fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6598 ]

[ SECRET POST #6598 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6598 ⌋

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Nah. I'd fail 100%.
I was raised in a very conservative catholic family. I'm a lesbian so I was riddled with internalized misogyny and homophobia. I had to work REEEEALY hard to get rid of that, but I got over almost all my issues around my young adulthood.
I struggled with a little bit of transphobia around 8 years ago and I think I was in danger of becoming a full blown TERF, almost only because my ex was becoming one and I was pretty suggestible back then. I luckily sniffed out that that girl had some serious issues and bailed out.

Incredibly enough I managed to not be racist. I just never care about other's people's skin colour and/or religion. Possibly because ethnic and cultural diversity is very stimulating and of interest for me.
Still, I possibly made some horrible jokes that were considered OK 25+ years ago were I lived. But not that many, I never considered those comments funny, even as a kid.

Now, I make unfortunate comments all the time, almost never because of any bigoted views (some are still there lurking around, I'm sure), but because I completely lack social grace.
There is also cultural bias to take in consideration. I'm not from the USA, so stuff that are considered bigoted in the USA probably don't even register to me and vice versa.
For example: I think that fixating of anyone's ethnicity based of biology (like American claiming to be 10% Irish, 10% Cuban, 20% Irish etc) is a pretty bigoted view on any culture, but EEEEH that's just of American's sense of identity work so I don't say anything to their faces and almost never online. Maybe it's my view that's a very bigoted way of seeing race/ethnicity. Who knows???

Everyone is full of little or big stuff like that. I just try to be a decent human being and try to read books written by people who know better that me and have lived different lives/cultures, stuff like Hood Feminism.

A lot of this is why I have some doubts about anyone who claims they've never said or done anything bigoted in their lives. Different cultures have different customs and values and mores I think it would be quite difficult to find anyone who lives in any kind of multicultural society that hadn't said or done or assumed something prejudiced about someone else simply because they plain old didn't know better. Even if it's something as innocent as making a joke and not realizing it plays on stereotypes about that person's group that you didn't even know existed, especially if it's for example a small ethnic minority group that's not well known.

Obviously the immediate thing to do there is apologize, explain your intent, admit you didn't know what you said or did was wrong. But if you've never ever had that experience of being wrong and educating yourself, how can anyone including you know for sure that's the way you'd react instead of clinging to your belief that good people are never bigoted and you are a good person, and so you couldn't have been wrong?

But if you've never ever had that experience of being wrong and educating yourself, how can anyone including you know for sure that's the way you'd react instead of clinging to your belief that good people are never bigoted and you are a good person, and so you couldn't have been wrong?

This makes zero sense. If you've never experienced a time where you said something bigoted, how can you know you're not bigoted? What?

If you've never experienced making a mistake, how do you know for sure that you'd apologize for it and learn better instead of pretending it never happened or that it was the others who were wrong? If someone has never had any reason to say "sorry" and change for the better, how do you know for sure they would do so?

It's more a philosophical thing. Would you rather rely on a person who admits they made a bunch of mistakes as a newbie, decades ago, but learned better and fixed them up, or the person who claims they've never made a mistake? I'd choose the first one, personally.

Making mistakes is a different thing, though. Have I made mistakes in my life? Absolutely, and I always own up to them. I admit I screwed something up, or was wrong about something, or whatever, and apologize.

I still maintain I have never used any bigoted terms that I'm aware of. If I say a (what I think is) totally innocuous term in front of someone from a group whose culture finds that term offensive, I will absolutely apologize, but it's never happened (or if it has, the person didn't have any reaction to it and didn't point it out).

Right and saying "I may have by accident but never on purpose, that I'm aware of, but if it happened I'd absolutely apologize and change" is different from "I definitely have never done it even by accident, and how can all of you have done it and then apologized changed!?" which is what some people are saying.

Do you see where people are coming from with that? lol

Yeah, if it's accidental then it's different. I guess I was thinking more about people who knew words were wrong to say and then said them anyway. I know there are at least a couple comments here saying things along the lines "yeah, I knew it was wrong but I didn't care" and those are the people I have issue with. If you knew something was wrong but did it anyway, then, uh...you kind of suck.

Tbf according to science the brain takes until like age 25 to fully develop. This includes things like empathy and other-and-self awareness; not that teens are incapable of all those things but people develop at different rates and they are going through those years at very much not an adult level. If you've talked to high schoolers they are definitely slamming through adolescence and hormones and are generally emotionally confused messes that are desperately trying to figure everything out and lashing out when they feel vulnerable.

Doing it knowingly and intentionally as a grown ass adult is a different thing, of course.

I don't know, I just find it really hard to accept that. Your brain doesn't have to be FULLY developed to know right from wrong. Racism is not something that comes out of nowhere, it's something that is taught. And if a kid grows up in a very racist environment, it's the parents' job to teach them to not be racist. So maybe I guess I should blame the parents instead of the teenagers.

I grew up in a racist environment with a racist father and I realized I was experiencing white privilege as young as the single digits. It's a matter of upbringing and if someone chooses to agree with the messages they're taught, not some pseudoscientific claim of when someone is mentally mature. Plenty of people under "25" aren't racist and too many people past that are.

