When you get older you hide stuff on your resume. That you graduated from high school in 1977 and that one job that you worked at for less than a year and got fired for “not taking out the garbage”. I maintain to this day that I did indeed take out the garbage and the fact that the Manager’s son started working in the store the very next day exposes the real motive behind the action.
You also pick up on things. Like when folks are racist, discriminatory, and homo-other -gender phobic. It’s in their words and in their actions. Especially when, in all appearances, you appear to be a white privileged man. They see themselves in you so feel comfortable in spewing their garbage. Well, until you call them out on it. Something they didn’t see coming for sure.
I live in a city full of these people.
“Damn dirty Indians.”
“The immigrants are taking our jobs.”
“Gender neutral signs on washrooms are too expensive.”
“If they’re gonna hang the gay flag, then they should hang the confederate flag.”
and one of the most interesting things I’ve heard,
“Why does 10% of our workforce need to be diverse?”
My response to the last one is “I think it should be more!”
In their minds they’re not any of these things, but they refuse to move any further than what they’ve been taught and what they know. And they’ve been taught to never change.
I live in a city full of these people.
I grew up constantly moving from army base to army base so in a way I was lucky because I was always among a diverse group of children. Not everyone gets that opportunity. In fact many people never leave the state in which they are born.
Otherness as I like to call it stems from the fear of the unknown. The anxiety and ignorance of each generation being passed to the next. I think that cultural differences, varied skin tones, unique flavors are beautiful but language exists in our work labeling every thing and every one. I think if the world could stop trying to lump people into groups and just celebrate everyone as a unique individual then there would be less hate all around. Alarmingly though I just see more classifications popping up and people struggling to fit themselves into these neat categories, all of them being constructs of the human ego.
Just my opinion though.
Dont let people bring you down and try not to lump them all together. The best we can do is hope for a more enlightened generation to follow.
Thank you for your support and your love.