern social media marketplace, Facebook and similar platforms allow companies to target ads based on any number of criteria — just not race. But housing advertisers can craft groups of targeting criteria that aren’t explicitly racial, but correlate with race, to get the same effect. This is modern systemic racism in the same way that the original “redlining” by banks was. Ben Carson at HUD filed a lawsuit against Facebook for this systemically racist behavior. But curiously, if the government framework against racial prejudice were removed, as California is attempting to do, literal racial redlining would be back on the table as an acceptable business practice.

The Systemic Racism of Fiat Currency

The United States went off the gold standard in 1971, a few years after the hard won concessions from the Civil Rights Movement. Since then, your relative wage as an American worker has been tied to how many degrees of separation your job is from a bank.

Since rich people are more closely associated with banks, fiat currency initiated, fueled, and currently drives the widening wealth gap. The “rich get richer” engine was built by Richard Nixon in 1971 and has not ceased yet. But because the black population was relatively poor in 1971, they have not been able to capitalize on it in the way that whites in 1971 were, and since wealth is heritable, this created one of the greatest differential racial “privileges” we see today.

If you want to browse several dozen more graphs that show this, go here. Fiat currency was never intended to be a racist system, but its implementation became “systemically racist” per definition [1] above, because of when the starting gun was fired. The solution here is go back to the gold standard, or some other standard. Audit the Fed, end the Fed, this sort of thing. Maybe bitcoin. But this, and the next one, are responsible for almost all of the racial wealth disparity in the United States.

The Systemic Racism of The Drug War

This is the biggest source of systemic racism [1] in the United States, and unpacking it all would take ten articles. Instead, I’ll just copy a highly rhetorical rant-like dialogue between me and a buddy on a sports discussion forum a few days ago. He’s a black former football player from GT, very smart, who was monitoring my discussion about my school board and intrigued by the school board letters I quoted above.

Him:

First off, sorry for your loss! I couldn’t imagine the pain you feel daily with losing a spouse. That response on systemic racism was very interesting and rather mind blowing. I’m interested in CRT and your breakdown of it.

Me:

I think it’s going to fuck everything up, dude. I think it’s going to make the next two decades way worse, because of what I said in the second letter. Like, inequity is obvious. If you take off the weird cult glasses, the reasons are obvious. It’s the trap. It’s the drug war. Black folks don’t trust cops and cops don’t trust black folks because they’re always put at odds with each other due to the drug war. Snitches get stitches is classic Honor Culture talk — black folks (particularly men) have to resolve their disagreements on the street because they can’t trust the authority to resolve them for them. So you end up with more black men in prisons, more broken black homes, and more people saddled with poverty because broken homes don’t work as well as non-broken ones. The fucking government caused all this, and the government is a system, so “systemic racism” in that way is absolutely obviously a real and true thing. But then the CRT people play shell games with the words, so once you admit and understand that that’s a thing, they sneak this other thing under the shell, which is “all white people are secretly racist and if you say you’re not racist that’s evidence that you’re racist and oh by the way all inequitable outcomes are a result of that secret unknowable racism instead of THE TRAP. PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE TRAP.” It drives me fucking bonkers dude. The stats in the black community are evident, obvious proof against “Intersectionality Theory,” where the social justice people claim that socioeconomic outcomes are due to marginalized status, and people who check more boxes on the Intersectionality Matrix of Oppression are more marginalized than people who check fewer boxes. Black Men Black women have higher earnings, better jobs, are less likely to get shot, are less likely to end up in prison, and are more likely to retain the historical incomes of their family if they’re well off than black men are. Every single metric shows that black men are worse off than black women, but “Intersectionality Theory” says that’s impossible. And it’s the black women who are pushing it. I would be irate if I was a black dude. The reason black men are held back, at a statistical and individual level, is The Trap. Gah. I get so frustrated even typing this shit up. But that’s just my take — what’s your take on CRT?

Him:

Really, i have no thoughts on it bc i have been even exposed to that way thinking. I’m pretty just As frustrated in this new era of enlightenment/wokeness.

The #1 biggest and most important thing the United States can do to fix systemic racism is end the drug war, bring the baby daddies home, restore the traditional two parent black household, give black boys good male role models, restore trust in the police system, and fix the communities that the government broke.

The Rub

These are all achievable objectives that could be done with simple policy changes. But when the modern CRT / Social Justice Tribe ignores these, and attempts to lay blame for the situation on “a culture of unconscious bias” instead of the obvious reasons, they are perpetuating the actual problems by hiding them. They are making systemic racism [1] worse by focusing on systemic racism [2].

And to add insult to injury, by leveraging prejudice as a tool to fight systemic racism [2], they are opening the window for individual racism as it was understood prior, to jump back into play. Once prejudice is on the table, everybody gets to use it. Those actual conscious white racists we’ve been fortunate enough to sideline the last few decades are back in play. You gave their weapons back to them.

People within CRT, and within Social Justice at large, need to have an awakening moment. They need to understand the damage they’re doing. They need someone to rise within their ranks capable of actual systems analysis to handle the “systemic racism” discussion, and they need to be willing to let go of certain liberal sacred policy cows in their efforts.

And the people opposing CRT need to change their approach as well. Trolling Social Justice advocates on Twitter does no good. In order to step into a positive position in the dialogue, opposition to CRT needs to present a positive case for change in the way everyone can understand, as an alternate. I personally don’t think they’re doing that particularly well.