system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Proof of Institutionalized Racism?

I hope I've found the proper channel for this question. 

 Is there any evidence of institutionalized racism that doesn't rest on the assumption that correlation means causation?  I've been arguing with friends about the validity of institutionalized racism and have been struck by my subsequent research which has yielded an alarming number of studies that present a statistical tread and then tie it to racism without any real hard-evidence that suggestions racism is the cause.  

Any articles or suggestions would be greatly appreciate. Thanks in advance.
gpt
I think you're operating off of an incorrect or incomplete understanding of what institutional racism *is*. 

Institutional racism doesn't have to be caused by an oppressing class directly oppressing people, or some group of Senators making a policy with the express intent of oppressing a minority group. Institutional racism can be simply the result of how our institutions are set up causing disproportionate negative impact on particular minority groups -- whether intentional or not. There doesn't have to be any particularly racist cause or design to these things. 

One common example of institutional racism is pollution and respiratory illnesses. It goes kind of like this. 

Black minority groups are disproportionately poor (for a variety of reasons but let's just leave it at that) and therefore live in community pockets where rent is low and population densities tend to be higher than average. People don't very much like living next to coal plants, so when new coal plants get built there's a lot of political wrangling that goes into its placement. Rich people tend to have a lot of political clout so these coal plants tend to be built in impoverished areas, which are populated disproportionately by black people. Thus we see that black people have disproportionately high rates of respiratory illnesses caused by coal pollution. 

This is an example of institutional racism -- a minority group receiving a disproportionately negative result from the way our social institutions function.