A few weeks ago, during a conversation about race in American schools, someone looked me straight in the face and insisted racism didn’t exist in education. They said it with conviction, eyebrows raised, tone firm, as if reciting a universal truth that required no proof. And because they felt the word “racism” was too sharp, too charged, too indicting, they tried out every synonym they could find.
“Bias.”
“Miscommunication.”
“Cultural mismatch.”
“Bad experiences.”
“Misunderstanding.”
Anything but the word they were avoiding.
That moment stayed with me because it was so familiar. That same evasive maneuver appears in every institution: policing, housing, healthcare, hiring, the military, you name it. Each one insists racism doesn’t live there. They don’t tolerate it. They have zero-tolerance policies. They’ve “moved past all that.” They would never.
And yet the disparities, the consequences, remain as visible as an oil stain on a white shirt.
It’s a national game of “Where’s Waldo?” except Waldo is six feet tall, dead center, and waving. The people who benefit from not seeing him keep peering into the corner, insisting, “Nope, don’t see him.” Spoiler: he’s never been hiding. He’s been on the payroll for centuries.
This is no innocent game of hide-and-seek. It’s a deliberate performance.
PEEKABOO POLITICS
There’s a game parents play with infants: peekaboo. Cover your eyes, and the child believes you’ve disappeared. To the baby, whatever isn’t seen must not exist.
This is how America treats racism.
Close your eyes, and the inequalities vanish. Cover your face, and the data disappears. Call it a different name, and you avoid accountability. Deny what is visible, and you avoid confronting the institution that benefits from it.
Peekaboo politics is a convenient performance for the people least harmed by racism. What a gift it is to live inside a system that protects you from the consequences of your own denial. But for the people on the other side of that denial, peekaboo is suffocating — a game that leaves them shouting into institutions that keep their hands over their eyes like toddlers refusing the truth.
And to maintain the illusion, we’ve become gold medalists in linguistic gymnastics.
THE EUPHEMISM OLYMPICS
Americans will twist themselves into rhetorical pretzels before they’ll name the thing directly.
We say “achievement gap” instead of racism. (The students aren’t achieving what, exactly? And who decided that benchmark?)
We say “officer-involved shooting” instead of racism. (Passive voice doing some HEAVY lifting there.)
We say “tough on crime” instead of racism. (Tough on which criminals, in which neighborhoods?)
We say “economic anxiety” instead of racism. (But only for certain anxious people.)
We say “implicit bias” instead of racism. (Because if it’s unconscious, no one has to take responsibility.)
I’ve spent 18 years in education equity, sitting in rooms where we discuss racially disparate outcomes using every word except the one that actually applies. We’ll commission a $50,000 study to explain why Black boys keep getting suspended at three times the rate of white boys, then ignore every recommendation that would require examining our own practices. It’s like hiring a nutritionist, listening to them explain you’re eating poison, then asking if they have any recipes that let you keep eating poison.
Of course, the language alone wouldn’t work without a system. We’ve industrialized the excuse-making process.
THE DENIAL PLAYBOOK
When the receipts for racial inequity pile up — and they always do — we follow a well-worn script.
Step 1: Acknowledge the disparity exists. (Very important — you have to seem reasonable.)
Step 2: List 47 possible explanations that have nothing to do with racism. Culture. Choices. Work ethic. Family structure. Personal responsibility. Bad luck. Mercury is in retrograde. Anything but the thing.
Step 3: Conclude that it’s “complicated” and “we need more research.” (This buys you another decade, minimum.)
Bonus Step: If anyone keeps pressing, accuse them of “playing the race card” or “being divisive.” Nothing shuts down a conversation faster than making the person pointing out racism the problem.
This playbook is applied universally because the employee in question has a flawless, if unacknowledged, record.
THE BEST RÉSUMÉ IN AMERICA
If racism were a person, I imagine him as America’s most successful freelancer. Under “Skills,” he lists: wealth extraction, policy distortion, narrative control, and an uncanny ability to make his presence felt while remaining off the company directory. Under “Work History,” he’s got 400 years of continuous employment across every sector. Under “References,” he writes “Available upon request,” but when you call, everyone says they’ve never worked with him.
