From slavery to the modern-day classroom, race continues to shape every aspect of life in America. For Black Americans, navigating this system isn’t a choice; it’s survival.

In America, race is not just a category; it’s a condition. It defines the neighborhoods we live in, the schools we attend, the jobs we get, and too often, whether we live or die. Everything on our society, from the foundation of capitalism to the architecture of our democracy, was built on racial hierarchy.

To be Black in America is to exist inside a system that was never meant to see us as fully human. From the plantation to the prison cell, from segregation signs to “Stop and Frisk,” this country has found new names and new methods for the same old problem: controlling Black life.

W.E.B. Du Bois said it best in The Souls of Black Folk: “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” A century later, the color line hasn’t disappeared; it’s just been redrawn.

American loves to brand itself as “post-racial.” Every few years, the myth resurfaces; after Obama’s election, after George Floyd’s death, after the latest diversity initiative. But a few symbolic breakthroughs can’t undo centuries of racial engineering.

The legacy of slavery didn’t end in 1865; it evolved. Jim Crow was replaced by redinings, mass incarcerations, and the school-to-prison pipeline. The Department of Housing and Urban Development found that the wealth gap between Black and white families is wider today that it was in the 1960s. That’s not an accident, that’s design.

Even our healthcare system carries the scars of racism. Black women in the U.S. are nearly three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes that white women. In classrooms, Black students are more likely to be suspended or labeled “disruptive.” Racism isn’t just limited to policy, it’s also in perception.

James Baldwin once wrote, “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” That rage is not hatred, its recognition. When you see how deeply race structures reality, you can’t unsee it.

The Complexity Within Blackness

Here’s the conversation we need to have; not all Blackness is experienced the same way. And while that’s true, it doesn’t mean race becomes less central in America.

There are many factors that can change the way a Black person experiences race, from skin tone, to geography, to wealth status, but for now I want to just touch on the geography aspect.

For many Black immigrants and members of the African diaspora, coming to the United States means stepping into a racial system that’s far more rigid and punitive than in their home countries. In places like Nigeria, Jamaica, or Ghana, identity may center more on tribe, class, or nationality. But in America, none of that matters first. Here, Black is the primary label; and it carries centuries of meaning.

This isn’t to say that African or Caribbean immigrants haven’t faced their own colonial wounds. But the American racial system is unique in how thoroughly it defines one’s social worth. Black Americans, whose ancestors endured chattel slavery on this soil, have lived generations under laws that literally coded their exisistence as property, then as inferior citizens. And it wasn’t that long ago, there are still Black Americans alive now who can tell you their stories and experiences of being a slave and how they lived during the Jim Crow era.

So when Black Americans speak about systemic racism, police violence, or generational trauma, we aren’t exaggerating. It’s lived history. And when newcomers undermine those experiences by saying things like “not all Black people have it that bad,” it dismissed the reality of an entire group of people who have fought for every inch of progress this country pretends to celebrate.

As Angela Davis said, “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist. We must be anti-racist.” That means recognizing that solidarity begins with listening, not comparison.

Building Solidarity

If there’s a message I want readers – especially Black readers across the diaspora – to take from this, it’s this: race is not an abstraction in America. It is the foundation of this society’s power structure. To exist here as a Black person, regardless of where you were born, means inheriting a struggle that you didn’t ask for but cannot ignore.

We are not all the same, but our liberation is linked. The goal is not to erase our differences, but to confront the system that keeps inventing new ways to divide us.

Because in America, race is not a passing phase, it’s the organizing principle. The sooner we acknowledge that, the closer we come to dismantling it.

“In America, race isn’t just part of the story – it is the story. Every institution, every law, and every social norm has been shaped by it.”

Christopher Za’Mir