What Makes Systemic Discrimination ‘Systemic?’  Formal models and real-world examples 

Systemic Discrimination has become one of the most salient, misunderstood, and definitionally amorphous concepts, not only in the social sciences but also in political and legal circles as well.  In this paper we draw on work spanning multiple substantive fields, including economics, public health, education, sociology, and law, as well as more mathematically technical fields, to clarify common themes that appear to make systemic discrimination “systemic.”  After describing these features, we briefly discuss how they interactively lead to mathematical properties of complex systems such as scaling and path dependence.  Hence not only have these features been identified as “systemic” in the literature for substantive reasons-they are also systemic for technical reasons that have important implications for measurement and policy solutions.

We formalize our arguments in several popular contexts including but not limited to, police brutality, hiring discrimination, and healthcare policy.  These clarifications can improve scholarly discourse on the topic, resolve measurement issues, and lead to policy solutions that can address what is precisely meant by the “systemic” portion of “systemic discrimination.”  A draft is forthcoming.