He’s the consultant whose edits appear in every memo, though he doesn’t have an office. He’s the contractor who built the foundation of every institution, but whose name never makes it onto the paperwork.
And his work product is impeccable, if you know where to look. The receipts are published, debated, and ignored.
THE RECEIPTS KEEP PILING UP
The absurdity is that America produces endless evidence of racial inequity. Year after year, report after report, crisis after crisis. Yet no one claims authorship.
The Pentagon says racism doesn’t exist there. Yet in 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth moved to axe DEI programs and boasted of scrapping Women, Peace & Security — rebranding it as “woke,” despite its 2017 bipartisan roots. Leadership pipelines remain overwhelmingly white and male. Promotions stall for Black officers. But racism? “Not in this building.”
Schools insist racism is not in their DNA. Yet according to the U.S. Department of Education’s 2020–21 data, Black boys are 8% of enrollment but 18% of out-of-school suspensions and expulsions. Gifted programs are stratified. Teachers of color are underrepresented. But racism? “No, that’s not what’s happening. It’s more… complicated.”
Hospitals reject the idea of racism. Yet in 2023, Black women died in childbirth at 50.3 per 100,000 live births — over three times the rate for white women at 14.5, according to the CDC. Providers call this “cultural competency gaps,” as if Black patients just aren’t explaining their impending death clearly enough. But racism? “Impossible. We treat everyone the same.”
The economy provides the most blatant proof. Florida’s 2023 immigration law (SB 1718) was predicted to cost the state $12.6 billion in year one. By mid-2024, businesses were begging for relief as crops rotted and restaurants sat empty. We evict the chef, then call 911 because dinner isn’t ready. The direct line from racist policy to your grocery bill is bright as neon, but we’re still calling it a “supply chain issue.”
Now, you might be wondering how this keeps happening. The answer is: on purpose.
Maintaining this level of denial costs us everything. This employee is bankrupting us.
THE MOST EXPENSIVE CONTRACTOR IN AMERICA
Racism is astronomically expensive.
He’s the only contractor who consistently delivers over budget and behind schedule, yet keeps getting rehired. His “War on Drugs” promised safety and delivered mass incarceration and a trillion-dollar price tag. His immigration policies were supposed to “protect jobs,” and now farms and kitchens are understaffed.
We pay for him in hospital bills when untreated chronic conditions become ER visits. We pay for him in lost GDP when education systems fail entire demographics. We pay for him at the grocery store when we criminalize agricultural labor.
The effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act? That’s racism with a price tag — targeting the healthcare access of millions of Black, Latino, and low-income Americans while raising costs for everyone. The mass deportations? Racism, itemized on your receipt.
But denial? Denial is priceless. It costs nothing to pretend nothing is wrong. The American brand: we don’t fix what we can rename.
So after 400 years, where do we find this elusive employee?
SO WHERE IS RACISM?
The same place he’s always been, everywhere we’ve decided not to look. In the policy no one reads. In the hiring decision no one questions. In the discipline statistics no one investigates. In the pain, no one believes.
The truth is that racism is not elusive. We are. We are elusive in our responsibility. We are elusive in our honesty.
Racism isn’t hiding. He’s sitting at the table, feet up, eating off your plate. He’s been here so long, his ass print is forever indented into the chair. And every time someone finally points at him and says his name, twenty people jump up to say, “Who? I don’t see anyone. You must be imagining things.”
Peekaboo only works on babies. And America is a grown-ass adult long overdue to open its eyes.
This country has spent 400 years perfecting the art of benefiting from racism while denying its existence. That’s not ignorance — that’s strategy. You can’t accidentally avoid seeing something that big, that loud, that expensive. That takes work. That takes commitment.
You cannot fix what you refuse to name. The game is over. The mess is everywhere.
The nomad everyone swears they never let in has been getting a paycheck for 400 years.
Stop pretending you don’t see him.
We see you, racism. We know exactly where you work, and it’s long past time to fire you.
Written by : Nyarde
