So POC, despite having experienced ancestral and ongoing trauma as a result of colonization in our ancestral lands, now benefit from these colonial structures in the West.

And because our education systems do an incredible job of ensuring that we don't see/understand the link of colonization to white people or colonization to the 'success' of Western nations, we begin to become conditioned to see whiteness as a key to success.

We view financial security, success, stability, as things that result from whiteness. We accept whiteness as the standard for what is "normal", "acceptable", "polite", and thus celebrated - so we try to mimic it.

And in doing so, we interalize these beliefs that run counter to our very existence, resulting in internalized racism.