C. Raeff Three Examples of Systems
June 6, 2022 Three examples of systems: The pandemic; the earth and climate change; systemic racism
Hello It’s Complex Readers,
I hope that the week is starting well for you. This week’s newsletter contains more examples of systems and systems thinking. It’s really three newsletters in one (!) because there are three distinct examples of systems. The examples are: 1. the pandemic 2. the earth and climate change, and 3. systemic racism. You can scroll down and see where each one starts. None is by any means exhaustive. The point is to start getting used to thinking about the world from a systems perspective.
Here is a brief reminder about systems. A system is a wider whole made up of multiple, connected, and dynamic parts. So, we think about and deal with any complex issue in terms of multidimensionality (M), connectedness (C), and dynamics (D). I like to abbreviate them as MCD. Think MCD, be MCD!
Multidimensionality refers to how complex phenomena are made up of multiple parts.
Connectedness refers to the varied ways in which complex phenomena are connected or linked. Systems theory emphasizes interrelatedness, that is, mutual and reciprocal connections between and among parts and wholes.
Dynamics refers to how system processes are ongoing and can be played out in stable ways, as well as in varied, changing, and sometimes unpredictable ways.
If you want a refresher or if you are new to It’s Complex, here is the newsletter about systems theory and also last week’s newsletter about people as examples of systems.
Please share It’s Complex with anyone and everyone. Thank you! Tell them to share as well.
The Pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic was and remains complex, and can be understood systemically in terms of multidimensionality, connectedness, and dynamics. The multiple, connected, and dynamic dimensions of the pandemic are complex and consist of their own multiple, connected, and dynamic sub-systemic parts.
Multidimensionality
The pandemic is obviously a biological phenomenon. Biologically, corona viruses come in varied or multiple forms and cause multiple diseases (e.g., SARS, MERS, some cases of the common cold). https://www.webmd.com/lung/coronavirus-history Covid-19 can affect people in different or multiple ways, ranging from being asymptomatic, to experiencing mild symptoms, to having to be on a ventilator, to dying. People responded to treatment in individualized ways. Some people are suffering long-term effects, some are not.
The pandemic is not unidimensionally biological. As a multidimensional phenomenon, it is also social, cultural, and economic. And alas, it also became political. We will get into some of these dimensions while considering dynamics and connectedness.
Dynamics
As a biological phenomenon, the corona virus that causes Covid-19 is dynamic. It mutated several times—remember Delta, remember Omicron. It is still mutating, and it will continue to mutate because that is what viruses do. The global course of the pandemic has also been dynamic, as some areas that were not hit hard at first were affected more later and vice versa. There have been waves, spikes, and surges of cases at different times in different parts of the world. In addition, transmission was not well-understood at first, and some (including me) were wiping down surfaces and every object that came into the house. As scientific understanding evolved through research, it became clear that infection transmission occurs through airborne respiratory droplets. I wiped down less and less, but I still like to wash my hands vigorously when I get home. Virus transmissibility is also not static, and research shows that “Transmissibility is not fixed: It can vary based on a population’s behavior, demographics, and health.” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/opinion/herd-immunity-covid-us.html?searchResultPosition=1
The pandemic further involves multiple and dynamic economic issues. At first, some businesses shut down and stock markets plummeted. Some people became unemployed and food insecure. But some businesses thrived online and stock markets recovered. Economic dynamics were evident in economists’ disagreements about predicting the post-Covid economic recovery. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/business/economy/economy-recovery-forecast-coronavirus.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
The pandemic is also a dynamic social phenomenon. People had to navigate social distancing and develop new ways of engaging with others. Some established new connections online, while others suffered from social isolation. Individuals had to think about wearing masks and getting vaccinated, not only to protect themselves but to protect others. Part of why cases rose and fell at different rates at different times in different parts of the world is related to variability in social distancing, thus pointing to connections between social and biological dimensions of the pandemic.
