ABSTRACT
Racism is a word that can evoke powerful feelings of guilt, blame, shame, and anger, leading people to withdraw from conversations that they fear might be discomfiting and/or distressing. The term "institutional racism" was coined in the 1960s in America and came into widespread usage after the publication of the book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton. Carmichael and Hamilton were prominent activists for civil rights in America. Richardson and Wood comment that their use of the term "institutional racism" was a deliberately provocative way of saying that major changes were still required throughout American society even though racism was no longer enshrined in the legal system. The British experience of race and racism differed from the American in that the "apartheid" or "Jim Crow" system was not a part of the British experience.
