this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
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I regularly think about how many of our sweet old grandparents were among these crowds.
How many of our doting loving grandmother's were hurling racial slurs at the top of their lungs?
How many grandfather's strung up the rope for the lynch mob?
These things ended less than a full generation ago
If you look at the Ruby Bridges pictures you'll see school aged kids who are still very much alive and vote like crazy. I pointed this out to my brother one day and he was totally caught off guard. And he's a pretty smart dude, it's just something that has been framed as "in the past" to us our whole lives by pretty much every institution. Propaganda works, very insidiously.
The civil rights museum in Memphis,TN is amazing. What made it impactful to me is very much that. Seeing the buses, diners, the hotel, all modern things made me realize these things basically just happened. Black Americans have had a long arduous road to just exist in the country they were forced to come to. And they're always being gaslit, told it happened long ago, didn't happen, it wasn't that bad etc.
Most of them were probably just quiet racist beliefs at home and in implicit ways in public.
It's easier to miss, but it's also easier to retreat from, since it's not such a public belief.
Just like most people weren't civil rights activists, most also weren't frothing rally style racists.