‘Structural racism’ is a voguish term on the left. It is often mocked and frequently disparaged. However it does contain an essential truth – racism isn’t just the fault of a few bad eggs. Sometimes entire institutions and ideologies subordinate people based on their ethnicity.

The distinguishing feature of structural racism is a lack of intent. We can all recognise the harm caused by the frothing-at-the-mouth skinhead, but less overt racist assumptions can be carried along by society’s immutable institutions. The most notorious recent example of the power of structural and institutional racism was the police’s lethargic response to the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence. Lawrence was slaughtered in an unprovoked attack while waiting for a bus in South London in 1993. His killers were unarguably evil and depraved individuals; yet the problem of racism went further than the actions of ‘a few bad eggs’. The Lawrence family was forced to seek justice from a police force that itself appeared to carry a number of unconscious racist assumptions about black victims of crime.

Anti-Semitism can permeate institutions and political organisations in a similar fashion. It is easy enough to call out the thugs who proudly sport swastikas and emit unmitigated Jew hatred; yet anti-Semitic assumptions and tropes have entered the mainstream in far more ambiguous forms.

Read the full article at International Business Times.