Ex-Racists, What Made You Change Your Mind?

ex-racists of reddit what made you change your mind i went away to college i was a kid in a racist family n-bombs were thrown around the dinner table regularly i had really only met a few african-americans in my whole life i was also the first in my family to go to college other than my brother to seminary for the cult my family is in which i don't count my friend richard redacted was my first black friend i think he only liked me at first because he had a crush on my friend damien she would always be at my parties but we ended up friends for four years i'm naturally sort of empathetic and am good at putting myself in other shoes it just sort of dawned on me very early on that i wouldn't speak or act that way if he was around so i just decided i should never act that way it took me a little while to forgive myself for being garbage but i was a kid and literally didn't know any better oh yeah and i fired my crappy family i haven't talked to rich in over 20 years i moved 3000 miles away after college and as you might expect from his name it is basically impossible to google him if you are out there rich thanks it just sort of dawned on me very early on that i wouldn't speak or act that way if he was around so i just decided i should never act that way this so important to remember thank you my grandma grew up in virginia in the 1900s being racist is just the default setting nana loved her family more than anything though so at one point in the late 1980s she met her first not 100 white grandkid and discovered she still loved him he made astounding late life progress accepting that darker skin-toned people were not only people but family friends and welcome in her house reminds me of what a comedian said yay i grew up in a very racist part of virginia called virginia my whole family is quite racist when i was little i was trying to wrap my head around the rules of the world so i thought it was as simple as different teams blacks versus whites was just like the red sox versus the tigers then my grandmother starts going on about how horrible polish people are and how i'm never to talk to them so i'm psyched screw those polish people whatever color they are we're mortal enemies then she points out our polish neighbor to me but she's white i point out to my grandmother that she's white so we're on the same team my grandmother says no that she's a mix breed i point out that my great granddad was a shoshone indian and that i'm a mixed breed she says that doesn't count that's when i realized she was just making up the rules and i wasn't going to play games with someone who couldn't stick to the rules she says that doesn't count i wish more people realize that if you have to lie to make your point your point is probably wrong i never made the choice really to be racist but i grew up in south mississippi and my family wasn't overtly racist but they were the kind to say racist things behind closed doors and didn't allow us to watch tv shows such as the cosby show or fresh prince and definitely no rap music in the house i absolutely fell in love with a lot of black artists in the early 90s i loved the hip-hop scene at the time and holy crap fresh prince was the best sitcom on television i played football with 80 black guys and worked at popeye's chicken with over half the staff being black i guess you can say my own real world exposure despite their attempt to shelter me change me i cringe of some of the vernacular i used in my early youth as the n-word was the same as black in my house i literally was not raised to know that was a bad word i'm glad that from the age of maybe 12 on i learned to love all people on my own i remember my cousin and i were listening to jimi hendrix and my grandma came into the room and in spanish said something along the lines of that [ __ ] boy could really play the guitar to my grandpa who was sleeping on the couch really jarring stuff tl dr being forced to be racist by family stopped me from actually being racist also my mom i had a super racist grandparent uncle both pieces of crap supported by my grandma i would frequently stay with them while both my parents worked on saturdays i would pretend around them when i was younger because i wanted them to like me i don't remember this story but my mom will tell it so proudly if the subject of racism comes up she was very different from her dad brother i was maybe six or seven when one day i was crying when my mom picked me up and the whole way home i just sobbed like my heart was broken i wouldn't tell her what was wrong but i cried quietly the whole way home and went right into my bed and laid down crying my dad and her came in and asked me what was wrong i still didn't want to tell them and my dad got a little gruff with me boy you tell me what's wrong right now if somebody hurt you or told you not to tell me and i guess i started crying loudly for the first time and blurted out grandpa and uncle chuck said i can't be friends with malcolm anymore because he is a dirty nr my uncle made me call him and say that to him my mom immediately flew into a rage she went down there and from what i told beat the living crap out of her brother told her dad that i would not be coming over anymore and that he was no longer invited to any family events she then drove to my friend's house with blood from my uncle's nose still on her shirt apologized profusely for what happened and told them the story and that i had been crying the whole time because my uncle made me do that we had dinner the next day and instead of going to my grandpa's house on saturdays i ended up going to my friend malcolm's house note i say it because my grandpa is dead and later in life i told my uncle who never changed that he's not my uncle anymore when he called my two years old half mexican nissa sc he now has a