The Cycle of Misinformation and Consequence

Every day, I realize just how many people don’t understand the systems they critique. They argue about nonprofits without knowing how public funding works. They complain about scholarships but don’t grasp how educational grants function. They debate church finances yet fail to comprehend tax exemptions. And still, they have something to say about everything.

Take diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, for example. Across social media, some loudly oppose DEI, believing it’s an unfair advantage rather than an attempt to level an uneven playing field. Many of these same individuals cheer when companies eliminate DEI initiatives—until they become collateral damage.

Consider this: An American white male spends months ranting against DEI. His employer finally cuts the program, and with it, his own job—because the funding that supported his position was tied to the initiative he fought to dismantle. Now, without employment, he struggles to find work in a saturated market. The pay isn’t what he’s used to. His car insurance lapses. His home slips out of reach. The life he built crumbles, and with no support system to fall back on, despair takes hold. Unable to cope, he takes his own life.

Meanwhile, a Black employee faces the same layoff but survives—because survival has always been a necessity. Generations of systemic barriers have taught Black communities how to navigate economic instability. They know how to stretch a dollar, lean on community networks, and pivot when opportunities disappear. This resilience isn’t romanticized; it’s a byproduct of being forced to adapt when the system repeatedly fails them.

What’s happening here is not just an individual tragedy but a reflection of broader patterns. People dismantle systems they don’t understand, only to suffer the consequences when those systems are gone. Public funding works the same way—when people support defunding schools in favor of private or charter institutions, they don’t realize their own communities will bear the burden. When they argue against social safety nets, they don’t see that one unexpected hardship could leave them needing the very assistance they opposed.

Ignorance of how these structures operate doesn’t exempt anyone from the reality of their collapse. The difference is that some have generations of experience surviving instability—while others are facing it for the first time, unprepared.