In this book we use the term systemic racism for the many institutionalized structures of white-created racial oppression that have for centuries greatly shaped the lives of African Americans and other Americans of color. Implemented by European Americans in the seventeenth century, white-on-black oppression has been central to this society ever since. As we will demonstrate throughout this book's chapters, this systemic racism involves these key societal features: (1) a complex array of oppressive racial practices implemented by whites. (2) the unjustly gained privileges and power of white Americans that result from this oppression. (3) the substantial, well-institutionalized, and unjust impoverishment inflicted by this oppression on African Americans. (4) the extensive white racial frame that has been used for centuries to rationalize and maintain white privilege and power over the centuries.