“What does ‘inherent racism’ mean—and why does everyone use it incorrectly?”

The word inherent gets thrown around a lot in anti-racism conversations—but some people are using it wrong, and others are reacting to it based on a narrow, personal definition.

Let’s be clear:

When something is inherent, it means it’s built in, natural, or inseparable from the thing itself.

Open a thesaurus and you’ll find:

Synonyms: innate, essential, permanent, intrinsic, ingrained

Antonyms: acquired, learned, external, superficial, removable

So when someone says “racism is inherent in whiteness” or “white people are inherently racist,” what they usually mean is that racism is deeply woven into the systems white people are born into.

But here’s where it gets messy:

A lot of people use inherent when they really mean learned or absorbed—and then say, “But you can unlearn it!”

You can’t unlearn something that’s inherent. That’s a contradiction.

That’s where the confusion starts. Some people hear “inherent” and assume it means “unchangeable.” Others use it to describe something that feels permanent—like a system that’s everywhere, invisible, and impossible to escape.

Here’s the thing: Racism is systemically inherent.

Whiteness was constructed with racism baked in—from colonization to slavery to redlining to mass incarceration. And all white people are born into that system. It surrounds them, protects them, and benefits them by default. That is what we mean when we say racism is inherent to whiteness.

So yes—all white people are inherently racist within that broader, systemic definition.

If that makes you uncomfortable, good.

It means you’re paying attention.

“I don’t have white privilege—I grew up poor.”

Hear this a lot. And we get it—poverty is real, and it’s brutal. But white privilege doesn’t mean your life was easy. It means your skin color wasn’t one of the things making it harder.

You can struggle with money, addiction, violence, trauma, or neglect—and still be treated better than a Black person facing the same struggles. That’s privilege. It’s not about what you had, it’s about what wasn’t used against you.

We also know that privilege isn’t tied to money—because some of the richest Black people in this country still face racism every day. Being wealthy doesn’t stop you from getting profiled, followed in stores, denied housing, or targeted online. That’s how deep this runs.

You might’ve grown up with very little. But whiteness still gave you benefits you probably didn’t notice—because you didn’t have to. That’s how privilege works.

“Isn’t talking about racism itself divisive?”

People say talking about racism “divides us,” but let’s be real—when have we ever actually united?

Calling out what’s broken doesn’t cause the damage; it just brings it into the light. If your ceiling is leaking, pointing at the puddle isn’t the problem—the hole in the roof is.

Same goes for racism. Naming it doesn’t create the harm. Ignoring it just allows it to spread. And claiming to “not see color”? That’s not wisdom. That’s avoidance.

The reality is, one group has spent generations just trying to survive, exist, and be left in peace. The other group has often drawn the lines—through white flight, redlining, gentrification, and constantly shifting the rules to maintain control.

This isn’t a both-sides issue. Historically and even today, division tends to come from those who already hold the power, not from those asking for fairness.

If we ever want real coexistence, it has to start with truth. That means facing hard history, naming injustice, and being willing to sit in the discomfort that comes with real growth.

Silence isn’t peace—it’s just a pause button on a problem that keeps getting worse. Talking about racism doesn’t divide us. It gives us a shot at finally repairing what’s been broken for far too long.

“I treat everyone equally. Isn’t that enough?”

Treating people equally doesn’t fix a system that treats them unequally.

Racism isn’t just about how you act toward people of color. It’s about how systems treat them differently—in schools, in housing, at work, in healthcare, in policing. You can be respectful to everyone you meet and still benefit from a system that consistently favors white people.

That’s the trap: thinking that personal kindness is enough to cancel out structural harm.

You might not be doing anything wrong, but that doesn’t mean you’re doing anything right, either. In fact, staying neutral in the face of injustice usually protects the status quo. And the status quo is working exactly as it was designed to.

Antiracism isn’t about treating people equally. It’s about confronting the unequal foundation we’re standing on and being willing to do something about it.

“I don’t see color.”

If you don’t see color, then you don’t see racism.

It might sound noble—like you’re rising above prejudice. But what it really says is, “I’m ignoring a part of who you are.” It’s a microaggression. A way of saying, “Don’t worry—I see you as one of the good ones. I don’t see your Blackness. I don’t see you.”

That’s not progress. That’s erasure.

People of color don’t have the luxury of not seeing race—because the world won’t let them forget it. Saying you “don’t see color” means you haven’t had to see how race shapes everything from healthcare to housing to whether or not someone makes it home alive after a traffic stop.

This isn’t about judging people because of color. It’s about acknowledging how color changes the way people are judged and treated. Seeing color isn’t the problem—denying it is.

If you really want to treat people fairly, you have to see the whole person. That includes race. That includes history. That includes truth.

