In our previous two discussions, we have spoken about the role of the individual and the role of community in addressing racism, with an understanding that both have distinct and valuable roles to play. For this session we will be focusing on the role of institutions in addressing racism.

Institutions are created to ensure social order and a functioning society. At the most basic level, institutions create policies, write and uphold laws, offer goods and services, manage access to resources (be they financial, social, or material), and provide skills and training. Institutions serve important functions within the social body, including governing, coordinating, regulating, organizing, and building capacity. Examples of institutions include hospitals, schools, banks, media, government, cultural organizations, and religious institutions. Institutions are structures that have a longevity that individuals do not. Individuals can come and go within institutions, but the structure, function, and identity of institutions often remain the same. Ideally, institutions should be oriented toward serving, as best as possible, the needs of the people whom they represent. This orientation has implications for how society sets up institutions, and how it fosters their development over time.

The reality of institutions in the United States paints a picture often contrary to the ideal sketched above. A brief look at our nation’s history shows our institutions valuing the accumulation of wealth, the consolidation of power, and systems that benefit a portion of the population at the expense of another. Many, if not most, of our foundational institutions, erected by a privileged few, sought to formalize and systematize advantage through oppression. This oppression has insinuated itself into the whole social structure of our country. To truly uproot racism and all forms of oppression, the role of institutions in creating and perpetuating that racism and inequality must be acknowledged.

There are no simple formulas for just institutional arrangements and how they interact with the individuals and communities they serve. The diversity of human societies, their ever-increasing complexity, and the growing interdependence of historically distant populations means that institutions must continually evolve. This can only be accomplished if we can overcome the tendencies to idealize existing institutional structures and to uncritically perpetuate them. Instead, we need to approach institutions in a mode of continuous learning. This means we have to be open to reexamining the role and purpose of institutions.

How can we foster institutions that see themselves as instruments for nurturing human potential? How can institutions build the capacity of individuals, harmonize their disparate initiatives, and direct collective effort toward a noble cause? Such questions suggest profound changes in habit and attitude. Institutions so affected would shun any semblance of authoritarianism, creating authentic channels for feedback and criticism to build trust and avoid creating an atmosphere of backbiting and disaffection.

What is implied here in many ways is a radical reimagination of the concept of power. Prevalent concepts of power understood and employed as a means of domination, with the accompanying notions of contest, contention, division and superiority must be left behind. This is not to deny the operation of power: After all, even in cases where the institutions of society have received their mandates through the consent of the people, power is involved in the exercise of authority. But all the processes of an institution should be affected by the powers of the human spirit that every great religious tradition hopes to tap: the power of unity, of love, of humble service, of pure deeds. Associated with power in this sense are words such as release, encourage, channel, guide, and enable. Power is not a finite entity which is to be seized and jealously guarded; it constitutes a limitless capacity, residing in the human spirit, to transform.

At a practical level, to make this shift, one possibility is to strive to develop certain capacities within institutions. These capacities include the capacity to learn, the capacity to administer justice, the capacity to foster unity, and the capacity for consultative decision-making guided by spiritual principles. When an institution acts as an effective channel of the human spirit, the powers of individuals are stirred and oriented, and the community is afforded the guidance essential for its progress.