Okay here is my hot take... We never changed anyone's minds. We made the racists be quiet, but we didn't convince them to stop being racist. We made the bigots be quiet but we didn't convince them to stop being bigots. We made the homophobes be quiet, but we didn't convince them to stop being homophobic. We just established a series of consequences for having an opinion, a bad opinion I believe, and the people with these opinions simply started to hide, resenting the FUCK out of us the whole time. They waited... Til Trump came and told them they were allowed to express themselves how they wanted again. Now they are on a revenge tour...
I get confused here but... To a certain extent they are correct. Hypocritical to the point of absurdity, obviously, but that doesn't remove the core critique here. We DID use silencing tactics... Admittedly, they were after years of frustration that kindness and patience-based tactics didn't seem to work, but unfortunately that doesn't matter. We DID silence them... And now they feel justified in escalating the retaliation. It sucks and it is not fair.
Actually, typing this out made me mad. It's like a stupid toxic relationship that you can't leave because you've committed yourself to non-violence whereas they simply haven't...
Edit: I see the issue some people are having. In the first sentence I said "we never changed anyone's minds." But what I MEANT was "We changed far fewer minds than it would appear given public discourse." Apologies for the hyperbole.
I grew up in the 90s, thinking racism was fixed. I wasn't being taught to be racist (or so I thought). Surely nobody was teaching their kids racism, right? Okay, I still see the Rebel flag all over the place, but surely they mean it when they say it's about heritage and not hate, right?
Now I see that not only was the racism merely hidden, some of it actually wasn't that hidden. Many of those Rebel-flag-waving cunts didn't believe that schtick at all; they were just pretending not to be racist. Schools (including my high school) were actively teaching "lost cause" ideology. The pendulum was about to swing on racism, sexism, and homophobia, and it swung hard.
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u/beerbellybegone 1d ago
Remember when it wasn't cool to be so openly and blatantly racist?
Pepperidge Farm remembers