Answered by Robin Kelley:
To begin with, students need a clear definition of racism, one that emphasizes its institutional character. If lending institutions, for example, decide that home loans to African American residents in black communities are a greater risk than in white communities, and they support their arguments with data about declining property value, these are still racist policies. We need to ask why property values decline, how are resources divided, why segregation persists, what are the differences in education, wages, unemployment, how do the price of good (groceries, for example) differ between communities, etc. In other words, they have to look a the whole picture and see how inequality is reproduced. They need to know, for example, that much of the suburban success story was subsidized by federal funds, sometimes paid for by inner city tax payers.
The only way to expose the hidden, more subtle (and often more devastating) forms of racism is to study it in its institutional form.
