What Is Systemic Racism?

John McWhorter, Lara Bazelon, Glenn Loury, Kmele Foster, Chloé Valdary and Kenny Xu weigh in.

By Bari Weiss

The longtime Democratic operative James Carville gives good quote, and yesterday was no different. In a conversation with Vox about Biden’s first 100 days he ended up mostly sounding off about the problem of what he calls “faculty lounge” politics:

You ever get the sense that people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges use a different language than ordinary people? They come up with a word like “Latinx” that no one else uses. Or they use a phrase like “communities of color.” I don’t know anyone who speaks like that. I don’t know anyone who lives in a “community of color.” I know lots of white and Black and brown people and they all live in . . . neighborhoods.

If you have a few minutes, read the whole thing. But Carville’s bottom line is that “there’s too much jargon and there’s too much esoterica and it turns people off.”  One bit of that jargon — much like “equity” and “social justice” — is the phrase “systemic racism.”  All of a sudden, it was everywhere. We were supposed to say it. We were supposed to root it out. But what did it actually mean?...............So today I invited a group of writers I admire and who challenge me to weigh in on the question: What is systemic racism? .............To Read More....