Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Racism Code: How Inequality Survives Awareness

The Racism Code: How Inequality Survives Awareness

Harris, Langston P.

Paperback

Black American StudiesGeneral Racism & Ethnic StudiesSocial Movements

ISBN13: 9798247683735
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Feb 10 2026
Pages: 178
Weight: 0.54
Height: 0.38 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
We know racism is wrong. We talk about it constantly. So why does inequality keep getting worse?

The answer lies not in what people believe, but in what systems do. From hiring algorithms to healthcare AI, from school funding to predictive policing-racism today operates as invisible code running in the background of American institutions. It doesn't require hatred. It doesn't need conspiracy. It simply runs, automatically replicating patterns we thought we had left behind.

In 2019, a healthcare algorithm used by hospitals across America systematically recommended that Black patients receive less care than equally sick white patients. The algorithm didn't use race. It didn't intend discrimination. It was designed to be efficient. But efficiency was defined in ways that encoded inequality. This is the racism code: inequality that reproduces itself automatically, without anyone having to consciously choose it.

Think of racism not as a set of attitudes but as an operating system-code that structures what's possible, what's easy, what's default. Like software, this code was written long ago during centuries of explicit racial hierarchy. Unlike old software we replace when obsolete, this code has been continuously updated, adapted, made more efficient. The original programmers are gone, but their logic persists, translated into new languages: algorithms instead of laws, data instead of doctrine, optimization instead of oppression.

The Racism Code reveals how inequality actually works-not through individual prejudice but through institutional mechanisms that most people never see. More importantly, it shows what it takes to change these systems, moving beyond awareness campaigns and good intentions to enforceable accountability and structural transformation.

This book is for anyone who:

Also in

General Racism & Ethnic Studies

View All