Oppression: The Operating System of America

It's Not a Glitch, It’s the Code

When most people think of an operating system, they think of the hidden framework that makes computers run—Windows, MacOS, Linux. The operating system is not the app you use, but the structure that makes every app possible. It shapes what can run, what crashes, and what is considered compatible. America, if we are honest, runs on an operating system too—and that operating system is oppression.

Oppression Is Not a Glitch, It’s the Code

Too often, when racial injustice, economic inequality, or gender-based violence comes to light, people frame it as a “glitch in the system.” But oppression is not a malfunction. It is the very architecture on which this nation was built. Enslavement of Africans, genocide of Indigenous peoples, exploitation of immigrant labor, and exclusion of women from full personhood weren’t accidents. They were deliberate programming decisions that still define how America functions.

The Government Shutdown: System Failure by Design

Look at the current government shutdown. The lights are off in many federal offices, programs for the poor are frozen, and federal workers are missing paychecks—yet billionaires, lobbyists, and corporations keep running without interruption. That’s not dysfunction; that’s design. The shutdown exposes the truth: when the system crashes, it’s always the working class, the elderly, and the marginalized who absorb the impact. Power and wealth remain insulated, untouched by the chaos they create. The system’s core code ensures that suffering is always downloaded to the most vulnerable users.

The Software Updates Keep the Same Code

Across centuries, America has gone through what looks like upgrades—emancipation, civil rights legislation, marriage equality, disability rights protections. Each of these updates created new icons on the desktop, new access points for progress. But the underlying operating system remains the same: a hierarchy that privileges whiteness, wealth, maleness, straightness, and able-bodiedness. Every time the oppressed gain ground, the system adapts to preserve power for those at the top. Jim Crow replaced slavery. Mass incarceration replaced Jim Crow. Voter suppression laws now replace the open terrorism of poll taxes and literacy tests. The interface changes; the code doesn’t.

Power Always Protects Itself

Oppression operates like antivirus software—but inverted. Instead of protecting against harmful viruses, it protects against liberation. Movements for justice are flagged as threats: abolitionists were criminalized, civil rights leaders were surveilled, Black Lives Matter activists are labeled extremists. The system works overtime to quarantine anything that challenges its supremacy, ensuring that those with power stay shielded while those without it remain vulnerable.

The Myth of Neutrality

One of the most insidious features of America’s operating system is the myth of neutrality. “The law is the law.” “The system is fair.” “Everyone has the same opportunities.” These claims suggest that America runs on meritocracy. But meritocracy itself is an illusion—a program coded to keep people believing that failure is personal, not structural. If you can’t run a program on your computer because the operating system doesn’t support it, the fault isn’t in the app. It’s in the OS.

Rewriting the Code

If oppression is the operating system, then real liberation requires more than installing patches or surface updates. It demands rewriting the code. That means confronting history truthfully, redistributing resources, restructuring institutions, and dismantling myths that keep people complicit. It means building systems that run on equity, justice, and love—not exploitation, fear, and domination.

Now what?

America cannot continue to pretend oppression is a bug that can be worked out with small reforms. It is the backbone of the entire system. Until we collectively acknowledge that, we will keep mistaking upgrades for transformation. The real question is whether we are willing to finally write a new operating system—one not built on the subjugation of many for the benefit of a few.

Blacklisted Saint