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In reply to the discussion: White DUers: Tell Your Stories [View all]elocs
(22,474 posts)My father was a disabled vet from WWII and came from a poor family, cotton pickers in Mississippi. In my very small world at that time I didn't know about racial differences.
Thinking back, I had black women who would babysit me and I distinctly remember my father when talking with them saying, "yes ma'am" and "no ma'am" just like any other women. I played with black kids but at the time didn't see any difference in skin color than in hair color. We were all just kids.
When I was 5 we moved to a small city in Wisconsin that might have had a couple of black families. When I was 7 years old at my grade school at recess I saw some older boys taunting and bullying a younger one and I had an an eye-opening experience: I was astounded at what was happening because somehow it came to me that it was because the younger boy was black. I was amazed.
Racial prejudice is a learned behavior. I never learned it from my parents but others do.
I also came to understand that much of racial prejudice and discrimination in the South was societal and in the North a fear of the unknown all of those years ago. But I have also learned that that Wisconsin city where I still live was once a sundown city and one of the most white cities in America.
Frankly it's not surprising that a man like Trump was elected president after Obama. Racists and people bent toward racial prejudice mostly laid in the weeds but now have overt permission to come out in the open. When good people and people of good faith and intent abdicate their responsibility to participate to participate in our electoral process, flawed and imperfect as it is, then evil will prevail.