For several years now, systemic racism has been among the most frequently mentioned concepts in American discourse. The term and its equivalents — including “structural” and “institutional” racism — appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post roughly 10 times more often in 2019 than they did in 2013, and have greatly proliferated since then. The topic is now the subject of countless college courses, classroom discussions, books, articles, media programming, political speeches, and formal and informal conversations. It is safe to say that today, systemic racism has acquired the status of a cultural meme.