Masks and vaccines are dynamic sub-systemic parts of the pandemic. Some who eschewed masks and vaccines at first ended up wearing masks and getting vaccinated. Others did not. In the United States, the vaccination process went pretty well during the first few months of 2021 (under the new Biden administration) after some initial hiccups. But then it slowed down and we heard more and more about anti-vaxxers. Why would so many people not get vaccinated? Ignorance? Misinformation? Political propaganda? Political loyalty? Distrust of government? Distrust of science? Historically negative medical experiences? Lack of transportation? Childcare issues? A boss who won’t allow time off for getting a vaccine? Fatalism? In keeping with systemic multidimensionality, how about all of the above! How about different reasons for different people. And, in keeping with systemic dynamics, some people’s views of vaccines were stable and some changed, as was the case for masks. Vaccine hesitancy decreased during the course of the vaccine rollout in the winter of 2021 and in March 2021, the Pew Report reported that 69% of Americans intended to get vaccinated or already had, which was up from the 60% in November 2020 who said they planned to get vaccinated. https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2021/03/05/growing-share-of-americans-say-they-plan-to-get-a-covid-19-vaccine-or-already-have/ On April 12, 2021, the New York Times corroborated this trend (https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/03/30/world/covid-vaccine-coronavirus-cases). Then, vaccination rates tapered off, but as the Delta variant took hold and became the dominant variant, vaccination rates increased again toward the end of July 2021 https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/07/31/world/covid-delta-variant-vaccine#less-vaccinated-covid-shots
Connectedness
We Are in It Together. The pandemic revealed connections galore. The Covid-19 outbreak became a world-wide pandemic partly because of the massive and speedy worldwide connections that currently comprise our globalized world. During the pandemic, we learned that we are in it together and that what any single person does affects others, which ultimately affected how the virus spread—or did not spread—throughout any single country and the world. Everyone has to do their part because everyone is a sub-systemic part of the world, both grand-scale and small-scale.
All Corners of the World. As businesses of all kinds shut down during initial lockdowns, multiple connections became apparent. Even shutting down one restaurant in one neighborhood or putting one school online, creates all kinds of systemic effects among the interrelated parts of that corner of the world, from work and financial disruption for scores of people, to disrupting children’s educations, to deteriorating buildings, to mice and other animals searching for food in new places. Without jobs, people cannot buy food and other goods, which jeopardizes yet other businesses that produce, distribute, and sell those goods. It also decreases tax revenues, which jeopardizes all kinds of services—from police and fire departments, to garbage collection, to maintaining public parks, roads and bridges, to education. Because of systemic connections, many effects go beyond that corner of the world to varied other corners of the world. I like referring to varied corners of the world because it conveys how big the world is, as well as how localized people’s experiences in the world are. However, I wonder whether it makes sense to speak of corners of the world because it implies that there are some parts of the world that are separate and isolated from the rest of the world. But today there are very few, if any, isolated corners of the world. Thus, if people are not buying goods in one corner of the world, people who work in factories that produce goods in some other corners of the world are affected. If those people are laid off, there are further effects that may go beyond that corner of the world.
The Supply Chain. As the pandemic wore on, we heard a lot about the supply chain and that there were shortages of all kinds of goods because of global supply chain problems. A lot was going on among the multiple and connected parts of the global economy, and supply chain problems continue today. I personally find supply chain issues very interesting and I admit that I became quite fascinated by them. I love how they involve starting with one dimension and then take you in multiple, sometimes unexpected (for me) directions. You end up having to consider so many multidimensional, connected, and dynamic issues.
