Consider _just_
****** Housing Patterns
War on Drugs
Schooling* *******
[*And, _really_, consider this under the heading "school system," and keep the word _education_ out of it. Just try thinking of "education" and "schooling" as really different things.]
I think it is primarily housing patterns (which determines school distribution) and the War on Drugs that are the primary material bases of racist ideology. And the _causal_ pattern is _from_ housing _to_ "racism," not the other direction. The effect of the ideology is to create mass _comfort_ with the social realities that cause the ideology. And there is no way of "getting at" that vicious (and often "unconscious") ideology EXCEPT by focusing on the institutions and social relations which generate it.
And keep Tim Wise out of it. For several years now all the focus on Tim Wise has done is stir up confusing defensive reactions on the part of posters. Everyone gets anxious to insist that he or she is not racist. So what. Robert Wood has correctly and importantly argues: " We have also seen substantial transformation of racism as an ideological formation, often moving from biological to cultural forms of racism." About 25 years ago I spent part of a class hour insisting on that there was no such thing as Race (biologically). Two students stopped after class to insist there was a "cultural" difference. It really is amazing, if you focus on it sharply enough, just how firmly, even hysterically, so many "anti-racist" or "non-racist" whites AND BLACKS cling to the concept of Race (and the definition of Racism is this belief in some sort of reality for the concept of Race).
Again, I think the works of Barbara Jeanne Fields are pretty fundamental here.
Carrol