Face Not Recognised—But I See the System Clearly Now

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It happened in seconds.

I lifted my phone, looked straight into the camera, and waited.

Face not recognised. Try again.

A second attempt. A third. A fourth.

Still—nothing.

The device I used every single day, the one that had mapped my features, studied my patterns, stored my data—suddenly, I no longer existed.

I was locked out.

Not because I had changed. Not because I was any less me than I was yesterday.

But because the system failed to account for me.

At first, it seemed like a glitch. Then I realised—this wasn’t just about my phone.

This was a metaphor for everything.

The Privileged Core & The Intersectional Majority: Who Gets Seen & Who Gets Erased

Technology didn’t erase me by accident. It erased me by design.

Facial recognition systems have long been notoriously biased—trained on datasets that prioritise white, cis, able-bodied, neurotypical men as the default.

It’s the same with AI hiring tools, healthcare algorithms, and legal predictive systems.

📌 The privileged core is always recognised. The intersectional majority is an afterthought—if we are considered at all.

But it’s bigger than technology.

🔹 In boardrooms, those who don’t fit the dominant leadership mold are “not leadership material.”
🔹 In healthcare, pain is "misdiagnosed," symptoms dismissed, treatment delayed.
🔹 In media, representation is filtered, controlled, tokenised.
🔹 In mental health, intersectional stress is ignored—reframed as a "personal problem," rather than a systemic issue.

📌 The system is not broken. It was built this way.

And yet—this reality is shifting.

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The Big Lie: You’re a Minority. But You’re Not.

For centuries, we’ve been told we are the minority.

Women. Black and Brown communities. LGBTQ+ individuals. Neurodivergent minds. Disabled bodies. Those from marginalised faiths. Those outside the capitalist ideal.

All divided. All disconnected. All taught to believe our struggles are separate.

But here’s the truth:

📌 We are not the minority. We are the global majority.

If you add up the numbers:

✔ Women & Non-Men → 50%+
✔ People of Colour (Globally) → 85%
✔ Neurodivergent & Disabled → 15-20%
✔ Queer & LGBTQ+ → 10-15%
✔ Working Class → 60%+
✔ People from Marginalised Religious Backgrounds → 30%

📌 The 0.5% privileged core relies on one thing to hold power—division.

Because as long as we see ourselves as separate “minorities,” we will keep competing for scraps instead of flipping the table.

The System’s Greatest Trick: Making You Fight Yourself

The system doesn’t just erase us.

It turns us against ourselves.

It sells us engineered crises—pitting us against each other so we enforce the oppression on our own communities.

🔹 “They’re stealing your jobs.” (Instead of questioning the corporations hoarding wealth.)
🔹 “They’re diluting your culture.” (Instead of asking who created these cultural divisions.)
🔹 “They have it better than you.” (Instead of dismantling the structures that suppress us all.)

📌 Language is a weapon. And in English, it’s hidden in plain sight.

Have you ever wondered why “blackmail,” “blacklist,” “black sheep,” and “dark past” all carry negative connotations—while “white lie” and “pure as snow” remain positive?

This isn’t coincidence. It’s linguistic programming.

The words we internalise shape our reality—reinforcing biases we don’t even know we carry.

📌 You cannot dismantle a system while using its tools against yourself.

Which means the real revolution starts within.

The Internal Battle: Slaying vs. Taming Your Dragons

This brings us to the dragons.

Every system of oppression doesn’t just operate externally—it embeds itself internally.

We grow up with internalised beliefs that whisper:

❌ "You are not enough."
❌ "You must work twice as hard."
❌ "You must shrink yourself to survive."

📌 These beliefs are not innate. They are programmed.

But instead of slaying our dragons, we must learn to tame them.

Meet Your Dragon: The Anatomy of Your Challenges

Every struggle you’ve faced—racism, classism, ableism, homophobia, sexism, neurodivergent erasure—has shaped a dragon inside you.

But here’s what no one tells you:

📌 Your dragon is not your enemy. It is your power.

🔥 The Scales → The armor of past wounds and survival mechanisms. It protects you, but it also weighs you down.
⚔️ The Fangs → Every moment of rejection, failure, and erasure. They can wound—but they can also be wielded as weapons of wisdom.
🌪 The Wings → The potential for elevation, freedom, and escape—if you trust yourself enough to use them.
🔥 The Fire → The raw energy of anger, grief, and passion. Uncontrolled, it can destroy. Harnessed, it illuminates the path ahead.
💎 The Treasure → The wisdom, insight, and perspective your struggles have guarded. This is your superpower.

📌 Most people spend their whole lives trying to kill their dragons.

They suppress their emotions.
They deny their neurodivergence.
They erase parts of themselves to fit into systems never built for them.

But here’s the truth:

📌 You cannot kill what is part of you.

Your dragon is not your enemy.

It is your greatest strength.

Mastering Your Dragon: From Burden to Superpower

If slaying the dragon is a lie, then what’s the real path forward?

📌 You don’t kill the dragon—you train it, master it, and ride it.

This is where everything shifts.

It’s where you stop battling yourself and start seeing your struggles for what they really are: powerful forces waiting to be harnessed.

