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Showing Original Post only (View all)The murder of George Floyd has shown me I work with a lot of racists [View all]
I've been at my job 16 years now. Blue-collar factory guys, Teamsters, mostly high school educated. I've always known most of them were conservative (which is ironic as we're unionized and would be making half the salary and benefits we make if we weren't). But for the most part, they always seemed like genuinely good-hearted people when you got past politics.
But since the protests and riots? My God, I've heard shit I never imagined from their mouths. The fact we're only 30 miles from Minneapolis and 95% of the plant is white, in an exurb/rural area doesn't help. But holy shit, are they triggered like I've never seen before.
"Floyd was a piece of shit felon who deserved to die."
"What was so bad about the Confederacy?"
"I toured a plantation on vacation and they treated their slaves good."
"Protesters are going to blow up Mt Rushmore!"
"A good machine gun would clear up this whole problem."
"If I was that black jogger chased and killed in Georgia by white guys with shotguns, I would have just sat down and waited for the cops. It's his own fault he got shot."
I could go on. The list is loooonnnggg.
The plantation quote set me off today. I got in a shouting match in the break room with the guy. My wife and daughter have ancestors who were slaves, and that was my last fucking straw. I wasn't going to stand by and let him sugarcoat the ownership of human beings like livestock.
Anyone else dealing with this shit? I've passed the point of biting my tongue. In a few short years my biracial daughter will be a young woman, on her own with people like them. I won't be able to use my whiteness to protect her anymore and it's tearing me up inside.
As Andrew Burke famously said "The only thing required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."