LordMortis wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2018 9:17 am
I am thankful that as racist as my parents are, they not only hide it, they fight it, and they never ever ever let their children be exposed to their bias until we were adults. I suppose that's where I once had a patient hope that this from of bigotry would die in the US necessarily as the generations passed. I usually like being wrong, coming to an ah ha moment and learning more about the world. These last 10 years have been a kind of wrong I don't like being.
While bigotry and racism are not dying in the US, I do think they're diminishing. I think back to when I was a kid, and can imagine nearly
every kid on the playground saying something similar to what my daughter heard. Now it's just a select few. I think of the multi-cultural influences that my kids interact with every day without even batting an eye, all of which would have been unheard of 20-30 years ago. I don't have data to back it up, but my feeling is that the number of kids learning and/or spouting racist rhetoric is far less these days compared to what it was.
Unfortunately, Trump has given a massive megaphone and a veneer of cultural acceptance to those who
do subscribe to bigoted viewpoints. So while I don't think there's necessarily more of them, they are far more visible because the bigots now feel it's appropriate to do so. They're emboldened to speak their mind, and get more attention as a result.
That's what I'm going to keep telling myself, anyways. The alternative is too depressing.
When darkness veils the world, four Warriors of Light shall come.