“If we just stop talking about racism, it will go away.”

Silence has never ended oppression. It’s just made it easier to ignore.

Racism isn’t kept alive by the people who talk about it. It’s kept alive by the people who benefit from it—and pretend not to see it.

If a wound is infected, covering it up doesn’t make it heal. It festers. Same with racism. Avoiding the topic doesn’t make it disappear—it lets the damage spread unchecked.

Talking about racism is what exposes it. What challenges it. What dismantles it. The people most desperate to silence those conversations are usually the ones most protected by the status quo.

If talking about racism makes you uncomfortable—good. That discomfort is where change begins.

“My family didn’t own slaves—we only came here a couple generations ago.”

You don’t have to be descended from slaveowners to benefit from the system slavery built.

Slavery was just the foundation. What came after—Jim Crow laws, redlining, school segregation, voter suppression, mass incarceration—carried the same logic forward. And every one of those systems was designed to advantage white people as a group, regardless of where your specific family came from or when they arrived.

If your ancestors arrived in the U.S. as white immigrants, they were folded into whiteness. They got access to neighborhoods, schools, and jobs that Black Americans were actively shut out of—by law, by policy, by violence.

So no, your family might not have owned slaves. But they likely stepped into a system that was already tilted in their favor. That’s how white privilege works: you inherit the benefits, even if you didn’t cause the harm.

“Why do white people need to take responsibility? I didn’t ask for any of this.”

You might not have asked for it—but you still inherited it.

Whiteness comes with built-in advantages in this country. You didn’t choose them—but you benefit from them. That’s the part a lot of people don’t want to admit. It feels unfair. It feels like blame. But it’s not about blame. It’s about responsibility.

If you were handed a house built on stolen land, with stolen labor, and protected by unjust laws—and you keep living in it without ever acknowledging how it got there—that’s complicity.

You didn’t build the system, but you’re living in it. And if you’re not actively working to change it, then you’re helping keep it running.

Antiracism isn’t about shame. It’s about being honest about where we stand, and what we do with the power we didn’t earn but still hold.

“But the dictionary says - racism is just treating people differently because of race.”

The dictionary is not a source of truth. It’s a mirror.

It reflects how society currently uses a word—and society has a long track record of getting racism wrong.

If you want to understand racism, you don’t go to a one-sentence summary written by a mostly white editorial board. You go to the people who’ve lived it. You read history. You study systems. You listen to those who’ve been on the receiving end of injustice.

And let’s be real: if the dictionary were the only source of knowledge we needed, there’d be no point in having encyclopedias, universities, or an entire Dewey Decimal System just to organize deeper thought. A dictionary tells you what a word sounds like in a conversation—not what it means in the real world.

The dictionary also once said women were “the weaker sex.” That homosexuality was a “disorder.” That enslaved people were “property.” Just because something’s printed in a reference book doesn’t make it just—or even accurate.

So if you’re using the dictionary to shut down conversations about racism, you’re not looking for truth. You’re looking for the fastest way to avoid it.

“Aren’t you being racist by generalizing about white people?”

No. Naming a system isn’t the same as attacking a person.

Talking about whiteness, white privilege, or white silence doesn’t mean every individual white person is evil—it means that whiteness, as a system, has shaped how power works. And if you’re white, you were born into that system—even if you didn’t ask to be.

Racism requires power. Systemic power. It’s not just bias or hurt feelings—it’s about who holds the keys in courtrooms, boardrooms, classrooms, and hospitals. That’s why “reverse racism” doesn’t hold up. Punching up isn’t the same as punching down.

If hearing the word “white” in a critique feels personal, that’s worth sitting with. The discomfort isn’t proof that the critique is wrong. It’s proof that whiteness was never meant to be looked at directly.

Antiracism isn’t about blaming you—it’s about asking you to see the water you’re swimming in and stop pretending it’s not there.

“But what about reverse racism?”

There’s no such thing as reverse racism—because racism isn’t just about prejudice. It’s about power.

Anyone can hold bias, bigotry, or even hatred. That’s real. But racism is when those attitudes are backed by systemic power—when they shape who gets hired, who gets stopped by police, who gets access to housing, healthcare, or education. That power structure has never favored Black or Brown people in this country. It has always favored white people.

People love to run to the dictionary for backup. But the only book in the library that says racism can go “both ways” is the dictionary—and the dictionary isn’t a source. It’s a snapshot. It just reflects how we currently use a word, not how that word plays out in real life.

So no—calling out white privilege, critiquing whiteness, or expressing anger at the system isn’t “reverse racism.” It’s telling the truth. And if that truth feels like a threat, that says more about the system than the people speaking up against it.