Growing up, my parents were very intent on educating us early about the cycle of poverty - how beginning life in poverty was already extremely disadvantageous because it often lead to lack of proper education, lack of access to healthcare, therefore lack of opportunity for higher education. Without higher education, one is not ordinarily allowed into a higher-paying job and therefore the cycle repeats for their children. I was immediately struck by this and recognized from a young age how lucky I was to be born into privilege. The thing my parents left out was how much deeper that cycle is for people of color. Not only might a Black family be stuck in the cycle of poverty but the system itself - redlining, incarceration, job discrimination - is literally created to keep them there, whereas most of those programs and systems were erected to help *white* people out of the cycle. I can't believe I am just now figuring this out.
Our education system is in part to blame. We are given this stripped down sanitized version of our history, while leaving out the parts that many white people do not want to think about or acknowledge. Over time white people can develop such a strong cognitive dissonance to the idea that our white ancestors were the ones who perpetuated violence, not to mention the violence they continue to maintain by staying silent.
Silence = violence.
It is those of us who seek knowledge outside of the mainstream culture, like yourself, who may start to slow the process of perpetuating the oppression. As long as we are able to learn with an open mind, stay humble, continue to educate ourselves against the conformist narrative, and turn knowledge into action, we can start to dismantle racism.