Pattern or Practice peels the veneer off that shoddy pretense and provides a stark view of what institutionalized racism looks like. A small Midwestern town, once a manufacturing powerhouse, is a backsliding, post-industrial community with a race problem so pervasive that disbelief is nearly always the observer’s first reaction. By the time the final credits are rolling, that disbelief is replaced by anger, disgust, perhaps shame and hopefully a desire for change.