IMO, "Systemic Racism" is where a system treats people of a certain race differently because of their race, usually disadvantaging one group and advantaging another.
@minimus, the above shows a different definition.
The only documented and approved systemically racist system I can think of right now is college admissions, which favours black candidates mostly at the expense of asian candidates.
College admission is a good example, where everyone says that admission should be based on merit and they take the issue of Asians being discriminated against because Blacks, Latinos etc get affirmative action and automatically get a place even when they don't have the same grades. There was a court case about this and the judge sided with university of Harvard. Basically Harvard said they use a holistic approach to admission and not just grades(LOL). Is this Harvard university moving the goal post?
The problem with grade based/merit only approach to University admission is that it is not applied equally. There is something called legacy admission which benefits students whose parent went to the same university. It also benefits students whose parents have donated a nice chunk of change $$$$ to the university.
Narrowing your comment to black students only benefiting from a systemic problem doesn't cut it.
There are those who get admission because they are great at Football but don't have necessarily the best academic grades. What do you do with them? Are you going to put an average size Asian with excellent grades in your basketball team when you want someone like Shaquille O'neil to dunk on the opponent? That is another reason why grade/merit based admission doesn't take into account everything.
