Why This Word Used To Describe Systemic Racism Is So Damn Triggering

A recent study from Pew Research Center, whichfound that “most Black Americans believe U.S. institutions were designed to hold Black people back,” has gotten some backlashthis past week. Although the report has since been revised to acknowledge its misstep, it originally used the term “racial conspiracy theories” to describe how Black Americans perceive bias.

This triggered me. Yes, most of us recognize systemic racism enough to call it out when asked — but its existence is a fact, not a “belief.”

The findings, which shared new data about the Black experience in America, are an extension of a series that aims to understand how Black Americans perceive individual success by identifying what it calls our “suspicions” about the barriers we face. The study surveyed 5,000 Black adults about whether they believed claims related to racial bias to be true or false.

Of the “suspicions” the study looked to explore, researchers found that about 60% of Black adults surveyed agreed that institutions such as policing, the criminal justice system and the country’s economic system are designed to hold Black people back.

These systems are flawed (or, frankly, broken altogether), and there’s evidence that they are stacked against us. We are not outsiders looking in on some social experiment. Black Americans currently live the daily experiences that prove the existence of historical and present-day racial bias.

Research has shown that “Black and Hispanic individuals are more likely than White people with similar criminal histories and charges to be arrested and held in jail before trial.” They also “tend to have higher bails set and receive lengthier and more punitive sanctions.”

There’s the yawning wealth disparity that stems from a