Very much depends on the kind of racism displayed, though. Is it easy to tell your dad is racist if he's tossing slurs around everywhere? Yeah. It's much harder if your parents are subtly racist in the "they're not like us" and "always trust 'your people' over others" and "meritocracy is real and people who claim racism are making excuses" sense and claiming they aren't racist while being very polite and never uttering a slur.

It's been interesting to me to see the people who say they learned better being way more open and understanding of other people's upbringings than the ones who claim to never have even accidentally done a wrong.

never have even accidentally done a wrong

I specifically said people who knew things were wrong and did them anyway, and then you started defending them because apparently up to 25 you get a free pass for having no conscience.

Re: Purity test time!

(Anonymous) - 2025-01-29 20:05 (UTC) - Expand

"It's much harder if your parents are subtly racist in the "they're not like us" and "always trust 'your people' over others" and "meritocracy is real and people who claim racism are making excuses" sense and claiming they aren't racist while being very polite and never uttering a slur."

Those things are incredibly racist and it's not even a question. Society is way past the point where we've realized you can be racist without using slurs. A so-called "polite" racist is still a racist even if they claim they're not.

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(Anonymous) - 2025-01-29 20:52 (UTC) - Expand

AYRT

I agree with you. It's a matter of how you were raised, and at a certain point, of having a mind of your own and being able to think for yourself and not just assume everything you were taught is true.

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(Anonymous) - 2025-01-30 20:56 (UTC) - Expand

>Tbf according to science the brain takes until like age 25 to fully develop

Not always true. This is a pretty new concept, I never even heard of 25 being the maturity marker until I was 28. https://www.iflscience.com/does-the-brain-really-mature-at-the-age-of-25-68979

DA

Like the article suggested when people claim the brain is not developed until 25, it's not the brain per se they are talking about, but the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is that part of the brain heavily associated with rational thinking and impulse control, the two thing that SHOULD characterise an adult human.
Also it's a medium parameter, most probably based on neurotypical subjects. But yeah, it means that people under 25 are usually way more impulsive than older adults because the prefrontal cortex is not 100% matured as it COULD be in latter adulthood.

(btw re emphathy: "the involvement of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal junction, and the medial temporal lobe in self-reflection and autobiographical memory places these key regions as necessary for cognitive empathy."
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21071616/
so the prefrontal cortex seems to play a part in that, but in cognitive empathy.
I personally think you can have high empathy levels even if your prefrontal cortex is still pretty immature)

You're calling people bigoted for being aware

Ack stupid keyboard

That's supposed to say being aware of or stating their own culture. Maybe you just don't get it since you're not from the US, but America is made up of multiple different cultures, and people being aware of which ones make up their background is not bigoted. I don't see how knowing about your own background could possibly be bigoted and it's weird to me that you think it is.

DA

It can lead to awkward things like people saying "haha must be Nationality A in me" about supposedly stereotypical things they do. It's a lot of white Americans do, even if they weren't raised in the culture at all and have zero experiences having been to the actual countries they claim ancestry from. Someone's great great great grandparents are from Northern Ireland so they make jokes about drinking and fighting being in 'their' culture or something and think that's fine to do, even though they've never been to the place, are completely unaware of its current politics, and most people from the place they're talking about would be like 'you are a white boy from a suburb in Connecticut, calm down and stop claiming us.'

Is it bigotry? ...is sort of a gray area. Certainly can push the line if they're adopting stereotypes and making jokes about a culture they claim that isn't actually theirs, which lots do. People who are literally from the place don't have this issue since they are from the place and you know, living there and part of the culture right now. The American with the great great great grandparent is doing at least some appropriation there.

*It's a thing a lot of white Americans do
*white American boy from a suburb

Haha, my typing is terrible too.

ayrt

Okay, that makes sense. I was thinking it was more that just pointing out "hey, my great grandparents are from X country" was considered bigoted, and that didn't make any sense to me.

Comment OP here and YEP, exactly what you said!
It's why I stressed out that a cultural bias is at play with me. It's possibly bigoted of me thinking that the way Americans keep in touch with their origins is bigoted (at this point I don't believe this is not the right word for it, but whatever. Pardon me, I'm exhausted).

I'm also from a country that a lot of American people boast about in their ethnicity claiming lists. It's just strange... the "real country" and what they claim to be the essential traits of their ethnicity (which is stereotypes) are very different most of the time. Also, they don't even know a word of the language! Why boast about it then if it's only a "genetic" thing and nothing else for the vast majority of people? I don't get it.

BTW it's funny you stress that it's a "white American boy from a suburb" thing to do because in my experience it happened from white, latino and black people. Even if yeah, the vast majority of people were white Americans, also because that's the people I interacted the most in my country and the other country I lived it (also females, because I interact predominantly with women so again anecdote bias at play). I guess it depends on what ethnicity you're talking about...

You Europeans always defend the bigoted things you do by calling it your culture (eg Dutch people wearing blackface for a Christmas celebration) so calm down and think of Americans referencing their ancestry as part of their American culture.

I'm American lol.

You people literally have "race" on most of your identifying documents.

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