The local rent-to-own shop may seem like an odd symbol of inequality, but it is one.

The poor sometimes see rent-to-owns as a way to get furniture or electronics. But by the time they've paid off their purchase, they've often spent far more than the product would otherwise cost.

And since people of color are disproportionately represented among the poor, they're especially vulnerable to predatory practices. Low-income inner-city residents were particularly hard hit by foreclosures due to subprime lending.

While there was nothing illegal about such practices, they point to a broader, very complex problem. For years, government policies and institutions, as well as racial prejudice, have disadvantaged people of color and favored whites. Whether intentional or not, these influences are persistent, and they're present in every aspect of people's lives.

This is nothing new. When Social Security was founded in the 1930's, the program excluded domestic and agricultural workers. The majority of people in both jobs were people of color.

In the 1940's through the 1960's, Federal Housing Administration policies and practices segregated communities along racial and ethnic lines. Minorities got less than 2 percent of FHA-backed loans, which put them at a disadvantage for building wealth.

Two organizations - RISE (the Rochester Initiative for Structural Equality coalition) and Action for a Better Community - want to address issues like these on a local level. And last month, they held a conference on structural inequality: policies, social structures, or cultural perceptions that favor whites over minorities.

John A. Powell, executive director of Ohio State University's Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, uses health care as an example of that inequality and of the need to focus on entire systems. In his presentation at the RISE conference, he cited a Centers for Disease Control analysis of universal health care.

The CDC found that simply increasing the number of people who have health insurance in Massachusetts didn't increase access to health care for all blacks. And it actually increased the health-care disparity between blacks and whites.

Blacks often lived in areas where there weren't any hospitals or clinics, so even when they had insurance, they couldn't easily get to health-care providers. Many preferred to operate in middle-class communities rather than inner-city or rural areas.

"The problem is, blacks and whites are situated differently," Powell said.

Structural racism is reflected in employment figures, incarceration rates, and health statistics. It drives the unfair stereotype of the dangerous black male. It's also what led to the disparate sentences for powdered cocaine and crack possession, which government is finally starting to address.

But if there's one area that demands attention, perhaps more than anything else, it's education, says James Norman, CEO of Action for a Better Community. Urban school districts and students are dealing with concentrated poverty and segregation. In addition, urban students often have access to fewer resources than suburban students do. A suburban student, for example, is more likely to have a computer at home than an urban student, Norman says.

The RISE initiative is one of seven structural-equality projects across the country, funded by the Ford Foundation through the national Community Action Partnership.

At last month's conference, Mary Virtue of the Partnership discussed two of the other initiatives. Jacksonville, Florida, has a history of strained race relations, Virtue said, and the community has been conducting studies of the problem since the 1940's. But they've resulted in little action.

The Northeast Florida Community Action Agency began looking at the problem in a different light, hoping to identify a specific area of racial disparity that it could impact. It ended up setting a goal of reducing metro Jacksonville's racial disparity in unemployment. By helping unemployed blacks, the organization decided, it could help the overall community, Virtue said.

The group faced several impediments - including a lack of adequate public transportation and the cost of training programs - but it developed a series of programs, including a partnership with a local labor union. One of the initiatives was vocational education. Between the program's start in October 2009 and June 2010, 430 people enrolled; 319 completed vocational training, and 103 people were placed in jobs that pay between $8.50 and $35 an hour.

The agency and its community partners are also working to improve the public transportation system in minority neighborhoods and to create equal access to job opportunities.

These projects hinge on honest and productive conversations about race, and the RISE conference was partly devoted to that. Organizers wanted to get people familiar with terminology and to get them comfortable talking about structural racism. It's helpful to talk in terms of equality and opportunity instead of inequality and racism, speakers said. Participants are less likely to feel uneasy.

Race may be hard to talk about, but unless the discussions happen, more and more of the population will be marginalized, Norman said. By 2050, there will be fewer whites in the United States than there will be minorities, Norman says. If nothing else, he said, that could put the country at a competitive disadvantage in areas like education and worker skills.

The complexity of racial inequality can often stymie efforts to change. Virtue said. That's why it's important for organizations trying to change those systems to decide what exactly they're trying to do.

"It does help to focus," she said.

Locally, RISE hasn't selected a focus area yet. But organizers plan to hold two more conferences, to pinpoint problem areas they can change and determine strategies for reform.