When the pandemic started and countries locked down, some factories reduced schedules and some closed for different periods of time. In the context of decreased production, shipping companies reduced their schedules because there were fewer goods to move around the world. Under “normal” circumstances (i.e., before the pandemic), when a ship from Port X delivers its goods to Port Z, it picks up goods in Port Z and delivers the goods as well as the container back to Port X or somewhere else in the world. Because it is not cost-effective to ship empty containers, containers are filled, delivered, emptied, refilled, and delivered, emptied, refilled, and delivered… In keeping with these practices, reducing schedules early on in the pandemic included not refilling and not sending empty shipping containers back to where they came from or to another port. So, shipping containers were languishing empty and off schedule. Also, early on in the pandemic, China sent masks and hospital gowns to varied corners of the world, including Africa and South Asia, where shipping containers ended up languishing because those parts of the world do not produce goods that China buys or that would refill the containers.
When much of the world was initially on lockdown, factories decreased production, but consumer demand for products increased. As factories gradually opened up, increased consumer demand was hard to keep up with because factories were not up to full production immediately due to on-site Covid precautions (e.g., increased distance between workers, quarantining if exposed to Covid). Companies were also left scrambling to ramp up production partly because of the business practice of not maintaining stockpiled inventories. It costs money to stockpile or warehouse inventory, making it more cost-effective to produce goods as they are needed. Because goods are produced when they are needed, this practice is known as Just In Time manufacturing. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/business/coronavirus-global-shortages.html While Just In Time manufacturing may be efficient when varied parts of the global economic system are functioning smoothly, it clearly has its disadvantages when the global economic system is disrupted in unanticipated and unprecedented ways. If more stockpiled inventory had been available, maybe factories would have been able to send off goods during the transition from reduced production to increased production.
Also in our globalized world, a particular product is not necessarily produced from beginning to end in one factory. The parts may be produced in different factories in different countries, and then shipped to another factory to be assembled. If different factories have different Covid circumstances and practices, some of the parts may get to the assembly site at different times. If even one small part has not arrived, final production is off-schedule, which also means that shipping containers are not filled and moving around the world efficiently.
And so, we come back to the shipping containers. As factories reopened and increased production, problems arose when it came time to filling shipping containers. A factory in China may have been ready to ship goods, but maybe their containers were still in Africa or in some other port that had not yet sent containers back. And even when shipping containers were available, they could still languish in ports if fewer dockworkers were working due to varied and changing Covid circumstances. Also, shipping companies continued operating at reduced volumes due to Covid precautions and focused on routes that were being used most frequently, particularly between China and North America. That was great for North America, but what about delivering to other places?
Making stuff, filling containers, and shipping stuff around the world are complex enough, but they are not the whole story. Once goods are off a ship and out of shipping containers, they still have further to go. They have to be delivered locally. Maybe some stuff goes to a store, but other stuff goes to a company’s warehouse, where it awaits further delivery to a store or to an individual. For all of that to happen, you need dockworkers and truckers. And if more goods are being produced, you need more truckers and trucks than before to haul them around. But there was a shortage of workers, and in the Fall of 2021, ships loaded with shipping containers languished in the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles as never before. The worker shortage was due in part to Covid circumstances, but it was also due in part to working conditions. Long-haul trucking in particular is difficult work and was in trouble even before the pandemic. As some pointed out, the issue is not so much a shortage of truckers, but that trucking is plagued by poor working conditions and low retention rates. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/09/business/truck-driver-shortage.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/15/opinion/truckers-surveillance.html It looks like the trucking industry is another good example of a system. It is a system in its own right, as well as a sub-systemic part of globalization, as well as a sub-systemic part of the pandemic, and probably a sub-systemic part of yet other wider wholes.
And let’s not forget about the weather. There could be further delivery delays, depending on the weather. In the context of climate change, local weather conditions could be changing in ways that make delivering goods more difficult. And so, we can think about climate change, which is also an example of a system. It is an example of a sub-systemic part of the world that is connected to the global economic system, which is another sub-systemic part of the world. It is also connected to international relations and political systems.
Some Questions to Think and Comment About
What do you think about this example of systems? What struck you, what interested you, what surprised you?
What are some other examples of systems?
