The term originated in the USA (where it was more commonly known as ‘institutionalised racism’) following a report on the inner-city riots in America in the 1960s. It came into popular usage in the UK following the Macpherson Report (1999) into the murder in 1993 by white youths of the young black British man Stephen Lawrence. Broadly, it refers to policies and/or attitudes within organisations which lead to the discriminatory treatment of people because of their skin colour or ethnic background.
The Macpherson Report established that at the time of Stephen Lawrence’s death, the Metropolitan Police force was an institutionally racist organisation. In practice, this meant that young black men in particular were more likely to be stopped and searched by the police, and that crimes against them, even those as serious as murder, were less likely to be pursued with the rigour afforded to crimes against white British people. It is important in that it raises serious issues about the nature of justice and calls into question the validity of crime statistics.
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