It’s not that it’s necessarily targeted maliciously (they probably didn’t sit around and decide “hey, let’s poison a town!”), but things like this happen because black communities are marginalized and have no power (_especially_ in the south). You want to build a chemical plant. Well, the white people have money and power and all kinds of means to fight it: they have lawyers to sue, they have the freedom to show up to Council meetings, they have representatives who share their race and socioeconomic status. Poorer black communities have little to none of that. So it’s easier to build your plant in the poor, black town because nobody there can fight back effectively. Sure, it’s not lynching, you’re right. But it’s still systemic racism, just a softer, gentler version than perhaps your grandfather’s racism.

It’s not as simple as deciding whether or not you want to poison a town.

I'm not sure racism is the right term to use here. This seems more like the inevitable consequence of the cold, heartless, uncaring logic of politics, game theory, and capitalism. To paint it as racism sort of implies that somewhere along the line, someone who doesn't like black people decided to put the pollution there on purpose because of their personal prejudices. But it seems (to me) that this same thing would happen in a parallel universe to any less-powerful community, regardless of whether their marginalized status were due to race, language, legal immigration status, religion, inherited debt, etc.

Racism is probably an indirect cause in this particular case because it contributed to the community's lack of power. But I also think that labelling this as racism does more to confuse rather than clarify the issue, and points to solutions along the wrong axis. If the best solution is reduction of racism, then it makes sense to call this problem caused by racism. If it's actually best solved by economic policy or legal changes, then it's probably more helpful to phrase it as an economic problem or so on. Otherwise we'll be looking in the dark for a racist bad guy to punish and solve the problem, but we won't find one.

That's what systemic racism is: not necessarily a specific animus held by individuals, but an aspect of the structure of society that has effectively racist consequences.

Does the concept pay rent though? There are a lot of ways to end up powerless and marginalized; a legacy of racism is one but I named a few others. Generally the concept that encompasses the result of a group of people being marginalized, irrespective of how it happened, is class.

Does it sufficiently capture reality to say that this discrimination happens to the lower class? In that case, "systemic racism" is mostly acting as shorthand for statistics that black people have less wealth on average, and points to an explanation of why. Or does this happen to black communities over and above that of other communities of comparable wealth? In that case, it makes sense to say that racism is a separate factor, beyond just economics.

I guess what I'm saying is, these are two different concepts with two different implied solutions:

A) A history of racism is why black communities are poor, and all poor communities equally suffer these burdens.

B) Black communities suffer these burdens over and above equally poor communities.

In case A, measures to increase wealth equality might solve the problem. In case B, that might not be sufficient, and deeper causes of lingering racist discrimination might need to be sought.

Just labeling the issue "systemic racism" does more to confuse rather than clarify how to solve it, I think.

What do you mean by 'racist consequences'? Intent can be racist, belief can be racist, but consequences are just the resulting state. A racist policy is one that targets one particular race in a hostile way. A policy that is applied evenly to the entire population but impacts one race disproportionately, while entirely unfortunate, does not in itself constitute racism.

I know this is tangential and a bit of a nitpick, but I feel the semantic difference here is important.

What you just described is called "systemic racism" where the power structures and the rules were established to perpetuate oppression, but done within the rule of law so that no individual in the system seems explicitly racist. If you're looking for a bureaucrat in an office making a decision because they don't like black people, you're not going to find one. Instead, you're going to find things like, e.g. redlining and the interstate highway program.

> Poorer black communities have little to none of that.

So do poorer white communities.

Poor white communities tend to be rural, away from the infrastructure that would support these types of industry. In general, no one builds out there, except for agriculture (which has its own issues; see the on-going fight over smell and water pollution in NC over pigs farming.)

Poor black communities tend to be urban or suburban, right near the cities and commercial hubs where you'd want to build a chemical plant or industrial mill.