What Racism Actually Is: The Lie We've Been Sold and The Truth They Fear

The Illusion of Individualism: Why We Were Lied To

Oye, mira.

Racism is not just a slur, a dirty look, a Confederate flag waving in the wind. It’s not just police brutality, housing discrimination, or the lack of Black faces in corporate boardrooms. Racism is a system. A machine so intricately designed, so deeply embedded, that most don’t even recognize they’re inside of it.

Yet, we were taught—intentionally—that racism is simply overt meanness, personal prejudice, a bad apple in the bunch. This is the greatest con of the colonial world: making us believe that racism is about individuals instead of institutions, about attitudes instead of power, about hurt feelings instead of life-and-death realities. Today, I'm going to help you all navigate this truth.

In contemporary discourse, racism is commonly defined as:

the belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities, leading to the notion that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. This definition emphasizes individual prejudices and discriminatory behaviors based on perceived racial distinctions.        

However, this perspective often overlooks the systemic nature of racism. Scholars like Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) and Charles V. Hamilton introduced the concept of institutional racism in their 1967 work, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. They argued that racism extends beyond individual biases to encompass systemic structures that uphold racial inequalities.

From a decolonial standpoint, racism is understood as:

a pervasive system of power that maintains the dominance of certain racial groups over others. This framework emphasizes that racism is deeply embedded in societal institutions, policies, and cultural norms, perpetuating historical injustices and colonial legacies. Decolonial theorists advocate for a critical examination of these structures to dismantle systemic oppression and promote genuine equity.        

In essence, while mainstream definitions of racism focus on individual prejudices, a decolonial perspective reveals it as an entrenched system of power that requires comprehensive structural change to achieve true racial justice.

Who Defined Racism as a System?

This isn’t a new realization. Some of the greatest thinkers, scholars, and revolutionaries have told us exactly what racism is, and yet their voices have been strategically silenced, diluted, or ignored.

• Kwame Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael) & Charles V. Hamilton (1967) – In Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, they coined the term institutional racism, explaining that racism is not just personal bigotry but a network of economic, political, social, and cultural structures that sustain white supremacy.
• Dr. Frances Cress Welsing (1991) – In The Isis Papers, she analyzed racism as a global system of white domination, rooted in the fear of genetic annihilation and sustained through every sector of society.
• Ruth Wilson Gilmore (2007) – The prison abolitionist and scholar defines racism as "the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death." It’s about who is allowed to live well and who is systematically funneled toward early death.
• Toni Morrison (1993, Nobel Prize Speech) – She called out how language itself is weaponized to uphold racism, how even defining racism in simplistic ways is an act of erasure.

So why didn’t they teach you this in school? Because the very system that educates you is the system that depends on your ignorance. If you understand racism as a machine instead of an emotion, you might just start dismantling it.

Why We’re Only Taught the Shallow Definition

1. To Protect White Innocence

If racism is just about mean people, then white people can say, "I’m not racist because I don’t hate anyone." But if racism is about a system that benefits them regardless of intent, then they have to grapple with the fact that their comfort comes at someone else’s expense.

2. To Keep Black, Indigenous, Asian, Visible Minorities Fighting Ghosts Instead of Systems

If we believe racism is about individuals, we spend all our energy calling out individual racists instead of dismantling the laws, policies, and power structures that keep racism alive. We’re too busy fighting Karen at the grocery store to fight the zoning laws that ensure our communities never build generational wealth.

3. Because Systems Protect Themselves

The greatest trick white supremacy ever pulled was convincing the world it was just about "a few bad apples." In reality, the entire orchard was planted on stolen land, watered with blood, and fertilized with oppression. The system teaches itself in schools, polices itself in courts, and funds itself through wealth hoarded for centuries.

What Now? The Decolonial Awakening

It’s time to see the system for what it is. To unlearn the individualist lie and step into the truth that racism is a global operating system—one that must be hacked, reprogrammed, and ultimately, obliterated.

What You Can Do Today:

• A map for your Decolonial journey to understand the system and the role you play in it - Start with my book, The Decolonial Awakening: A Complete Roadmap to Collective Liberation
• Read and Share Radical Voices – The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon and Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi.
• Understand the Economic Side – Follow the money. Redlining, predatory loans, corporate gatekeeping—all of it upholds racial capitalism.
• Stop Debating Racists and Start Dismantling Power – Your time is precious. Focus on systemic change, not convincing people who benefit from the lie.
• Create and Support Decolonial Spaces – Institutions won’t save us. We must build our own networks, economies, and communities outside of white supremacist systems.

Why White People Say “Decolonialism is Made Up”

1. Deflection is a Defense Mechanism – If they admit racism is a system, they have to acknowledge their role in it. Instead of doing that hard work, they dismiss decolonialism as “made up” to protect their own comfort.
2. Western Epistemology is Self-Preserving – Decolonial frameworks challenge the Eurocentric worldview that has been normalized as the only valid way of understanding history, knowledge, and power.
3. They’ve Been Miseducated by Design – Colonial education deliberately teaches a whitewashed version of history that reduces racism to individual bad behavior rather than a centuries-old system of oppression.

Decolonialism is Not New, It’s Just Suppressed

Decolonial thought did not emerge out of thin air—it has existed as a resistance to colonial oppression for centuries. Here are some of the scholars who laid its foundation:

• Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth, 1961) – Described how colonialism dehumanizes and oppresses, and how the colonized must reclaim power.
• Aníbal Quijano (1992) – Coined the term “coloniality of power”, explaining that racism was structured into the modern world system.
• Ng?g? wa Thiong’o (Decolonizing the Mind, 1986) – Showed how colonial languages and literature maintain European domination.

The True Decolonial Definition of Racism

Racism is a system of power designed to uphold white supremacy through economic, political, and social structures that exploit and oppress non-white people across the globe.

It is not about personal feelings. It is not about mean words. It is not about individual bad actors.

It is about stolen land, stolen labor, stolen wealth, and a structure that keeps the colonizers in power. Period.

Why This Definition Scares White People

Because if racism is a system, it means that: ?? It exists even when no one is “intentionally” racist. ?? White people benefit from it whether they like it or not. ?? It can’t be fixed with “diverse hiring” or “racial sensitivity training”—it must be dismantled.

White supremacy relies on controlling the definition of racism because that’s how it hides in plain sight. The moment we refuse to accept their diluted definitions, we start dismantling the system that built their power.

So, let them call it “made up.” That just means they’re afraid of what happens when people finally wake up.

Racism was never just about personal hate. It’s about maintaining power. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it. The question is—what will you do now that you know?

#BreakTheSystem #DecolonizeEverything #RacismIsASystem

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