half mexican grandson but from what i hear he hasn't really changed dude your mom is a freaking superhero props to that lady education i grew up in the deep south i mean 20 years of my life was spent on the same exact street that my family has lived in for over a hundred years i went to public school k-12 so i basically grew up with the same people around aside from the occasional new student who made the questionable decision to move there when we all graduated we all went to the same exact community college i just got tired of it i made the decision to move north to go to college one of the first courses i took was a sociology class about our country's perspectives on different races it instantly opened my eyes to how racist i truly was i had been raised in it genuinely brainwashed into the ignorant thinking that rule racist attitudes i had never even stopped to ask myself if i were a racist until that class it was then that i came to the hard conclusion that i was racist homophobic and sexist i'm female and i had some harsh attitudes toward how a female should behave dress etc i'm ashamed of the things i used to think and the disdain i used to hold toward other people but admitting to being wrong is the first step toward progression i'm very glad that i took that class and that i realized my harmful behaviors it's something i think back to constantly and consider it as a turning point in my life my uncle used to be the most racist person i knew and it drove me crazy but here's an old white man and set in my ways is what he would say when confronted it all changed the day his great-granddaughter was born his granddaughter had married a black man and he was unaccepting until that baby was born she had him wrapped around her pinky finger from her first breath since then there are several mixed children in the family it's awesome to see the difference in his behavior he genuinely loves them all and accepts the racially different spouses of his grandchildren and their children if he hears anyone being racist he shuts it down not myself but men are former racist or at least now less racist friends of mine were able to have their minds changed just by simple exposure especially to non-whites that didn't fit the stereotype at first it starts that they are just one of the good ones but after a while when they meet enough good ones they start to realize that the good out number the bad and their racial worldview starts to crack doesn't work on them all though some are racists due to education and esteem issues but many are racist simply from lack of exposure to other races only having what the media environment they live in tell them to fill in that gap college roommate was muslim definitely was not a terrorist kinda already knew my perhaps was wrong about that but when you live with someone for an entire year it takes you from kinda already new to holy crap that way of thinking is fricked up i got into dnd in college kinda surprised my dad when i told him akande was my dungeon master a guy i worked with said he was neo-nazi as a teenager and ended up in prison somehow he hated jews for some reason and blacks he was never clear on why just that he had so much hatred in his heart and that was his outlet he was in prison for many years i think he almost killed somebody by beating them up so many years later and in prison there was a mentor type staff there and this one lady was so helpful to him and she cared about him so much that it really started to get into his hair the idea of being a positive person then he learned that she was jewish and he said he couldn't believe she was so kind and caring despite the fact he was acclaimed neo-nazi from that day he swore to be a better person he learned his lesson he's a pretty great guy these days doing his family thing and making sure his son grows up with lots of love and all that he didn't have really remarkable great guy it seems that what you are taught as a child is sometimes so hard to overcome short answer rap music and a curious mind but what's more impressive is how thick of a shell it cracked my stepfather who pretty much raised me was as a clansman and so is his father brothers etc this was an old-fashioned family too my mother didn't speak unless spoken to my sisters were expected to marry who my stepfather chose this was normal to us i was expecting to find a woman to marry and start a family as soon as i was 18. i'm 23 now so this was recent my stepfather beat my older sister black and blue for sleeping with a black man he always told us that black people are rapists and gang bangers and that mexican while hard workers are all dirty people and will never amount to anything useful aside from cheap labor he controlled what we watched and played to reinforce his beliefs in us on top of this he was a devout christian i was a closeted atheist since 16 but he would have literally killed me if he knew he believed that gay people should be killed alongside of atheist and muslims he wasn't focused on jews for whatever reason i had never met a person of color until i was 17 so i never experienced anything firsthand to contradict what i was told sometime in my late teens i discovered rap and was obsessed first song i heard was by tupac and i was obsessed well as i learned more it led me to martin luther king jr and what he did for people of color at some point i broke down crying because i realized everything i was told was a lie when i realized i was an atheist i decided i couldn't operate under my old mindset so i needed something to replace it and decided to go with the speech that broke my hatred i decided i would judge everyone based on their actions not the color of their skin or who they prefer to sleep with my stepfather beat my older sister black and blue for sleeping with a black man he always told us that black people are rapists