Hard coded and intractable racism in the United States comes from several institutional sources: Religions that foment beliefs about the comparative superiority of one race over another; communities, companies, clubs and organizations that have historically maintained racist structures and social construct; and schools in areas where racism is a fundamental part of society that never went away. In these cases, the individuals who are racist must change their beliefs and attitudes on their own.
There is no external force that can be guaranteed to undo neither generations of attitude or religious belief structure.
In dealing with the external manifestation of racist beliefs, as they are actualized through behavior and actions, however, there are plenty of ways to reduce the racist acts that occur in almost every setting of American society.
Racism in the United States has been reduced, but will never be eliminated in institutions where the highest level of authority is used to require individuals to work with each other and to put their racial issues aside. The military, parts of government, the medical and other fields have shown great progress in demonstrating that much of racism only goes on because it is either allowed to, or is encouraged to be externally manifested through behavior and action.
When institutional cultures are built to detect, correct, and eliminate situations of racial misconduct before it gets out of control, then incidents of racism, or the manifestation of racist views, decline. When there is no oversight or leadership being applied, racist incidents increase, and will become as egregious as possible until severe action is taken, usually by the courts as resulting from lawsuits.
Racism in the American workplace is thriving. Corporations that are household names have repeatedly failed to accomplish basic compliance with Federal laws, let alone end racist comments, racial slurs, and racist behavior within their walls. This would stop happening if the Federal government would enforce it’s laws, and render the proper punishments, instead of forcing victims of racism to go through the courts, where a multimillion dollar settlement is just another financially acceptable risk for the corporation.
In communities where there is a large segment of the population with racist tendencies, there will be less inclination to make any changes to overtly racist behavior. Instead, anyone who complains may face retaliation and even worse behavior. In these communities, external agencies and superior government entities must come in to enforce a basic level of improvement in government, schools, and employment, or there will be no reduction in expression and actualization of racist goals and behaviors.
Since most counties, cities and towns get their funding through intergovernmental transfers from state and federal funds, there should be no problem in negotiating improvements in conduct, as opposed to cutting of federal and state funds when systemic racism is confirmed.
But it is apparent that programs which educate, cause people to mix together, learn more about each other, and reduce ignorance based racism, will never be any more effective than they have ever been, when it comes to hard coded personal, religious based, and institutionalized racism.
America is a society that is segregated by economic class, by race, by regional construct about race, by religious construct about race, and by ethnicity within the races. Voluntary segregation will never end, as Americans insist on their rights to live where they please.
That does not mean, however, that the existing and mature structure of laws and enforcement systems cannot be used far more effectively than they are in order to reduce the most overt and institutionalized forms of racism in our governments, corporations, and institutions.
