I wasn’t
consciously a racist/ white supremacist; but I had been raised in the cult.
Racism is
like Christianity – it is a cult.
You are born
to parents that are members of the cult.
Your aunts and uncles and the adults in your orbit are members of that
cult. You are taught by adults to walk,
to talk, to use the toilet, and what is considered appropriate in the cult. You don’t question your nurture, because it
is the norm of the cult.
My grandmother
raised me. She was born in Mississippi
in the late 1800’s. Her uncles fought
for the glorious south in the Civil war.
The white racist Mississippi cult did not celebrate the fourth of July,
because that is when Vicksburg fell to Yankee aggression. As a
child, my friends and I dressed up in Confederate uniforms and paraded in
Vicksburg on Jefferson Davis’ birthday.
We did not hate, or even dislike black people, we had been taught that
they just were not our equal.
We went to church, we said the prayers, we
sang the songs and we drank the Cool-Aid, because that is what was expected of
us.
I left
Mississippi when I was eighteen and never returned. It took me nearly two decades to realize the fallacy
of my indoctrination.
It is like becoming
an atheist after you have been raised in the church; when you finally question
the logic of your beliefs and find them lacking.
the Ol'Buzzard
I was born in WV and had the same experience. The thing that amazes me is I have a brother-in-law who is a first generation Italian-American and he is a white supremacist. In the world that I grew up in Italians were not considered white. In fact, many considered them lower than the black people.
ReplyDeleteI was raised the same. In North Carolina. I left there when I was 25 because I needed change. Well, it changed my entire life -for the better! I no longer "belong" to anything except earth. I'm just an earthling, enjoying life.
ReplyDeletekudos to you for critical thinking and deductive reasoning
ReplyDeleteI now live in NC because this is where my children found good jobs. When my wife and I retired we chose to come here to be closer to the kids and grandchildren.
ReplyDeleteFor the first time in my life, I am proud to be called a hillbilly. I have lived in seven different states and have never seen so much willful ignorance and racism.
It's hard to be an atheist Democrat here in Billy Graham land.
The organization I was raised in was not deliberately racist in Canada at least but was 99.9% white. There were people that did not believe in mixed race marriage. The organization did missionary work in Africa and the Caribbean because those people needed saving. I try to be actively anti-racist but do not always succeed in overcoming my own innate biases. It isn't easy 'being green' as Kermit said
ReplyDeleteI could have been..my daddy and his brothers and sisters were raised by a racists..the 4 brothers including my daddy went into military..my 3 uncles got out and my daddy stayed..so he had a different outlook than the rest of the family..I was raised to never judge a person by his color or race or religion..i was lucky..
ReplyDeleteI was fortunate to have Parents that had an interracial intercultural Marriage, Interfaith, and Dad was Career Military so we got lots of exposure to other Countries and Cultures, other States and their differences too... and as for Religion, it ran the gamut in the extended Family from various Christian denominations to Buddhists and indigenous Tribal Spirituality. It wasn't always easy, but the diversity within our own extended Family has expanded all the more over the Generations and so what was always a non-issue for us seemed to very much be an issue for many people and I never quite understood it. So, the perspective I get from talking to other people who were raised differently gives me more of an understanding of what perpetuates things that are barriers to Unity in our Species... Human Beings invent so many reasons to set themselves apart, don't they?
ReplyDelete