How to Tame Your Dragon (Instead of Killing It)

The system wants you to see your pain, trauma, and challenges as signs of failure.

The truth?

📌 Your struggles have made you adaptable, innovative, and resilient in ways the privileged core will never understand.

🔥 Step 1: Approach with Patience → You cannot rush this process. Your dragon—your struggles—have been conditioned to be feared. You need to earn their trust before they work with you.

💡 Step 2: Understand Its Nature → Ask: What is my dragon protecting? What wounds created its scales? What fears sharpened its fangs?

🌀 Step 3: Stop Resisting, Start Listening → The more you fight your struggles, the stronger they push back. When you stop resisting your identity, you start harnessing its power.

🤝 Step 4: Build the Bond → Ask: What does my dragon need? What if, instead of silencing your emotions, you let them teach you?

🔥 Step 5: Speak the Command—DRACARYS! → When the moment comes, you don’t kill your dragon—you command it. And when you speak your truth, it doesn’t burn everything down—it illuminates the path ahead.

📌 This is how you transform a burden into a superpower.

The Intersectional Superpowers You’ve Already Been Training For

📌 Your identity isn’t a limitation. It’s a strategic advantage.

Let’s name what you’ve been forced to develop—skills the world now desperately needs:

✔ Adaptability → Navigating multiple cultures, systems, and expectations means you think in ways the privileged core never had to.
✔ Code-Switching as Strategy → You’ve been translating between worlds for survival. That skill is now one of the most valuable leadership tools.
✔ Hyper-Awareness of Power Structures → You can see biases, patterns, and system failures before others even notice.
✔ Creative Problem-Solving → When the world wasn’t built for you, you became an innovator by necessity.
✔ Emotional Intelligence & Empathy → The ability to read a room, understand unspoken barriers, and connect deeply.
✔ Resilience & Mental Toughness → You’ve already survived systems designed to break you. That makes you unstoppable.

📌 The privileged core is now scrambling to learn these skills. But you? You were trained in them from birth.

The Pyramid vs. The Circle: A New Power Structure is Emerging

The privileged core’s entire power structure is based on a pyramid.

A tiny elite sits at the top, with everyone else forced into hierarchy below.

📌 But nature doesn’t work like that.

The real world is built on circles.

🌱 Ecosystems function in interdependence.
🌌 Galaxies move in cycles and spirals.
👥 Indigenous leadership structures rely on collective decision-making.

📌 The intersectional future is built on circles, not pyramids.

And the privileged core is terrified of this shift. Because when power is shared instead of hoarded, their control evaporates.

The Illusion of Free Speech: How the System Tries to Silence You

The system loves to claim "free speech," but here’s the reality:

📌 Speech is only free when it doesn’t challenge power.

🚨 When marginalised people speak up, it’s labeled as:
❌ "Angry."
❌ "Divisive."
❌ "Unprofessional."
❌ "Too much."

🚨 When the privileged core pushes back, it’s framed as:
✅ "Protecting democracy."
✅ "Defending tradition."
✅ "Balanced debate."

📌 The same words are judged differently depending on who says them.

This is why media is designed to silence intersectional voices.

🔹 The Erasure Tactic → Not covering our stories at all.
🔹 The Distortion Tactic → Reframing activism as "dangerous" or "radical."
🔹 The Ridicule Tactic → Mocking movements to make them seem unserious.

📌 This isn’t an accident—it’s how the system maintains control.

And yet—it’s failing.

The Privileged Core is Resisting the Shift—But It’s Too Late

📌 This isn’t a theoretical future. It’s happening now.

✔ AI is exposing systemic bias → The data is proving what we already knew.
✔ Intersectional communities are creating independent power structures.
✔ Gen Z & Alpha are intersectionally conscious—they won’t tolerate the old systems.
✔ Governments, businesses, and institutions that don’t adapt are collapsing.

📌 The privileged core knows this shift is inevitable—that’s why they are resisting it harder than ever.

Intersectionality & The Future: We Are the Architects of What Comes Next

This is not about replacing the privileged core. It’s about neutralising the structures that require oppression to exist.

📌 The intersectional future isn’t coming—it’s already here.

✔ Power is decentralising.
✔ Leadership is changing.
✔ Voices once erased are becoming impossible to ignore.

And the most powerful shift of all?

📌 We are no longer asking for permission.

Final Thought: You Are Not a Minority. You Are the Future.

Everything you have ever been told about power, identity, and struggle has been framed to maintain a system that benefits a tiny elite.

But that illusion is cracking.

📌 You are not fighting for a seat at their table. You are building something new.

And now—you get to decide what it looks like.

 Author Bio

I’m Jarell Bempong, a Catalyst for Cultural Consciousness™, best-selling author, and award-winning innovator dedicated to reshaping leadership, mental health, and AI-augmented intersectionality. I pioneered Intersectional Cultural Consciousness™ (ICC™) and Intersectional Futurism™ to expose the hidden biases embedded in our systems and empower the intersectional majority to reclaim power. My work isn’t about fighting the old—it’s about building the future we deserve.

📌 Follow my work at: www.bempongtalkingtherapy.com
🔗 Connect with me on LinkedIn: Jarell Bempong