Discrimination Isn’t Just a Slur or a Policy. It’s a System. And You’re Probably in It.
You think discrimination is something obvious.
Something loud.
Something other people do.
It’s not.
Discrimination is quiet. It’s structural. It’s inherited. It’s invisible to the people it benefits and inescapable to the people it harms.
Let’s define it straight:
Discrimination is unequal treatment based on identity, not behavior.
It can be active (“We don’t hire people like you”) or passive (“He just wasn’t a culture fit”).
It shows up in:
- Hiring. Same resume. Different name. One gets called back. The other doesn’t.
- Healthcare. Women, Black patients, neurodivergent folks being dismissed or misdiagnosed.
- Education. Schools in rich white neighborhoods get more funding. Period.
- Policing. If you think this one needs more examples, open literally any news site.
- Pay gaps. Race. Gender. Disability. Pick your margin—there’s a gap for it.
- Media. Whose stories get told? Whose pain gets sympathy? Whose bodies get praised?
Discrimination isn’t a bug in the system. It’s the system functioning exactly as designed.
And if you’re thinking “Well, I’m not racist/sexist/ableist”… cool. But that’s not the point.
The point is: your comfort isn’t proof that things are fair.
We’ve built societies where equality feels like oppression to the privileged.
If you’ve never had to:
- Code-switch,
- Translate your grief into something palatable,
- Worry your name would cost you a job,
- Tone down your hair, clothes, or voice to feel safe,
…then you’ve experienced protection from discrimination, not absence of it.
So what can we actually do?
1. Acknowledge that you’re biased. Yes, you.
Bias isn’t evil. It’s human.
But unexamined bias becomes policy, culture, and gatekeeping.
Start noticing who gets interrupted. Who gets praised. Who gets promoted. Who gets dismissed.
2. Redistribute the mic.
If you’re in a room and everyone looks, talks, and thinks like you—it’s not diversity. It’s an echo chamber.
Hire different voices. Believe them when they speak. Pay them like it matters.
3. Stop asking marginalized people to fix it.
It is not a Black woman’s job to educate you on racism.
It is not a trans person’s job to explain gender.
It is not a disabled person’s job to make your workplace accessible.
If you caused the mess—or benefit from it—you clean it up.
4. Accept that equity ≠ comfort.
If making things more fair makes you uncomfortable, you were sitting too pretty on the unfair side.
Too many people mistake loss of privilege for oppression. Spoiler: it’s not. It’s balance.
Here’s the gut punch:
Discrimination won’t end because we “raise awareness.”
It’ll end when we change policies, systems, incentives, and power structures.
This is about impact over intention.
Action over optics.
Reparations over apologies.
You want to be a “good person”? Great. Be brave enough to be an uncomfortable one.
Fight discrimination with your choices.
With your hiring. Your platforms. Your money. Your vote.
With your willingness to be wrong and change anyway.
Because silence is comfortable for the privileged.
And deadly for everyone else.
