The Problem Isn’t “Those People”… It’s the Way We’ve Been Taught to See Them

There’s something deeply unsettling about the way people talk about race in 2026. Not just the outright racism… that part is obvious. It’s the casual stuff. The coded language. The “I’m not racist, but…” conversations. The way people describe behavior and somehow magically tie it back to an entire race of people without even realizing what they’re doing.

You hear it everywhere.

A cruise line changes demographics, and suddenly people start talking about how it’s become “classless.” There are fights on a ship, and instead of asking why tensions exist or what social conditions create conflict, people reduce it to: “Well, look who’s going on those cruises now.”

Everybody knows what they mean.

We’re refusing to acknowledge history while actively judging people shaped by it. It’s cringe.

People are not born angry, defensive, loud, distrustful, guarded, or reactive in a vacuum. Human beings are shaped by generations of treatment, trauma, survival, exclusion, and disrespect. If a group of people has been marginalized, criminalized, ignored, exploited, mocked, or oppressed for centuries, that pain doesn’t disappear because laws changed on paper.

It lives in communities. It lives in families. It lives in instincts. It lives in nervous systems. It lives next door.

White America struggles to understand that.

There’s this popular phrase people love to say: “I don’t see color.”

That’s the problem.

You should see color. You should see culture. You should see history. You should recognize that different groups of people have had wildly different experiences in this country. Pretending everyone started from the same place is not equality… it’s denial.

If you refuse to see color, then you also refuse to see what people have survived.

You refuse to see Indigenous people living on land that was stolen from them. You refuse to see Black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved, segregated, terrorized, redlined, over-policed, and still disproportionately targeted today. You refuse to see immigrants constantly treated like outsiders no matter how long they’ve been here. You refuse to see LGBTQ+ people who have spent decades fighting just to exist safely in public spaces.

Marginalized groups often understand each other better than privileged groups understand them because pain recognizes pain.

Instead of empathy, we get judgment.

We get people calling others “ghetto,” “trashy,” “aggressive,” “dramatic,” “sensitive,” or “classless” without ever asking what conditions created those behaviors in the first place. We diagnose communities instead of listening to them.

It comes from fear… fear of anything unfamiliar, fear of losing power, fear of being uncomfortable long enough to learn something new.

That’s why division has become such a profitable political tool. Keep people separated, keep them suspicious of one another, keep them blaming each other instead of questioning systems, and nobody ever comes together long enough to demand better.

Republican vs. Democrat. Black vs. white. Straight vs. gay. Christian vs. everyone else. Rural vs. urban. Native-born vs. immigrant.

Divide. Distract. Repeat.

Ordinary people… people who probably have far more in common than they realize… spend their energy tearing each other apart instead of recognizing shared struggles.

The older I get, the more I realize racism is often rooted less in pure hatred and more in a stubborn refusal to understand people outside your own experience. Ignorance gets passed off as “common sense.” Stereotypes get treated like facts. Entire groups of people get reduced to headlines, assumptions, or viral videos.

It’s embarrassing.

We live in a time where information is endless, perspectives are accessible, and people still choose to remain emotionally and intellectually small.

I still believe people can grow.

I’ve seen people unlearn things. I’ve seen minds change. I’ve seen empathy happen in real time when someone finally listens instead of reacts.

None of us are trapped this way unless we choose to be.

The answer was never to erase our differences. The answer is to understand them.

The moment you stop seeing race, history, identity, and lived experience as threats… you can finally start seeing people as human beings.

And maybe that’s where real progress actually begins.

Xoxo, AB 💅💄💋