Politesse
Lux Aeterna
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2018
- Messages
- 12,502
- Location
- Chochenyo Territory, US
- Gender
- nonbinary
- Basic Beliefs
- Jedi Wayseeker
I would say that the remaining elements of structural racism that exist in the government are fairly serious matters, even though the Constitution has ostensibly much such discriminations illegal. There are yet some stiff battles to fight. Blatant favoritism of Protestant Christianity under the Law. Language and dialect favoritism. Indian policy. Affirmative action. Immigration policy. Mass incarceration. Voting rights in disenfranchised areas. We have some big hills to conquer yet.
I tend to agree. Let's not get into whether we mean exactly the same thing when we use the term structural and leave that aside. In some ways it's not central.
Do you have an example in mind for the favoritism of Protestant Christianity under the Law?
We are, for instance, legally a monogamous nation, and one in which many of the central elements of African and Afro-Caribbean religions (such as animal sacrifices or spirit possessions) have no protection under the law, and as such are free to be (and are) overtly discriminated against by the laws of individual states. Even a cursory review of the case law shows that the racial undertones of such laws were not accidental, that Vodou and Santeria were being explicitly targeted for their racial associations, but since such cases fall into the grey area left by the 14th Amendment, there's no way to effectively challenge them on those grounds. So they remain, and are likely to continue remaining; the Supreme Court, at least will not challenge them unless new federal law should be made. On a similar note, part of the reason for this is that Afro-Caribbean religions are less likely to have federal recognition as a religion in the first place.
I concede your point that we might not categorize these as "structural", but to me a barrier that involves the apparatus of state to enforce it is structural racism, even if race is not the only factor involved with it. I'm a functionalist in my sympathies, and care more about whether a practical barrier to social expression and mobility exists than whether the common ideology says it ought to.