Trying to discuss race with white people is like talking to a brick wall. I just tried to talk about racism and got fucking ganged up on by white people swearing that you can only be racist if you intend to be so they aren’t racist as long as they mean well. It’s so fucking entitled when white people start lecturing poc about what’s really racist. God.
Anyone who doesn’t occassionally sincerely ask themselves the questions, “how might I be wrong?”, “what might my own biases be blinding me to?,” and, of course, “am I a bad person?” is not only ignorant, but is indeed a bad person because they’re not willing to reflect on how their willful ignorance is hurting both themselves and those around them.
Learning to be uncomfortable with your own beliefs and wrestling and coming to terms with them, and, most importantly, changing your point of view over time with the aim of increasing your empathy for others not like you, is part of what it means to be an adult. There are very few adults in this world.
Ok like. Most of this I agree with but I hate the redefining of “adult”. How is this an adult thing if so few actual adults fit it and most people I know who would qualify as an adult under this are actual children
I don’t consider people who are unwilling or incapable of self reflection and change to be capable of maturing (at least in any way that is helpful to communities and societies), and thereby don’t constitute having achieved adulthood.
It makes sense if you think about how mean spirited preteens/teenagers can be and how many “adults” never really grow out of that. I consider these people to be “stunted” and/or “stuck” at a particular point in their self actualization where they were unable or unwilling to change their point of view because it made them feel bad about themselves or challenged their sense of self.
Instead of doing the hard work of growing up and reorienting their sense of self around a new paradigm (i.e. one based off of empathy for others of different races), they simply decided to ignore the uncomfortable possibility that they might be in the wrong, and were essentially lazy about challenging their own beliefs.
Again, not very mature, sounds a lot like a complaining angry teenager to me. And yeah, there are A LOT of people I would say are play acting as adults rather than actually being one. But that’s just my not so humble opinion.