Page 167 - Microaggressions in Everyday Live Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation

From Old - Fashioned Racism to Modern Racism 141

of color to less dramatic and more subtle forms such as refusing to rent an
apartment or sell a house to a Black couple or discouraging sons or daughters
from marrying outside of their race. Most Whites would actively condemn
these acts as illegal, immoral, and contrary to the democratic ideals we hold
in this society (Sue, 2003). Individual racism occurs between people and/
or between groups. However, open expressions of racism are not the only
manifestations of racism. More broad definitions of racism include acknowl-

edgment that it may be expressed unintentionally and unconsciously as well.
Whether intentional or unintentional, and conscious or unconscious, it has the
effect of subordinating or oppressing a person or group because of attributes
such as color.
2. Institutional racism does not reside in individuals, but in the very
institutional policies, practices, and structures of governments, businesses,
courts, law enforcement agencies, schools, unions, churches, and other organ-
izations. It unfairly subordinates groups of color while allowing White

European American groups to profit or to be advantaged. There are many
examples of such inequities created by unfair policies and practices: segregated
neighborhoods and schools, discriminatory employment and promotion

policies, racial profiling, inequities in health care, and an educational curriculum
that ignores or distorts the history of people of color.
Ironically, institutional structures and practices are designed to regularize
procedures, to increase efficiency, and to allow for application of fairness, but

in reality they often contribute to oppression and discrimination: for example,

(1) Blacks were once defined as three - fifths of a man, (2) laws forbade Native

Americans to practice their religions, (3) Asians were not allowed to own

land, and (4) the “ separate but equal doctrine ” justified educational segrega-
tion. These unfair policies continue in the forms of bank lending practices,
environmental racism (allowing factories to set up shops that pollute minority
neighborhoods, but preventing them from entering affluent and White neigh-

borhoods), housing segregation, and so on.
3. Cultural racism is the overarching umbrella under which both individual

and institutional racism flourish. It is composed of a worldview that contains a
powerful belief: the superiority of one group ’ s cultural heritage over another.
There is a collective sense of superiority in a White Western European way of
life that possesses elements of “ chosenness ” and “ entitlement ” (Eidelson &
Eidelson, 2003; Sue, 2004): individualism is perceived as more desirable than
collectivism, and the Protestant work ethic, capitalism, Christianity, use of
English, written traditions, and European physical features (blond hair, blue

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