The Lie That Raised Us

"You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:32

Children enter the world innocent.

Curious.

Always asking why.

During slavery, a White child might have tugged on their parent’s sleeve and asked a simple, honest question:

Why are the Black people in the fields while we live in the house?

That question demanded an answer.

And the answer could not be the truth.

So a story was told.

Something about order.

Something about capability.

Something about God’s design.

Something that made exploitation feel necessary and inequality feel normal.

That child grew up. And when their own children asked the same question, the story was passed down: refined, softened, repackaged, but intact.

Generation after generation.

At the same time, a Black child living in the fields watching their parents labor, watching whiteness live differently, asked their own parents a version of the same question:

Why are we here? Why is our life like this?

And their parents, too, had to answer.

Not with lies of superiority, but with explanations for survival.

Stories that helped children endure what they could not yet change.

Stories shaped by fear, caution, faith, and the need to stay alive.

An Inheritance We Didn’t Choose

No one alive today invented this lie. But all of us inherited it.

White families inherited stories that justified control, surveillance, and separation

Black families inherited stories shaped by harm, endurance, and the need to navigate systems that were never built with them in mind.

Over time, the lie embedded itself so deeply that it stopped sounding like a lie at all.

It became “common sense.”

It became “how things are.”

It became invisible.

And when lies become invisible, they become powerful.

How the Lie Lives in Us

This is the part we rarely talk about.

As Black people, we can internalize the lies told about us.

We can begin to doubt our own worth, our own capacity, our own right to dignity and protection.

We can mistake survival strategies for identity.

We can absorb shame that never belonged to us.

And as White people, the lie can show up as distance, defensiveness, or the belief that systems are neutral simply because they feel familiar.

This is why truth-telling must be paired with internal work.

Because the lie didn’t just build systems.

It shaped people.

And systems are made of people.

People placed in positions of power over families.

People conducting assessments that result in forcible family separation.

People making recommendations.

People deciding what is “safe,” what is “risky,” and what is “necessary.”

Every decision is filtered through a lens.

Through a worldview.

Through what someone was taught, explicitly or implicitly, about Black families.

When those beliefs go unexamined, the lie doesn’t disappear.

It gets professionally packaged.

Stamped with authority.

And presented as objective judgment.

That is how a lie becomes policy.

And how harm is carried out in the name of expertise.

Jesus was clear about this.

He did not treat lies as harmless misunderstandings.

He called the devil the father of lies. The source from which deception flows and multiplies.

And once a lie is repeated often enough, it no longer needs intention to do damage.

It simply needs permission.

The Lie as Infrastructure

This lie is not abstract.

It feeds our institutions.

It is the foundation of modern social work practices.

It is embedded in child welfare.

It shows up in education systems that label some children “at risk” before they can read.

It informs policies that confuse poverty with neglect and surveillance with care.

The people who created these systems.

Who drafted the policies, wrote the laws, designed the frameworks were shaped by the same inherited stories.

They did not question the lie.

They operationalized it.

And once a lie becomes policy, it no longer needs belief to do harm.

It just needs compliance.

Why Truth Still Matters

Jesus said the truth would set us free, not comfort us.

Not affirm us.

Free us.

Freedom requires confrontation.

With history.

With systems.

With ourselves.

The work before us is not to assign guilt for what we did not create.

The work is to take responsibility for what we now see.

What stories were you told?

What explanations were offered to make inequality make sense?

What scripts have you never questioned because they were handed to you by people you trusted?

Rewriting the Script

The lie that raised us does not have to be the truth we pass down.

But breaking generational inheritance requires intention.

It requires humility.

It requires courage.

It requires all of us, Black and White, to do the internal work of unlearning, remembering, and rewriting.

Because the same lie that once explained the fields and the house still explains who gets watched, who loses their children, who gets separated, who gets financial support, and who gets protected today.

And until we tell the truth about that, we will keep building systems that look neutral but act exactly as they were designed.

Selective outrage is not an accident.

It is the fruit of a lie we inherited.

The question is whether we will pass it down or end it.