What are some systems that you are grappling with? What is your experience with them? How could your ongoing dealings with some systems be improved by thinking about them in terms of multidimensionality, interrelatedness, and dynamics?
What questions do you have about any of this?
The Earth and Climate Change
The Earth. Our earthly physical environment can certainly be understood as a system in terms of multidimensionality, connectedness, and dynamics. For starters, the earth is made up of multiple parts and processes, from dirt particles to the polar vortex. I cannot even fathom making a manageable list that could capture the earth’s incredible multidimensionality.
The earth is also dynamic. As already pointed out in the introductory newsletter about complexity, even stones are not set in stone (On Complexity). Maybe you live near a river or maybe you have walked, run, or cycled along the same river path for years. You can always count on the river being there. It is a consistent or stable part of your physical environment. Yet it flows and it is not the same each time. You can’t step into the same river twice. And maybe you are noticing that its waters are not as deep as they used to be. You start to wonder if it will always be there. The path too is both stable and variable. And eventually, the path will deteriorate unless money is spent to buy equipment and materials, and to hire people to maintain it. The path thus involves multiple and dynamic connections to people.
The multiple and dynamic parts of the earth are utterly connected and inseparable in ways that also defy exhaustive list making. And that is why even an island is not an island from a systems perspective. Indeed, the very definition of an island involves connections: a land mass surrounded by water. Without being connected to water in this way, there would be no island. It turns out that there are different kinds of islands, defined by different ways of being connected to bodies of water. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/island/ Maybe the water that surrounds a particular island is rising due to climate change, which in turn, is making the island inhospitable to varied creatures, including human beings.
Climate Change. Climate change is a complex process that itself can be understood systemically in terms of multidimensionality, connectedness, and dynamics. Dynamics are clearly involved if change is occurring. Climate change is occurring partly because of interrelations among the earth’s multiple and dynamic parts, which know no national, cultural, or political boundaries. Systemic connections are why environmental events in one part of the world can have consequences far away. China is currently the world’s largest producer of the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet, which is causing Arctic ice to melt. Yet, China is far away from the Arctic Ocean. We can use melting Arctic ice to think about some of the varied connections among multiple dynamic parts of the planet that go into the systemic complexities of climate change.
As the temperature rises and the ice melts, the water has to go somewhere. It goes into the world’s oceans, which means that sea levels are rising all over the world. Also, as temperatures rise, ocean water gets warmer. As ocean waters warm, fish are moving to cooler waters, which disrupts marine life in varied ways. It also affects the fishing industry, worldwide food supplies, and international relations. According to one report, when Atlantic mackerel began swimming to Icelandic waters in 2005, “Britain would accuse Iceland of stealing its fish, a Norwegian civil servant would accuse Iceland of making up its own rules, and all of the parties would accuse each other of varying degrees of fighting dirty.” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/29/climate/climate-change-ocean-fish-iceland.html
In addition, melting Arctic ice means that there are no longer vast amounts of snow and ice to reflect heat back into space. And so, the temperature rises, and as the temperature rises, more ice melts, and then there is even less ice to reflect heat back into space, and so, the temperature rises, and as the temperature rises… We thus see a vicious cycle of ongoing interrelations between rising temperature and melting ice. In further addition, Arctic ice stores methane, which is a greenhouse gas. But melting ice cannot store methane. And so, methane is released and the temperature rises and as the temperature rises, more ice melts, and more methane is released and the temperature rises further, and… and another vicious cycle of ongoing interrelations takes hold.
Also as temperatures rise, more moisture evaporates from the soil and from bodies of water, which contributes to more severe rain and snow storms, as well as to more frequent and longer droughts. Maybe the river near you is flooding, but someone else’s nearby river has run dry.
