In the years following the murder of George Floyd and the widespread protests that followed, terms like “systemic racism” and “structural racism” have become part of national conversations. However, Stephen Menendian, research director at the University of California, Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute, noticed a gap in public understanding and scholarship.

“Amazingly, astonishingly, there [was] no book on structural racism out there,” said Menendian. To address this, he spent 15 years working on his new book, Structural Racism: The Dynamics of Opportunity and Race in America, released in June. The book examines how various systems in American society reinforce racial inequality—often unintentionally—and presents ten policy proposals aimed at promoting racial equity.

Menendian builds upon earlier ideas about institutional and systemic racism. He explained that in the 1960s, activists described institutional racism as racial inequality continuing without overt prejudice or bigotry. Systemic racism expanded this concept to include broader structures such as school funding and curriculum design. Structural racism, according to Menendian, considers how policies across different areas—including zoning laws, health systems, and employment practices—interact to limit opportunities for people of color.

Menendian’s work focuses on disparities between Black and white Americans but suggests these patterns apply more broadly. His institute provides an interactive dashboard with over 80 metrics showing racial disparities across the United States.

“Five years after the largest protest movement in American history, very little has fundamentally changed. Not only that, many — if not most — of the policy accomplishments achieved since are being rolled back. We have to get it right next time that that window opens,” said Menendian.

He continued: “It is a way in which we understand the causes and perpetuation of racial inequality as being rooted in the organization of systems and structures, rather than driven by bigotry or racist ideas.”

“If I had a magic wand and I could wave that wand and make a wish and say that every American will be free of bigotry, prejudice or interpersonal racism, what would change, in terms of measured outcomes of racial inequality? Would life expectancy change? Maternal mortality? Disparate rates of dementia? Would the racial wealth gap suddenly even out? The answer is no. Once you create an organized system, it can continue to produce the same outcomes regardless of intent.”

Menendian offered examples from housing policy: “We used to have racial zoning in the United States... Then we moved to single-family zoning or fiscal zoning. The motivation in many cases is not to keep out Black people, but it’s to keep out the poor. It has the effect of maintaining racial segregation.”

He describes structural racism as “the racialization of opportunity structures.” These structures include education quality, neighborhood resources, job availability and regional economic health—all factors influencing upward mobility.

“The simplest way that I have to describe structural racism is that local opportunity structures in the United States consistently and predictively perpetuate racial advantage and disadvantage based on race,” he said.

According to Menendian's analysis using national data tools such as dashboards measuring opportunity gaps by race (https://belonging.berkeley.edu/racial-disparities-dashboard), Black Americans disproportionately live in low-opportunity environments—even those with higher incomes—while white Americans are more likely found in high-opportunity neighborhoods.

“My position is that racial inequality is largely, but not entirely, caused by structural arrangements. Structural racism is the callous neglect to that reality,” he said.

Menendian identified common misunderstandings about structural racism. First is focusing too much on finding individual perpetrators instead of addressing larger systems: “The first misunderstanding is that people will recognize that racial inequality can be systemic but nonetheless spend their energy looking for ... a nefarious racist actor — instead of dismantling the web.”

He also challenges views linking current inequalities solely to historical legacies like slavery or Jim Crow laws: “The policies that ... undergird and exacerbate racial inequality are not directly traceable to the past.”

He cited recent events such as predatory lending during the subprime mortgage crisis targeting Black homeowners—not motivated by explicit bigotry but by profit—as well as mass incarceration trends since 1970 as examples where contemporary policies have worsened inequalities independently from older forms of discrimination.

“The real problem is that the system is set up so that rational behavior — doing the best thing for our kids ... actually tends to exacerbate racial inequality in every way,” Menendian said.

His analysis points out how residential segregation emerged more strongly outside Southern states during periods like early 20th-century Great Migration; today’s most segregated schools are often found in Northeastern or Midwestern cities rather than traditional southern strongholds.

Menendian highlights Minneapolis–St. Paul’s tax base sharing program from 1970s as an example policy addressing regional inequities: municipalities share increases in revenue regionally—a step he sees as combating structural sources of inequality (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/regional-tax-base-sharing-questions-and-answers/).

For readers seeking further information beyond his book—which includes detailed policy recommendations—Menendian recommends reviewing his annotated bibliography along with interactive data tools published by UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute (https://belonging.berkeley.edu/racial-disparities-dashboard).

This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.