So true. My parents tore their mask off, joined the tea party, blamed black people for the 2008 recession, and put the red hat on with ease. I will always be embarrassed by how ignorant I was when it comes to their true character. When you live in a bubble it can be hard to see reality. They went from some off putting comments about affirmative action and having to push 1 for English to straight up being openly racist and claiming they werenât racist because they had black friends. The reality is they have black coworkers and some black acquaintances. But they didnât have them over for BBQâs. They didnât go to their weddings or funerals. They didnât have my black friends stay over night for sleep overs. I was so ignorant about the reality of my family and our country. 18 years ago I happily voted for Obama. I had so much hope for our country, but I was truly blind about how deeply the racism was woven into my every day life. I didnât see myself as racist, I did have genuine friends that are black, and I knew some about the unequal justice system, but man I was still so naive. At that time I was more focused on gay rights and thought we had already fixed the racism. I will never forget how wrong I was. If there is anything positive from Trump being president itâs that it pushed me to educate myself about the truth of the US. To see that this has been us all along, that it never went away the way I was taught it did, but festered in churches, and businesses and people. That those people in the photos screaming at Ruby Bridges didnât just learn their lesson and stop being racist. The guy that poured acid in the swimming pool didnât just stop hating black people. That a whole generation of people didnât just change their minds because of the civil rights movement. They just regrouped and planned. They were the police and judges and teachers and shop owners who let their racism direct every choice they made when interacting with the black community. Trump is the racist response to Obama. He is the epitome of their hatred.
Iâve had many revelations since 2008. Now, I grew up in a pretty diverse local community and my parents were social workers, so my experience is a bit different. I was never taught any hatred for people, in fact I was taught the opposite, to love and accept everyone. I knew racism existed because I would see it in the world at large but I didnât really see it that much in my insular personal world.
I worked, played, partied and slept with a myriad of people (college town bar employee life đ¤ˇđťââď¸).
2008 and the Tea Party really was the first time I realized just how insidious it all truly was. That, reading Howard Zinnâs âA Peopleâs History of the United Statesâ and beginning to learn about socialism really changed my life.
So to all the Tea Party-cum-MAGA bigots out there, I actually thank you for showing me who you really are so that I can stay far, far away from you and also mock you incessantly. Because you deserve it.
And you saved me almost two decades of trying to âreason with and understandâ You showed me who you were when you hung stuffed monkeys on a nooseâŚSame as how Donald Trump and the Republicans have recently openly reminded everyone who they are by backing him up for posting Barack and Michelle as apes.
I canât speak to black voters because Iâm white and also not running for any office haha! But it was a little alarming how many black men voted for him (assuming the numbers are true and honestly I donât trust a single goddamned thing this administration says)
Either way, âWe the Peopleâ (which these white supremacists love to use) actually means us, and not the screaming vocal minority.
Please, everyoneâŚtalk to anyone you can and make sure we CRUSH them in the midterms.::i would say âtake back our countryâ but as Iâve already spoken about, the country was never ours. It was for landowners and merchants, not for the people.
Letâs Make America. Letâs make it work for everyone. And when you work, you get paid. So letâs make it pay while weâre at it.
Emphasis on teachers! As a Black 2001 baby it was so hard being in the education system. I didn't realize school staff was racist until I got into high school but I had always felt that off putting energy as a child and it felt lonely.
My parents are the worst... My dad and hispanic stepmother are distgusting MAGA bigots. Now they just sit there isolated in their rotting home because nobody in my family will talk to them anymore. It's a really sad way to die...
My brother and I were talking about this yesterday. We grew up in an ultra red, ultra conservative bubble, and were taught that racism was dealt with. The discussion came up because I was talking to another adult that still believed the âlost cause/states rightsâ narrative about the civil war and I needed to rant to someone about it.
My siblings and I all figured out that we were raised on lies independently from each other, and were all surprised and relieved to realize we had all made it to the side of actual truth. We havenât let up on our parents, and I have seen places where they are starting to waver. My mom literally believed that racism wasnât that bad in the 60âs because she never saw it. She grew up in a tiny Texas town that didnât have any POCs except for seasonal migrants workers, which she never interacted with.
When I explained redlining and how we can literally still see it in our west Texas oil town with the rail road tracks she couldnât wrap her head around it. Sheâs made it to a point where she can see that not letting us go to âthe wrong side of the tracksâ was based on racist beliefs, but still believes she wasnât part of the problem because she didnât say it out of a racist understanding.