As sea levels rise, coastal communities are flooded and some are literally being washed away. Thus, people are affected. If a town disappears, what do people do? Where do they live, where do they work? Maybe the people of that town have fished in local waters for generations and maybe they identify who they are in terms of the fishing life of that community. How do they understand and define themselves now? If people can no longer survive where they live, maybe some of them immigrate to another part of the world. They become climate refugees who may or may not be welcome where they end up. Whether they are even recognized as refugees involves connections among policy makers from nations around the world who are the ones who argue over and decide on the very definition of what it means to be a refugee. Also, if flooding destroys critical infrastructure (e.g., pipes, roads, bridges, cell phone towers), what happens to people? How many people die on collapsed bridges? How many people do not have access to clean water if the pipes that transport water to their homes are not functioning? How much disease is spread if sewage infrastructure is failing?
In the context of storms and droughts, agricultural communities can be destroyed, and if people cannot grow even subsistence crops, what do they do? Maybe they too become climate refugees. Agricultural problems are among the multiple reasons that many people from Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador try to immigrate to the United States.
It is interesting to consider that as temperatures rise, some rather inhospitable corners of the world may become more habitable. For example, although it is predicted that climate change will reduce agricultural productivity across Europe, the United States, and India, agriculture will be more feasible in Siberia, and other northern regions, such as Canada, Scandinavia, and Iceland. Before the war in Ukraine, Russia was already transforming Siberia into a mega producer of soybean, corn, and wheat. Apparently, Russia hoped “to seize on the warming temperatures and longer growing seasons brought by climate change to refashion itself as one of the planet’s largest producers of food.” https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/16/magazine/russia-climate-migration-crisis.html?searchResultPosition=3 A warmer Siberia also has the potential to entice climate migrants who are seeking food and jobs. In addition, melting Arctic ice will open up new shipping routes that Russia can use and control to its advantage. On the other hand however, as Siberia warms, not all of the soil will be arable, and thawing soil can wreak havoc on roads, bridges, and buildings. And who knows, as Siberian permafrost thaws, the land may not be so great for agriculture after all because melting permafrost releases the greenhouse gases it has stored, thereby contributing to further climate warming. https://abcnews.go.com/International/siberias-permafrost-melt-causing-swamps-lakes-making-land/story?id=80789255 And right now, Putin’s war in Ukraine has changed Russia’s role and standing in the world. It is not clear that Russia will have the means to pursue agriculture in Siberia or that the rest of the world will buy from them. It depends on how multiple, connected, and dynamic environmental and geopolitical processes play out.
Some Questions to Think and Comment About
What do you think about this example of systems? What struck you, what interested you, what surprised you?
What are some other examples of systems?
What are some systems that you are grappling with? What is your experience with them? How could your ongoing dealings with some systems be improved by thinking about them in terms of multidimensionality, interrelatedness, and dynamics?
What questions do you have about any of this?
Systemic Racism
In recent years, and especially since the murder of George Floyd, there has been increasing discussion of systemic racism, also referred to as structural racism and institutional racism. I do not remember exactly when I first heard the term, but I know that it struck me immediately because it explicitly invokes systems. Whenever I hear or see “systemic racism,” my systems antennae perk up and I start thinking that certainly racism is a complex issue that can be understood from a systems perspective. And so, I have been thinking about racism as a system that consists of multiple, connected, and dynamic parts. Systemic racism can be viewed as one part or aspect of racism more generally. I am using systems theory to grapple with the complexities of racism in general and systemic racism as a particular kind of racism that can also be understood from a systems perspective. Thinking about racism from a systems perspective provides a framework for overcoming racism, including restructuring societal systems in non-racist ways.
Multidimensionality, Connectedness, and Dynamics
In contemporary discourse, the word “systemic” is used to make the point that some phenomenon goes beyond individuals and encompasses wider processes and aspects of the world. If someone is talking about a child’s problems in school and says “It’s systemic,” it means that dealing with the child’s school problems requires going beyond that particular child to how the education system is structured. Doing so, involves considering the economic and political circumstances in which the child’s school is embedded and in which the child’s family lives.
