Same. I grew up in rural Ohio (USA) going to churches talking about the “synagogues of satan”, people at school saying “that’s Jewish” for something lame, lots of words I won’t repeat here about a number of ethnic and sexual minorities, etc.
It all basically never sat well with me. I moved out when my mom remarried which was a bit before my senior year of high school. Bigger city, bigger school, more diversity, etc. quickly proved what I had long felt: humans are humans and neither their religion nor ethnicity nor gender identity changed that. This would have been in the late '90s.
I now live on the other side of the world from that place (Japan, of course, having its own issues with things like gender and racism, but that’s (a) mostly the older generations and (b) a story for another time). Before I quit facebook years ago, I did catch up with a couple of people. Most of them did not change, but many of the bad ones got worse (this would have been around 2016) and emboldened by far-right groups growing in popularity. Living as a minority in another country also taught me a lot of about privilege and accidental racism.
Was there a pivot point where you stopped just accepting what was around you and started resisting it?
One of the reasons this is such an insidious effect is that children just don’t have the critical capacity to step outside their home culture and even see it for what it is, let alone meaningful push back against their parents and other people in their lives. By the time this capacity develops, a lot of indoctrination has been done.
Pssh, not me. I was born into a homophobic redneck culture and I hated it. I now consider myself an LGBTQ+ ally and computer nerd.
Same. I grew up in rural Ohio (USA) going to churches talking about the “synagogues of satan”, people at school saying “that’s Jewish” for something lame, lots of words I won’t repeat here about a number of ethnic and sexual minorities, etc.
It all basically never sat well with me. I moved out when my mom remarried which was a bit before my senior year of high school. Bigger city, bigger school, more diversity, etc. quickly proved what I had long felt: humans are humans and neither their religion nor ethnicity nor gender identity changed that. This would have been in the late '90s.
I now live on the other side of the world from that place (Japan, of course, having its own issues with things like gender and racism, but that’s (a) mostly the older generations and (b) a story for another time). Before I quit facebook years ago, I did catch up with a couple of people. Most of them did not change, but many of the bad ones got worse (this would have been around 2016) and emboldened by far-right groups growing in popularity. Living as a minority in another country also taught me a lot of about privilege and accidental racism.
Was there a pivot point where you stopped just accepting what was around you and started resisting it?
One of the reasons this is such an insidious effect is that children just don’t have the critical capacity to step outside their home culture and even see it for what it is, let alone meaningful push back against their parents and other people in their lives. By the time this capacity develops, a lot of indoctrination has been done.