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Racism in America: A Reference Handbook recognizes the need for a holistic look at racism, considering interpersonal and in- stitutional processes and outcomes. Interpersonal racism (the type that occurs between people in their everyday words and actions) is particularly visible and, consequently, is what people usually think about when they think about racism. However, racism goes far beyond the interactions between individuals. It plays a substantial role in and through institutions like the government, the education system, the health care system, and the banking industry via formal rules (e.g., laws that limit ac- cess to members of a certain racial group) and informal norms (e.g., a bank’s unwritten but patterned practice of denying loans to minorities). Th at institutionalized nature of racism is the particular focus of this book. Chapter 1 explains the foundational underpinnings of rac- ism in America, noting how it provided the language and jus- tifi cation for economic expansion and stratifi cation. Racism rendered the forced removal of indigenous people from North American lands and the enslavement of Africans somehow ra- tional in the eyes of the general public and then permeated every major American structure. Th e chapter discusses how racism became inherent to the institutional DNA of science, religion, immigration, governance, labor, education, transpor- tation, housing, criminal justice, health care, the arts, sports, and consumer markets. Preface xiii