Systemic racism means that racism is not only about individuals who harbor and endorse racist ideas and act toward others in ways that reflect and express racist ideas. Systemic racism is about how racism is manifest in wider societal processes and structures, such as political policies and practices, economic practices, legal and criminal justice practices, voting rules, education practices, and healthcare practices. Systemic racism means that the structuring of varied wider societal processes favors one racial group and disadvantages another. In the US in particular, it means that public policies, as well as social, political, healthcare, education, and economic arrangements favor white people over people of color, and have done so throughout American history. It means that public policies and practices constrain people of color and deny them the same opportunities as whites. As such, systemic racism is located in multiple wider societal processes, some of which are typically referred to as “systems,” such as the criminal justice system, the education system, the healthcare system, and the economic system.
From a systems perspective, dealing with the complexities of systemic racism involves identifying some of its multiple, interrelated, and dynamic sub-systemic parts. And that is what I just did in the previous paragraph. The criminal justice, education, healthcare, and economic systems, as well as election policies and practices are some (but not all) of the multiple, interrelated, and dynamic parts of systemic racism. In turn, each part consists of its distinct multiple sub-systemic, interrelated, and dynamic parts, including particular policies and practices, such as redlining for the economic system, racial profiling and harsh sentencing for the criminal justice system, and voter suppression laws for political practices. There has been stability in some of these systemic practices for centuries, as well as changes over varied time frames.
A comprehensive systems analysis of systemic racism would also involve identifying interrelations among its multiple and dynamic parts. For example, redlining refers to a practice that originated in the 1930s with a federal housing program that provided government-insured mortgage loans to bolster home ownership during the Depression. The program was based on creating maps of cities and towns in the US with color-coded rankings for the loan riskiness of particular neighborhoods. African-American neighborhoods were considered most risky and were outlined in red. African-Americans were thus systemically denied government-insured home loans, and private lenders followed suit. In denying home ownership to African-Americans, redlining deprived them of being able to build home equity, which is a primary way of accumulating wealth in the US. Without home equity, home equity loans are out of reach, as is bequeathing wealth across generations. In addition, as redlined neighborhoods declined in value, businesses declined to invest in them. Without such investment, where do people shop? Without such investment, where do people work? If people in a school district do not own homes there and if unemployment rates are high there, where does local money for schools come from? Although redlining has been illegal since 1968, the effects are ongoing, including racial segregation of residential neighborhoods, as well as higher poverty, shorter lifespans, and more chronic disease among Blacks in the US compared to whites. https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-americahttps://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america
I readily recognize that these issues have been and continue to be addressed and analyzed in varied ways by scores of people from varied perspectives, including journalists, novelists, poets, filmmakers, political commentators, historians, economists, and social scientists. Thus, a systems approach to systemic racism does not have to start from scratch. The multiple, connected, and dynamic dimensions of systemic racism are precisely what is being discussed in discussions of systemic racism today, even if they do not explicitly invoke systems theory. A systems perspective provides a framework for dealing with varied analyses of systemic racism in a systematic and organized way. As you read any particular text or listen to any particular commentary or watch a particular movie, you can think about what part or parts of systemic racism it addresses. You can ask if it provides insight into connections (especially interrelations) among the parts. You can look for information about the historical dynamics of systemic racism, as well as its stability and variability over more recent and shorter time frames.
Systemic Racism, Behavioral Racism, and Experienced Racism
To reiterate, from a systems perspective, we can see systemic racism as one part or dimension of the wider whole of racism. Another part or dimension of racism includes racism as it is enacted by individuals as they go about their lives. We can call such racism behavioral racism or enacted racism. Another part or dimension of racism is racism as it is experienced by a person toward whom behavioral and systemic racism are directed. Such racism can be referred to as experienced racism. As sub-systemic parts of racism (along with systemic racism), behavioral racism and experienced racism are dynamic and interrelated, and consist of their own multiple, interrelated, and dynamic sub-systemic parts.
