Trauma Teaches the Oppressed to Play by Rules Meant to Keep Them Poor
We Inherit Wounds From Our Parents and Society
I’ve been watching our behavior as Black people with all the prayers and the forgiveness for the sins committed against us. We’re breaking our backs to do what’s “right,” even when the economic and social system does us wrong. We seem to double down on doing what’s “right” then. I heard the story of a Black woman who refuses to sign her aging mother up for Medicaid or Medicare. Her income is average, her savings are running out, and she has had to downgrade her care providers because she simply can’t afford the more expensive yet more experienced ones. Still, she believes that it would be immoral to tap into social benefits, that they “shouldn’t” qualify.
She got laid off when Trump’s administration slashed budgets that support many nonprofit organizations. She paid into the system every month, built her career helping others, and still chooses to suffer in silence while her white counterparts play the system like a damn electric guitar, with gusto and celebration. Her story isn’t all that rare—it’s patterned. It’s what trauma looks like when it matures into obedience, docility, what feels like safety from attack.
The White “Welfare Queens” and Kings of Aristocracy
One of her friends, a health worker, finally pulled her aside. Told her the truth: old white people come into clinics draped in wealth—cashmere coats, expensive watches, designer frames, pearl necklaces—and then hand over their Medicaid cards. Some are dropped off by their drivers in black SUVs and even limos. They “own” nothing on paper. Their lawyers tuck wealth into trusts and shell companies, rendering them legally broke while they sit on fortunes.
It’s not fraud. It’s the system working exactly how it was built. They understand the game and play it with generational wisdom. But the woman—the one working twice as hard for half as much—grew angry when she heard this. Why?
Because trauma will fight to protect the very ideology that birthed it.
The Fairness Trap
This woman, like many of us, was trained from a young age to believe that fairness is moral. And morality is noble. And nobility is rewarded. The belief is that if you work hard and are honest, karma, the universe, God, and people around you will recognize your good deeds, and you will be justly rewarded. But this is America. It was never built on any of these virtues and does not operate by any of them now. What’s rewarded is ownership. The system doesn’t hand out medals for moral restraint. It hands out tax breaks for capital gains.
We’re taught to believe that if we don’t work, we don’t eat. I often hear that even my mentor, a person I sincerely respect, talks about connecting eating with work. But billionaires eat plenty without working a day. They eat because they own. And we keep working because we don’t.
Psychologists like Dr. Joy DeGruy have documented how intergenerational trauma conditions Black and Brown people to accept suffering as noble. We don’t complain. We don’t protest. We outwork. We outperform. We over-police ourselves. Because we’ve been punished for centuries for stepping out of line—even when the line was a noose.
You Were Taught to Work, Not Own
In school, most of us were taught how to manage someone else’s business, not how to own one. I remember my high school and college subjects. They included accounting, management, marketing, English, computer science, economics, history, geography, and science. We were shown how to balance a budget, not build equity. Told to rent apartments, not acquire deeds. Groomed to be good employees who don’t ask questions about who benefits from our labor. The closest course I took that suggested ownership was one called Entrepreneurship, and it was lumped with marketing and treated as theory, rather than helping us with practical steps like registering a viable business and operating it as a future career path after school.
Meanwhile, kids of the wealthy get summer internships at law firms that handle offshore trusts. They get courses on investing, not resumes and LinkedIn profiles. They don’t learn to be fair—they learn to protect family assets. That’s why when it’s time to tap into the social net, they don’t hesitate. It’s not shameful—it’s strategy.
Trauma is Deep Programming
So many of us are walking around in a type of pain we don’t know we’re carrying. Emotional trauma manifests as moral rigidity. We believe this morality gives us value. We say with the air of the self-righteous: “It wouldn’t be right to take something I don’t desperately need.” But who taught you that?
Who taught you to suffer quietly while the system eats your paycheck and offers you crumbs in return? Who taught you to moralize starvation while billionaires bankrupt entire cities? I was just reading about an MP in South Croydon, London, who was speaking out against reparations for enslavement and colonial plundering. This MP is a common thief who defrauds the City he represented throughout his term with bogus expenses, many of which are blatantly private. Today, I hear that the City is trying to deal with bankruptcy. He will say he got it all legally, and probably he did. But where is his fairness and morality?
This trauma didn’t start with you. It started with survival. Enslaved people who disobeyed were whipped, lynched, or sold. Colonized people who spoke the truth were disappeared. Immigrants who questioned authority were deported. This is happening today! Trauma taught us that safety comes from silence and compliance.
But what once protected us is now destroying us.
Stop Playing by Rules That Don’t Exist
The system doesn’t care how fair you are. It only respects leverage. You don’t need to be immoral to survive capitalism. But you can’t be moralistic about a system that was never built for justice. This is not a divine order. It’s a manmade trap. Designed. Maintained. Marketed as meritocracy while operating as an oligarchy.
So if you qualify for Medicaid, take it. If you can write off your business expenses, do it. If you can get subsidized housing while you build wealth, do it. This is not cheating. This is surviving. This is equity. This is reclaiming.
And if that bothers you—if you feel resistance rising in your throat—ask yourself: whose voice is that?
Rewire Your Mind
Here’s the thing: you won’t heal overnight. These internal chains are deep. But start with this:
- Learn the system’s rules. Not the moral ones, the financial ones. Learn how trust funds work. Learn about LLCs, tax shelters, and asset protection.
- Study what wealthy families teach their kids. Then teach it to yours.
- Stop calling yourself “a good worker.” Start calling yourself a strategist. An owner. A builder.
- Connect with others who get it. Join cooperatives, mutual aid groups, or start one. Break isolation. Trauma thrives in silence.
Because the more we understand how deeply this system is designed to extract from us, the more we can stop giving it our obedience. You were not born to be compliant. You were born to be free.
My Final Thought
Do you really want fairness? Build your own systems. Mutual support. Shared knowledge. Ownership over labor. Decolonized thinking. And stop asking for permission.
America won’t save you. But you can save each other and yourself.
