Concept
Societal racism is a type of racism based on a set of institutional, historical, cultural and interpersonal practices within a society that places one or more social or ethnic groups in a better position to succeed and disadvantages other groups so that disparities develop between the groups. Societal racism has also been called structural racism, because, according to Carl E. James, society is structured in a way that excludes substantial numbers of people from minority backgrounds from taking part in social institutions. Societal racism is sometimes referred to as systemic racism as well. According to James Joseph Scheurich and Michelle D. Young, racism can be categorized into five types: overt racism, for example, when an individual says something racist; covert racism, which is also an individual phenomenon; institutional racism, which is when institutions treat people of different races differently; societal racism, and civilizational racism. Structural racism is harder to detect because it requires data to be examined over time to determine how the set of institutional, historical, cultural, and interpersonal practices maintain racial inequalities over a period of time. However, structural racism is the most prevalent form of racism because of how it pervades every level of society by incorporating the institutional, historical, cultural, and interpersonal practices within a society that perpetuates racial inequalities, therefore evaluating society as a whole. The same facts that make structural racism the most prevalent in society make it difficult to analyze and a poor choice when looking at an individual organization because it needs to analyze every level of a society, not just a certain organization. George M. Fredrickson has written that societal racism is deeply embedded in American culture and that in the 18th century, societal racism had already emerged with the purpose of maintaining a white-dominated society, and that "societal racism does not require an ideology to sustain it so long as it was taken for granted".