What does racism look like? Where does racism come from? When we’re asked these questions, we often imagine a vague image of a deeply flawed and misguided person who harbors an ignorant prejudice. These people may exist, but sociology guides us to understand that racism is not something that exists in a contained form within any specific individual. Rather, racism is a part of our society, a cultural and structural artifact that persists even after generations of individuals pass in and out of the social world. This is because like values, norms, and beliefs, racial and ethnic prejudices are transmitted intergenerationally. Racism persists as individuals are socialized to internalize racial prejudices, which in turn result in acts of individual discrimination. Furthermore, discrimination does not only happen at the individual level, and our social institutions also carry over racial prejudices from the past. One obvious example in the American context is residential segregation. Historically, racist redlining practices systematically devalued neighborhoods in which people of color lived, preventing wealth accumulation in those communities. Even if Americans today harbor no racial prejudice, the legacy of past institutional racism persists today. Indeed, many scholars have described the way in which contemporary policies can continue to perpetuate racial/ethnic discrimination, such as the over-policing of minority neighborhoods. Further still, some scholars believe that not addressing the contemporary impacts of historical racism or suggesting we stop talking about race without addressing these issues is a form of racism itself.