• pyromaster55@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      If you aren’t exposed to certain issues you may not know how serious they are, or even that they exist. I grew up in a small town in NC, and you would not believe the amount of genuinely good, compassionate, empathetic people that held really shitty beliefs because that’s what their parents and others they trusted tell them.

      I had friends on snap benefits that would complain about “welfare queens” (read, young black mothers).

      It’s important to realize that many of these people aren’t evil, they are a victim of their circumstance as much as anyone else. They were taught to be hateful, and while it’s not your responsibility to unteach them, if your decide to take that on, and they are open and willing to learn about how others struggle, and what they can do to help, you very quickly see that their naivete actually is pretty wholesome.

      They were just lied to by the folks they should have been able to trust, and that cycle can go on for generations.