and gang bangers and that mexican while hard workers are all dirty people and will never amount to anything useful aside from cheap labor lol colored people are a danger to you proceeds to be a danger to her i'm asian and i grew up kind of resenting my parents for being different than my classmates parents and i hated that they didn't know how to speak english i had to translate for them all the time call phone companies go to the dmv with them translate documents etc and i grew resentful so when i was in elementary school i told them that i wasn't korean but that i'm a full-fledged american and i wasn't going to speak korean anymore i also hated interacting with other asians that reminded me of my parents aka textbook internalized racism it wasn't until middle school when i had a teacher that validated my culture and actively tried to communicate with my parents that i realized that bilingualism is an asset and something i should be proud of now i'm going into teaching and have done some translating work on the side people say my korean is super fluent for an american born korean and i really have my parent to thank for that now i'm super regretful for hurting them like that just want to say you're not alone in this many asian americans face the same problem and have a lot of self-hatred especially when growing up with the white folks it's great that you're finally able to embrace your identity good on you good case could be made that i was racist as a kid when i was raised by and surrounded by racists for my entire childhood i stopped pretty quick when i joined the army since i got out of that small [ __ ] southern town echo chamber experienced we were all equally crappy in uncle sam's eyes watched another recruit get ftaged for calling another recruit the n-word witnessed a drill sergeant yanked two recruits out and smoked the crap out of them for flashing gang signs and just generally got the idea that racism and tribalism was incohorsive and destructive didn't fully stop for a while longer though took decades to quit hearing my dad or mom in my head when i saw a black guy go down the street going watch out for that n the crap is pervasive about being the first thing that pop up on reflex in your head squash is the next but it still was the first for a while i was in grade 10 a young smart athletic black kid attending a private school on a basketball scholarship there were probably five black kids total in the high school with around 150 200 kids in total majority white the rest descent and middle eastern out of the five black kids in total three of us were on the basketball team the other two were females also on the female basketball team did we ever get bullied by our own classmates teammates and even the teachers seem to give us a harder time after attending for two years and leaving after my grade 11 year due to the stress unfairness and imbalance of diversity i attended a public school my last year of high school where there were over 1 000 students of every race having a deep hate for others who didn't look like me after those two years going to a public school where everyone just saw you as the person you are and not your outer shell gave me some enlightenment that racism is taught not born with it in your blood my mother told me that i would see a huge change in culture for the better and that kids in public school come from different classes low middle and upper and i've got to see white kids who were poorer than me and white kids who were richer than me as happens to the private school where everyone's dad owned a rolls royce not actually but you get what i mean i grew a huge appreciate for every ethnicity and every culture and realize that it's how you're raised and how you're brought up through your role models people that hide behind the white picket fans are narrow-minded and i feel truly sorry for them my parents when i was a kid both of my parents were in grad school and extremely busy so my paternal grandmother spent a lot of time taking care of me unbeknownst to my parents she filled my head with racist stuff about how i shouldn't be friends with blacks or latinos just stick to befriending the other indian kids the whites were acceptable too one day i said something about black people that caught my parents off guard i don't remember what but my parents asked me where i had learned that and i told them they talked to her and she never really changed her ways this ultimately led to my parents no longer letting my grandmother live with us or be around my siblings and i without their supervision because they couldn't allow such a negative influence helping to raise us my parents talk to me about why what my grandmother told me was wrong it didn't take too much to get me back to being a normal non-racist person because i genuinely liked many of the black and latino kids in my class i wasn't actively racist when young but my surroundings didn't affect me i never once considered myself racist until i started noticing that at times i would look at a black person and think they're lucky for living in my country caucasian majority this made me start to question myself why was i having those thoughts i guess i had just been subliminally raised that way you see someone dirty you think ugh take a shower you see someone black you think ugh go back to where you came from only after realizing this did i start to actively try to rewire my brain so to say colon glad those times are way beyond me now i've read that your first thought is how you were raised and is out of your control your next thought or action is what defines you and is completely in your control i was raised in the deep self casual racism was very normal i didn't even realize it was a problem i never thought about it it was baked into every aspect of life especially church i eventually went to a christian