In my understanding, and others can correct me, it relates to the fact that society is structured in a way to discriminate - it's built into not only the laws, but simply how one has opportunities or roadblocks based on the birth lottery. For example, in the US, it can said a person (often African American) is most often born into a family of lower income, less educated parents, etc which may not allow for the kid growing up to be exposed to the opportunities other kids may have (summer camps, boy scout troops, whatever) or have parents willing or able to have an interest and support the child developing academically beyond what their parents achieve - if they even have more than one parent living with them. Consider in many places, big-brother-big-sister type organizations tend to be focused on inner city kids (again, predominately black) with certain activities and guidance, compared to suburban (white) areas that have boy scouts, after school athletics and travel sports teams, and other opportunities that inner city kids may not have available. But I'm speaking primarily to family (structure, income, education), and others may differ in opinion pointing to gov't.
Consider the 'war on drugs' was created to target certain groups (again, primarily African Americans) by applying harsher laws to crack cocaine (street drugs) than regular powder cocaine (more of a white collar drug), and harsher enforcement against weed (more common in black communities at the time than white). You then see decades of more blacks being imprisoned for these crimes, thereby taking fathers from families (see the above about single parents), giving blacks a criminal record which then gets compounded by later arrests for similarly slanted laws and you have prison populations that are by majority black. It then gives the impression 'blacks commit more crimes', so they get watched more closely by law enforcement = a self feeding cycle, a system that segregates and enforces laws based on race, which then keeps members of that race in a suppressed state (see above about education and opportunity). The racism has become built into the system = systemic racism.
I'm sure others can explain better, but does this help at all? There are a lot of arguments of how this doesn't exist - that everyone is subject to the same laws, that it's on the individuals to keep their family together and raise their children right; but those arguments don't stand up well against the numbers we see in reality. This adds to the problem, in that people will deny it exists if they can't see it for themselves and they personally never experienced (typically from a white person). And they can point to other non-blacks (ie, latino) that suffer in similar numbers and conditions, but it's moving the goalposts. The fact remains, society was built over time, adding laws to enforce certain behaviours, sometimes crafted in a way to target certain groups unfairly. The question is how to unthread these biases from society so all are actually treated equally.
she is thirty.
