It’s Not a choice It’s a System

I’ve been sitting with the truth that sometimes the most important thing I can do is use my voice to echo what’s already been shouted- often unheard-for far too long. I’m a white woman, and I’m not here to explain racism. Black women, indigenous people, and people of color have done that long before I showed up. But what I can do is refuse to let those truths be ignored in spaces that are still too comfortable. So I’m writing this as a reminder-to myself, and to anyone still choosing silence.

It drives me insane when people say it’s a choice to be affected by racism. As if someone wakes up and chose to be born in a redlined neighborhood. As if someone decides to grow up in underfunded schools, overpoliced streets, poisoned water, and generational struggle they just didn’t “try hard enough.” It’s not a choice. It’s a system. And that’s a fact. Racism isn’t just hateful slurs or individual bias.

It’s zoning laws. It’s wage gaps. It’s job discrimination. It’s who gets stopped, searched, or sentenced. It’s who has to prove they deserve to be here-everyday. Yes, people can build lives. Yes, some do. But that doesn’t erase the reality: Black women have to work twice as hard to get half the recognition. People of color are held to standards no one else has to meet. And even when they succeed, they’re still navigating a system built to break them. That’s not victimhood. That’s structural truth. Stop telling people they need to “want it more.” Start asking why some people have to climb ten walls just to stand where others were born. You don’t get to blame people for the cage they were born in. Not when the whole system was built to keep them there. They’re not imagining this. They’re living it.