re: #75 Justanotherhuman

Let me tell you something. When you’re raised in a family (immediate and extended) that uses vulgarities and slurs towards any ethnic group, that rubs off, esp on kids who don’t know better and are never taught differently, and then you gravitate toward others who do the same . And this woman was probably raised in that atmosphere of bigotry and got away with it numerous times with no one correcting her. I believe it’s in her vocabulary and she thought she could get away with it, even with a Black man sitting there because she simply thought she could.

I was raised that way, but learned quickly that it was not only offensive, but wrong, to treat other human beings as less than I am. Trust me, racial slurs are still used very widely among a lot of white people and I’ve had to upbraid people who thought it was “OK” because I’m white and wouldn’t be offended. I set them straight and they usually don’t like it, because they have no fucking self-awareness nor sense of fairness and equality. Yes, to them Blacks and other ethnic groups are naturally “lesser” than any white person. Always.

I had the whiplash-inducing life lesson of being told that bigotry was wrong for the first 18 years of my life, and then watching the person who imparted that lesson essentially go full metal “Yeah, that’s just something you say to kids when they’re little.”