Individual Racism Vs Institutional Racism

The differences between institutional racism and individual racism are stark and clearly defined. Institutional racism is prejudice on a large a scale, usually in regard to a company or institution. It’s not hard to find examples of institutional, the United States government provides man different instances for consideration. Segregation is a huge example of intuitional racism, as there were many laws put in place with the purpose of keeping ethnic groups, aside from white people, from getting opportunities to obtain power or social standing. More recently the war on drugs was a political policy put in place in order to target specific ethnic groups. One example of drug laws as institutional racism was giving the use of crack cocaine a higher classification then regular cocaine. This is because crack cocaine

Individual racism works on a much smaller scale then its counterpart, an is instead seen in the actions and viewpoints of individuals. There is a multitude of ways for individual racism to manifest in the lives of average citizens. An example is how a white man might cross to the other side of a street to avoid a black person because they feel unsafe, and have the prejudice that people of color are dangerous criminals. Even if people don’t completely avoid the person of color they might keep an eye on them as the pass, put their hand on their wallet, or clutch their purse, all because they fear that this black person might try and rob them. It could also just be a feeling of easiness as they pass, these are all ways that individual racism can manifest its self in an everyday occurrence. Overall, prejudice and racism are powerful forces that can control our action and our institutions, and great changes need to be made both in our internal selves and our societies if we want to make this would a place for everyone to have a chance to