Invisible racism is the subtle, subversive, and deliberate informal and formal mechanism that allows unequal access to rewards, prestige, sanctions, status, and privileges based on racial hierarchies. Though invisible racism does not carry the weight of the law; traditions, norms, and customs typically uphold, justify, and obscure its operation. For instance, a white European is expected to outperform selected tasks, develop specific skills, excel in certain environments as compared to an African migrant. That is, invisible racism serves to explain such obvious racial outcomes as natural, and normal. Alternatively, any deficiencies, lack of achievements, or failure to perform by one African migrant is similarly obscured, misdiagnosed, and misrepresented as a group failure.
Invisible racism is a matter of how one’s brain process of information is influenced by things they have seen, things they have experienced, and the way mainstream media has presented things. For instance, racialised minority groups, particularly African migrants, or refugees living in Europe, are required to pay more to rent an apartment, and are less likely to obtain key information regarding job opportunities. Whereas the systemically enhanced information, access, and assistance provided to White Europeans, increase the likelihood of their success vis-à-vis the racialised African migrants or refugees. Alternatively, the selective enforcement of various laws, increased surveillance of certain laws, and the disparities in educational funding within African migrants, or refugees’ communities, increase the likelihood that they will experience greater levels of criminalisation than White Europeans. Invisible racism operates and continues to remain deeply embedded in the social, economic, cultural, psychic, and political fabric of societies.
