Structural Racism

Structural racism describes how white supremacy is expressed in a society’s history, culture, institutions, and policies such that people of color are disadvantaged and subject to chronic adverse outcomes. Often used interchangeably with systemic racism, advocates of looking at racism from a structural perspective argue that counselors need to focus on the broad forces that maintain racial stratification and existing hierarchies of power and status.

As counselors in the United States increasingly serve racially diverse clients, there is a need to be able to conceptualize and respond to systemic issues. Rather than viewing client issues as purely individual, psychological, and internal to the client, counselors must consider inequities in the surrounding sociopolitical environment. In other words, the reasons that minoritized (i.e., Black or African American, Native American, Asian or Asian American, Latinx, or multiracial) people experience lower access, representation, and resources than dominant (i.e., white) people is rooted in structural racism, not individual prejudice alone.

Additionally, the structural racism perspective suggests that counselors in the United States need to be mindful that they have been socialized in messages and institutions that normalize and legitimize racism (e.g., “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps”; erasure of or lack of attention to history and culture of racially minoritized people in educational curriculums), regardless of racial group membership. Thus, all counselors, but especially white counselors, may personally hold beliefs that are detrimental to racially oppressed groups. This entry first elaborates on the definition of structural racism, including underlying philosophical assumptions and how it contrasts with other modes of racism, then offers concrete examples of structural racism at play. It concludes with a review of implications for counseling in order to enhance counselors’ capacity to respond to this set of issues.