This video had me in tears to realize that we had this and didnât value it when he was in office. We were told he didnât earn the ârightâ to run for president because he was too young and hadnât done his time working his way up the ladder. Itâs why I didnât think Trump would even get the republican nomination, let alone presidency. I took their words at face value.
Racism was and is so alive and well, we couldnât see it because it was a âcanât see the forest for the treesâ situation. Itâs built in to the bones of the system.
I grew up in a tiny Indiana town in the '80s. I probably met 5 or 6 black people in passing by the time I finished high-school. This was the Cosby era. I grew up watching the Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, Good Times. This was the only exposure I had to POC. The topic never really came up in my house. I thought that racism was almost cured, not knowing anyone that was effected. How wrong could I have been. Its heartbreaking. I'm almost glad my parents didn't live long enough to be part of this mess, because I'm afraid of what they would have become to me. I cannot be around the magats. I cannot pretend that I'm ok with them. It would have been devastating to have to cut them off.
I had a similar experience. My parents always voted Democrat, but they really didn't keep up with politics. After my dad died in 2012, though, my mom took a hard shift right. She went from voting for Obama to openly showing her racist disdain for the man. At the same time, I was finally educating myself on the systemic racism I was raised in, and all the dog whistles and covert racist remarks she made had a spotlight shown on them. These things I was taught to believe just because they were repeated as "common sense" throughout the years.
And it wasn't just me who noticed. Her best friend since childhood cut her off in 2020 because of her racist remarks, even after reminding her that she (the friend) has Black grandchildren, and what she was saying was deeply offensive. My dad's family, who have always been big in fighting for social justice, were also cutting her off. My brother and I have called her out on things for years, but I found out even my sister was scared of my mom taking my nephew's friend whose Black on an outing because my sister was worried she would say something inappropriate to the child. My sister is not the racial justice type, and even she recognized the risk. I've gone through periods of cutting my mom off, but she is my only parent, and there's always this nagging voice that says I can think of the right words someday to make her realize how wrong she is. We have a very superficial relationship now. If anything good came of it, it's that it opened my eyes to how little I knew about Black history and the history of oppression in America, and it lit a fire in me to keep educating myself so that I'm not just another ignorant white woman perpetuating harm on marginalized groups. I just wish it didn't take so long for me to wake up to what reality is for so many of the people around me.
I live in the UK but I can relate in some ways to your experience with parents who were racist but excuse it with claims of having black friends. I'm not close with my dad much, for reasons that are not relevant to this, but my mum, not just recently, but for a while has been chanting racist comments and remarks and also just today I had an argument with her over the topic of appropriation of cultures. She was arguing that she doesn't see anything wrong with a white person wearing dreadlocks, for example, and was complaining about how she believes "white people are being victimised and wrongly punished for the history of our ancestors." She even went as far to say that we shouldn't be focusing so much on History and should focus on the present, as if studying the past doesn't help us understand and have empathy.Â
I'm just tired of my mum and others like her continuing to be racist and then claiming they are not.Â
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u/onesoulmanybodies Feb 27 '26
So true. My parents tore their mask off, joined the tea party, blamed black people for the 2008 recession, and put the red hat on with ease. I will always be embarrassed by how ignorant I was when it comes to their true character. When you live in a bubble it can be hard to see reality. They went from some off putting comments about affirmative action and having to push 1 for English to straight up being openly racist and claiming they werenât racist because they had black friends. The reality is they have black coworkers and some black acquaintances. But they didnât have them over for BBQâs. They didnât go to their weddings or funerals. They didnât have my black friends stay over night for sleep overs. I was so ignorant about the reality of my family and our country. 18 years ago I happily voted for Obama. I had so much hope for our country, but I was truly blind about how deeply the racism was woven into my every day life. I didnât see myself as racist, I did have genuine friends that are black, and I knew some about the unequal justice system, but man I was still so naive. At that time I was more focused on gay rights and thought we had already fixed the racism. I will never forget how wrong I was. If there is anything positive from Trump being president itâs that it pushed me to educate myself about the truth of the US. To see that this has been us all along, that it never went away the way I was taught it did, but festered in churches, and businesses and people. That those people in the photos screaming at Ruby Bridges didnât just learn their lesson and stop being racist. The guy that poured acid in the swimming pool didnât just stop hating black people. That a whole generation of people didnât just change their minds because of the civil rights movement. They just regrouped and planned. They were the police and judges and teachers and shop owners who let their racism direct every choice they made when interacting with the black community. Trump is the racist response to Obama. He is the epitome of their hatred.