Weekly Highlights: Race, Racism & Deconstruction

September 27, 2026

Happy Sunday! Here are a few things worth reading, watching, and thinking about from this past week.

A thread kept appearing while I was putting these together: What happens when we define racism primarily by individual intention, while institutions continue producing racial patterns?

That question shows up in schools, workplaces, immigration policy, and even in how we teach people to recognize and respond to racism.

As always, you don't have to agree with every author or conclusion here. The practice is to notice the framework being used, examine the evidence, and ask what becomes visible, or invisible, through that lens.

🏫 1. Can systemic racism exist without an individual racist?

NEWS REPORTING | Associated Press | September 25

This one connects directly to something we've discussed repeatedly.

The AP examines changes in federal civil-rights enforcement in schools under the Trump administration, particularly disparate impact: the idea that a seemingly neutral policy can still be discriminatory when it predictably produces significant racial disparities.

The administration has withdrawn longstanding regulations allowing some discrimination claims to be evaluated through racial outcomes and has instructed schools not to consider race when designing discipline policies. The administration argues that prior disparate-impact approaches could pressure schools to treat students differently according to race; critics argue that abandoning the framework makes structural discrimination much harder to identify or remedy.

And that gives us a clear distinction:

Interpersonal racism asks: Did someone discriminate?

Systemic analysis also asks: What does the system consistently produce?

[Read the AP report via ABC News](https://abcnews.com/Politics/wireStory/trump-administration-moves-limit-fixes-systemic-racism-schools-136743667?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

💭 Think about it: If nobody involved in creating a policy expresses racial prejudice, but the policy repeatedly produces a substantial racial disparity, what information would you need to determine whether racism is operating?

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🔬 2. What if we actually taught young people how to respond to racism?

NEW RESEARCH | Journal of Research on Adolescence | September 24

Researchers tested TRANSFORM, an 11-session school-based program for adolescents from historically marginalized racial groups. Instead of merely teaching children that racism exists, the program builds racial literacy, coping and problem-solving skills, and strategies for responding to racism.

Only 15 young people participated, so this absolutely needs more research. But the pilot found increases from pre- to post-intervention in ethnic-racial pride and young people's confidence in their ability to respond to racism. Participants also described learning to process experiences collectively, respond to stress, solve problems and develop multiracial solidarity. So...

What if anti-racism education isn't primarily about producing people who know the correct vocabulary?

What if it's about developing capacity?

And honestly it's why I teach decon the way I do.

[Explore the TRANSFORM study](https://visualize.jove.com/42782006-transforming-skills-to-resist-racism-a-pilot-study-of-the-feasibility-acceptability-and-preliminary-effectiveness-of-a-group-based-intervention?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

💭 Think about it: What's the difference between knowing how to identify racism intellectually and having the emotional, interpersonal and collective skills to respond when it actually happens?

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🏭 3. When does a workplace problem become an institutional problem?

NEWS / ONGOING COURT CASE | Reuters | September 21

A major racial-discrimination trial against [Tesla](https://www.tesla.com/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) began in California this week.

The California Civil Rights Department alleges that Black workers at Tesla's Fremont factory experienced widespread racial harassment—including slurs and racist graffiti—as well as disparities involving pay and promotion, and that the company failed to respond adequately.

Tesla denies the allegations of systemic discrimination and says it investigates and disciplines racist misconduct. The case is expected to continue into October, so these are allegations being litigated, not final judicial findings.

But that distinction actually gives us a useful case study.

Imagine an organization says:

“Racism violates our policy, and we discipline racist individuals.”

What else would we need to know before determining whether the institution itself has a racism problem?

[Read Reuters' coverage of the trial](https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/tesla-faces-major-trial-alleged-bias-against-black-workers-after-years-lawsuits-2026-09-21/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

💭 Think about it: At what point does repeated interpersonal harm become evidence that we should investigate the structure around the individuals—leadership, reporting systems, incentives, promotion, accountability and organizational culture?

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🧠 4. Whiteness as religion?

VIDEO / INTERVIEW & ANALYSIS | Kansas City Defender | September 23

Okay, this one is for my fellow “let's look at whiteness through twelve different lenses” people.

The Kansas City Defender's Liberation Now features theologian and Black-studies scholar J. Kameron Carter in a conversation provocatively titled “Whiteness Is a Religion.”

Carter's scholarship has long examined the relationship among Christianity, race, colonialism and the construction of whiteness. The conversation asks us to consider whiteness not merely as skin color or individual prejudice, but as something that can function through stories, rituals, ideas about purity, authority, civilization and who counts as fully human. The Defender explicitly approaches the subject through Black liberation theology and Black radical thought, so consider this interpretive analysis, not neutral reporting.

This one could pair beautifully with other lenses:

Whiteness as identity.

Whiteness as culture.

Whiteness as normativity.

Whiteness as ideology.

Whiteness as property.

Whiteness as religion.

Different lenses reveal different mechanisms.

[Watch/read “Whiteness Is a Religion” at The Kansas City Defender](https://kansascitydefender.com/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

💭 Think about it: What becomes visible when we temporarily stop treating whiteness as a racial identity and instead examine it as a system of beliefs, rituals, authority and meaning-making? Where does that analogy illuminate—and where might it break down?

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🌱 Something to carry with you this week

There's a distinction underneath all four pieces:

Event → Pattern → Structure

One racist comment is an event.

Repeated similar experiences may reveal a pattern.

Policies, incentives, norms, resource distribution or power relationships that repeatedly create or tolerate that pattern may point us toward structure.

One of the traps in conversations about racism is getting stuck indefinitely at the first level:

Who said it?

Did they mean it?

Are they a racist?

Those aren't always useless questions.

But they aren't the only questions available to us.

Try moving one level outward:

What pattern is this part of?

And then one more:

What makes that pattern possible?

That's where deconstruction gets interesting.

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