I'm always taken back by how bullshit things are when I step outside my various bubbles.
Like, I was at a supper thing the other night and just assumed that (because of who the host was) everyone there would be generally LW. The woman to my right started going on about how young people shouldn’t be allowed to be on benefits, it makes them lazy, they need to get their arse into gear, do the necessaries, pull themselves up yadda yadda. She was the same age as the people she was referring to. Took me a moment to get past my surprise and get a useful conversation going. Five minutes in she was agreeing with me. So obvious she’s hoovered up some kind of sausage-machine generated garbage and assumed it was sensible so adopted it. Five minutes chat with a stranger and she’s going “Yeah, I hadn’t thought about that… Hmmm, that makes sense…” Zero critical thinking, no independent thinking.
(Apropos other chats on here recently, I think my skills at engaging people in productive conversation like this has been improved by following debate on here. Before, I’d have jumped in with the naysaying; now I’m more able to let the flaws in their position become more apparent to them. Thanks Urban.)
The week after the Brexit vote I was told to “go home to your own country” and “You people don’t understand, you’re not from here”, and shunned and stepped around in more subtle ways. Not happened since I was a much younger. It settled down soon after. But recently, outside of Brixton, especially outside of London, I’ve noticed an uptick in the offish stuff. I’m not English and not entirely white, but I was raised and conditioned as white. Generally, once I found my path and my tribe, it’s been very rare that that has been noted or remarked on. But lately there’s been more of the ‘Where are you from, no where are you really from” shit from people I don’t know. They seem emboldened to ask, in a way that feels very retrospective.
HeatherG
These two youngsters I know. One is Black and the other white:
I know a young man, in his early twenties, who is completely out of control and off the rails. A proper troublemaker, aggressive, angry, hopeless, socially isolated because of the way he is. I reckon he’s heading for disaster. His family background is tricky but he was loved and supported, he had hands on and involved care from all the adults around him. He was disciplined and corrected as any child should be. And yet, he’s a fuck up. There are possible reasons for this, nothing that can be changed, despite the love attention and support he’s received.
I know a young woman (mid 20s) who had the most terrible start in life, bad things happened to her, the police were involved, social services, the lot. The things that happened to her were pretty extreme. We all thought we’d lost her, she was gone and off the rails, no way back. But somehow she put herself through school got a good degree, she’s started a business, she’s had plenty of success and accolades, even had magazine articles written about her for her writing and public work, she’s an advocate, she’s politically active, and she’s also paying for her own therapy to deal with the past trauma.
If your mind automatically assumes the “bad” one to be Black, you need to look at your innate prejudices and give your head a wobble.
Also, if you accept without question that there is a
good child and a
bad child in these examples, or that the parenting was good or bad, you’re coming from a place of prejudice.
If you really hold racist and prejudiced views, you need to at least have some thinking and conviction behind them. Blindly accepting ideas and views that are fed to you isn’t just lazy, it’s dangerous. If you’re truly racist, that’s shit and insupportable. If you’re not, you need to work out how to push back on the conditioning you seem to have internalised.
) but after that start in life they will be exposed to many more things in their young lives.