college and they had a rule i didn't understand people of different races were not allowed to date without express written permission from both sets of parents however this only applied to black students not asians hispanics caucasians or anyone else this hit me when i found a close friend crying in the bookstore she was a very pretty black girl and she was balling her eyes out she really liked this other guy but his parents refused to give them permission to date she was devastated and suddenly it was like a veil was lifted from my eyes i could instantly see the hypocrisy i feel terrible for all the things i had thought in the way that i had acted all without thinking about it anyway that feels like a lifetime ago i am basically a completely different person from who i was up until my early twenties almost a complete 180 degrees on all my major world views it all started there with that poor sweet girl sesame street i'm not even joking was raised in a slightly racist household in a pretty racist state seeing kids of all colors playing together made me wonder why my mom wouldn't let me play with certain people it kind of snowballed from there it's really nice to see all these people working to move past the detrimental beliefs that they were raised with it reminds me why i have hope for humanity thanks for this question my mother my dad would spew racist crap and i'd never think anything of it never knew his words to be something the rest of society viewed as repulsive grew up in a small white town once my mom saw that what he was saying was setting in she took me aside and quickly sold my dad out i'm very grateful for this my mom quickly taught me that people should be judged on their character and not their skin my dad's favorite quote was you have to give respect to get it my mom taught me that everyone deserves respect until they give you a reason to not turn yours i've made so many more friend because of my mom's words and i can't thank her enough i remember when my sister and me were young our neighbor had a traveling nurse who would visit and often bring her daughter we took to the daughter right away but things went sour when my dad found us hanging out in the basement playroom never saw her again after that and never understood why later when i attended my first day of high school i was a nervous wreck but i did meet a nice kid who sat next to me in homeroom we had tons of similar interests which i thought no one else shared i came from a small 15 student per class elementary school on the way out of school i was with this friend and introduced him to my mom over dinner my mom says to my dad tell dad who your new friend is at school oh it's a cool kid named chris and tell dad what else about him it was then i realized everything my parents were racists i wanna know how the rest of that conversation went you kinda skipped the climax of the story i was never racist as far as i can remember but i used to use racist words all the time just because they were the words to use i even said an abbreviation of pakistani for ages thinking it was just like brit for british it was not i did the same thing as a child my mum gave me a right telling off and i didn't understand because it had never occurred to me that racism was a thing as i grew up in an extremely multicultural area my parents are super anti racist and the huge pakistani family next door were our best friends always hanging out and celebrating birthdays and both christian and muslim holidays together grew up in a hillbilly rural [ __ ] pile known for white nationalist activity with hillbilly [ __ ] pile friends i never considered myself racist but i certainly had some severe ingrown bosses didn't say anything when they started getting implied racist tattoos of viking runes and working class tokens like red laces while commenting about illegals and scum it moved to 88 to twos and i knew what was happening but didn't say anything because i didn't think it would turn violent i think i comforted myself with the fact that our town has an incredibly low minority population so i didn't assume anyone was in danger dum dum dum then friends i had known since middle school got arrested for grouping up and attacking minorities near our city center the victim was a citizen he was brown they assumed illegal i tried to engage rationally but by then it was clear what was happening and there was nothing i could say to pull them out of their cult balls at this point i had already started distancing myself from them which left a huge void because these were essentially my only friends certainly eye opening to see how easily the gentle kind intelligent kids i grew up with were turned to violent nationalism within just a couple years it's a great regret in life that i didn't confronted when i saw the writing on the wall but they were all loser m heads and i made the mistaken assumption that their drug addictions and lack of motivation would hinder any negative repercussions from their crap i was wrong and if nothing else if anything similar occurs i won't make the same mistake twice if you are new to the channel you can subscribe i publish new videos every day until then check another video [Music] bye for now

Channel: UE Stories

Views: 39,290

Keywords: ex racists, racist, racists caught on camera, racial flats, racial profiling, racial injustice, #updootst, updoot, reddit, r/askreddit, askreddit, ask reddit, r/, best of reddit, reddit stories, reddit story, top posts, funniest posts, funny, funny posts, funny reddit stories, funny askreddit, reddit funny, askreddit funny, askreddit stories, reddit stories 2019, people of reddit, sub, reddit cringe, memes, toadfilms, updoot everything, updoot reddit, story, stories, rslash, comedy, fresh

Id: OQvbqqQaDkM

Length: 23min 43sec (1423 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 25 2021