Institutional Racism

It is no secret that the United States, mostly dominated by whites, has oppressed and mistreated the people of the black community. The black community experiences two forms of racism, which are institutional and individual. Institutional racism, unlike individual racism, is a more subtle form of racism that is embedded within the political and economic fiber of a society which negatively affects people of a certain group (i.e. gender, class, race, etc.). Two examples of institutional racism is found in Spike Lee’s movie “Do the Right Thing” and in Robert M. Covers article “Violence and the World”. In addition, through both the film and the article, one can see how there is often contradiction that is within institutional racism.
The film …show more content…
In one scene of the film, the camera is directly facing different individuals yelling racial slurs about blacks, Italians, Latinos, Koreans and the police. However, the focus is on the racism mostly towards the black community. The viewer is shown this through the owners of the businesses in the community. Despite that the community is mostly black, the only two owners are Korean and Italian, which is also brought up in the film. The Korean owners recently bought the property that was previously destroyed and vacant for several years. Some of the residence stated how it was ridiculous that no one of the black community could buy this property. Although the film did not discuss why a black person could not buy that property, it is hinting at the fact that it may be due to institutional racism, being that blacks are victims of discriminatory practices around housing (i.e. refusing to give them loans). Another example of institutional violence provided by the film is shown through the police officers who ended up murdering Radio Raheem. The police officers were trying to restrain Radio Raheem by keeping him in a chokehold, even after he was not fighting back. Although one officer kept telling the other officer who had Radio Raheem in a chokehold that that was enough, the officer continued. After he finally let go, Radio Raheem fell to the ground, and instead of the officers checking to see if he was alive, they kicked him and told him to stop “acting”. Although the movie does not show what happened to the police officers for Raheem's murder, it shows us a story that we all know too well living in the United States, which is that police officers are rarely held accountable for what they do, especially for killing young, black males, some more recent examples being the death of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and so forth. Where the contradiction comes

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