Institutional (-ism)

Literature, 1967

Crime of collective guilt which is impossible to demonstrate or prosecute.

The first usage of the term as a linguistic collectivisation was undoubtedly in Stokely Carmichael’s “Black Power: The Politics of Liberation” (1967), around the time of the Kerner Commission report. It was compounded by the 1999 UK report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, aggravated by the development of critical race theory, and made worse with the hopeless Institution Theory. Amongst its many intrinsic contraditions, there is no accepted definition of “institution”, and if everyone is to blame, then no-one is to blame.

• https://oed.com/view/Entry/97111
• https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?&year_start=1950&year_end=2019&content=institutional+racism
• https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=institutional+sexism
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Power:_The_Politics_of_Liberation
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerner_Commission
• https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/277111/4262.pdf
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_theory