I grew up in the USA specifically a right-wing evangelical bubble. Pops was an engineer and part time pastor. So I was a pastor’s kid that went to an upper class Christian private school 5 days a week. Between that and church all of the other kids and adults I knew growing up (with the exception of an older brother 16 years my senior and 2 neighbor friends) were all part of the same cult.
There was so much I thought was normal
Adults bullying children
Casual violence
Abusive language
It took me until my early twenties to really understand that racism was real and the people I knew were racist. That sounds insane but in the bubble it was almost exclusively wealthy white people but we had some tokens. In my school about 1 in 40 students were Nigerian and we also had a handful of kids whose mothers were Asian mail order brides. These kids and their parents had to just accept and ignore the racist shit all the white people said and did in order to be “one of the good ones”. This made me think that shit really didn’t matter. I really enjoyed racist humor but I thought the joke was you would have to be so stupid to really think like this. Not ‘other race bad’ haha. Kinda like straight dudes pretending to be gay with each other. Which is also really suspicious in hindsight.
I think beneath it all was this idea that we all were good and well intentioned so anything that seemed contrary to that must be ‘joking’. Or the idea that you can say and act like an asshole but be a good person underneath it all.
You are just the sum of your words and actions.
Shit so many things.
We bullied each other in a classist way, like we had rigid school uniforms and one of the few choices we had was between short sleeves or long sleeves on our button ups. If you wore short sleeves even in the heat the other kids would call you a “grocery store manager”. That was seen as pathetic and gross.
I was one of the poorer students at the school. To give you an idea. The parents of two of the kids in the grade above me owned the NFL team in our state and they weren’t the richest students.
Idk I’m rambling. Great question OP! Really made me think
i went through the same thing of slowly realizing everyone i grew up with was a piece of shit, down to the realizing how present racism was and the horrible “humor”. also a small conservative bubble
i recently found this image and i think it describes it well
I grew up in the USA specifically a right-wing evangelical bubble. Pops was an engineer and part time pastor. So I was a pastor’s kid that went to an upper class Christian private school 5 days a week. Between that and church all of the other kids and adults I knew growing up (with the exception of an older brother 16 years my senior and 2 neighbor friends) were all part of the same cult.
There was so much I thought was normal
Adults bullying children
Casual violence
Abusive language
It took me until my early twenties to really understand that racism was real and the people I knew were racist. That sounds insane but in the bubble it was almost exclusively wealthy white people but we had some tokens. In my school about 1 in 40 students were Nigerian and we also had a handful of kids whose mothers were Asian mail order brides. These kids and their parents had to just accept and ignore the racist shit all the white people said and did in order to be “one of the good ones”. This made me think that shit really didn’t matter. I really enjoyed racist humor but I thought the joke was you would have to be so stupid to really think like this. Not ‘other race bad’ haha. Kinda like straight dudes pretending to be gay with each other. Which is also really suspicious in hindsight.
I think beneath it all was this idea that we all were good and well intentioned so anything that seemed contrary to that must be ‘joking’. Or the idea that you can say and act like an asshole but be a good person underneath it all.
You are just the sum of your words and actions.
Shit so many things.
We bullied each other in a classist way, like we had rigid school uniforms and one of the few choices we had was between short sleeves or long sleeves on our button ups. If you wore short sleeves even in the heat the other kids would call you a “grocery store manager”. That was seen as pathetic and gross.
I was one of the poorer students at the school. To give you an idea. The parents of two of the kids in the grade above me owned the NFL team in our state and they weren’t the richest students.
Idk I’m rambling. Great question OP! Really made me think
i went through the same thing of slowly realizing everyone i grew up with was a piece of shit, down to the realizing how present racism was and the horrible “humor”. also a small conservative bubble
i recently found this image and i think it describes it well
Lol that meme is spot on.
Sorry you had a similar experience growing up 🫂but it’s nice that someone understands what I mean and what it was like🙂