Behavioral racism encompasses the ways in which individuals endorse and express racist beliefs and values. Behavioral racism also encompasses racism as it occurs during direct interaction between individuals, from microaggression to acting in relation to others in blatantly and intentionally racist ways. In turn, these multiple forms of behavioral racism can be understood in terms of multiple, interrelated, and dynamic sub-systemic parts.
The multiple parts of behavioral racism further include its sources or causes. In other words, why do people behave or act in racist ways? Where do racist beliefs and ways of acting come from? These questions can be contextualized within the more general question: Why do people do what they do? That is a complex question that I have been pondering and grappling with for a long time (as I bet you have too), and there will be more about it in future newsletters (the first one on the topic probably in two short weeks). For now, suffice it to say that from a systems perspective, there are multiple, interrelated, and dynamic sources of human action. With regard to behavioral racism, some of those sources include interacting with others who espouse racist beliefs and act in racist ways, cultural beliefs and values, and participating in the wider societal processes and structures that comprise systemic racism.
The multidimensionality of behavioral racism additionally includes how to change it. That is, how does someone give up racist beliefs and ways of acting? Research in psychology has long shown that prejudice and negative views of others can be overcome through direct contact and cooperating to pursue common goals. In the 1950s, American psychologist Gordon Allport posited that meaningful contact with those deemed other in some way could reduce prejudice and intergroup conflict. Meaningful contact includes working together to pursue common goals. Meaningful contact additionally includes engaging with others in ways that knock people off kilter by perturbing how they view someone whom they perceive globally as problematically other. Such contact can promote viewing others in new and hopefully positive ways. There are no guarantees, but it is possible and it has happened.
With regard to experienced racism, a systems perspective involves discerning multiple dimensions of the experience of racism for particular individuals, including but not limited to how they feel when they experience different forms of racism, how they act in relation to someone who is expressing racist beliefs or acting in racist ways, and how race and racism influence their lives. In addition, one can ask: How are these (and other) aspects of experienced racism connected? The systemic complexities of experienced racism also include discerning its dynamics for particular people. That is, what are some of the varied ways in which a person experiences racism? How has a person’s experience of racism been similar over time and how has it changed?
A systems perspective also requires thinking about and identifying connections between and among systemic racism, behavioral racism, and experienced racism, as well as the dynamics of those connections. Clearly, people experience racism when others behave in racist ways and as they encounter systemic racism. Behavioral racism occurs within systemic societal practices, and racist societal practices contribute to enabling forms of behavioral racism. People who experience racism are at the forefront of activism to eliminate systemic racism. As systemic changes are made to reduce systemic racism, those changes may be connected to less behavioral racism and vice versa.
As with systemic racism, behavioral racism and experienced racism have been and continue to be analyzed in varied ways. Again, a systems perspective can be used to organize the issues, information, and insights from these varied sources. As you do so, think about what part (or parts) of racism is being addressed. You can ask if the analysis provides insight into connections among systemic racism, behavioral racism, and experienced racism. You can look for information about the historical dynamics of, systemic racism, behavioral racism, and experienced racism, as well as their stability and variability over more recent and shorter time frames.
Some Questions to Think and Comment About
What do you think about this example of systems? What struck you, what interested you, what surprised you?
What are some other examples of systems?
What are some systems that you are grappling with? What is your experience with them? How could your ongoing dealings with some systems be improved by thinking about them in terms of multidimensionality, interrelatedness, and dynamics?
What questions do you have about any of this?
It depends on the system. But you can start by identifying some of the most salient parts and their connections and their dynamics. Then identify what some of the problems with the parts and their connections and their dynamics are. Identify ways to reach the system's goals in different ways or identify new goals to achieve through different systems. Easier said than done, I know! Be prepared for unexpected outcomes and always assess and reasses.
Does anyone have any ideas about how to change systems from a systems perspective?