Racism rears its ugly head in so many forms, and for so many reasons. Even the most progressive and love filled people were still born into a racist world, full of systemic racism and biases constantly reinforced through media and legislation.
When you consider the whitewashing of history, the constant enforcement of systemic racism through policing practices, and the ways redlining enforces continued segregation for many people, it's naive to pretend anyone is born and raised without picking up something to unlearn.
That being said, there's still a big difference between someone who is actively working to promote racial equality while checking themselves, and someone actively spreading hate and violence.
In a recent Reddit thread people who formerly lived overtly racist lifestyles (and/or held socially racist views) shared the moments that shifted their entire paradigm.
1. amateurcockpiercer knows that war puts people's real character on display.
"Not me but my 6th grade teacher had a brother who served in Vietnam. Apparently he had a guy in their unit who was pretty openly racist. One day he gets hit in combat and while the rest of his unit is staying in their bunker the only black guy runs into open fire and drags his ass to safety. If that doesn't fix you idk what would."
2. transemacabre's dad also unlearned bias in Vietnam.
"My daddy said something similar about Vietnam. He said a black soldier might be dragging your ass to safety, while white soldiers run past you both. He was pretty enlightened for a white dude who grew up in 1950s Mississippi."
3. SJExit4 unlearned it by witnessing how it hurt others.
"I come from a family of racists. They spoke of other (than whites) races using ethnic slurs as common as commenting on the weather."
"When I was about 5, my older brother and i went into the local bakery to pick up an order for our mom who was waiting in the car. A black boy was in front of us in line. This was something i hadn't often seen and i said very loudly to my brother, look it's a n-r!"
"My brother quickly shushed me, which made me very confused, but it was the crushed look on the boy's face that made me start to question my family's viewpoint. Over 40 years later, I have a very diverse friend group, but still feel shame on how I made that boy feel those many years ago."
4. RoundNetwork dropped the racism once their world expanded.
"Actually interacting with the people I supposedly hated."
5. lilulyla stopped otherizing when they experienced being "the other."
"I actually had a bit of a moment but I don't know if it counts.
My father is an avid user of the n-word and in general, has some quite racist opinions, which I inherited. In fourth grade, I switched schools from a school with mostly white kids to one with people from everywhere. That's where I found some new friends with a big mixture of ethnicities. One day I go to a friends house and he has some friends there and we play video games. At one point I look up and realized I'm the only white person in this room. Before I always thought of POC as different, there I realized that I was the different one. Ergo: If we all can be "the different one" we are all the same."
6. Throwaway45637218465 unlearned their racism through a lot of conversation and life experience.
"I made a throwaway for this one. A lot of people are saying they weren't really racist, but I was. I absolutely was."
"I grew up in an affluent area of Orange County CA. My family had money, but not nearly enough as many of the kids at my school. I was an only child, got picked on, had pretty low self-esteem. My family were basically country club racists. Basically they didn't actively drop N Bombs all over the place, but they had prejudices and didn't push back at all when I started saying racist things as a kid. I absolutely said the N word with my friends, laughed about it, but was always too scared to do so publically."
"When I got to high school, I was big into right wing politics, wanting to join the army, and learning German. I wouldn't say I was a neo-Nazi, my best friend's brother was a neo-Nazi and I didn't hang out with any of his friends or want to go into that scene, but I often thought that I would have made a good Nazi had I been a German during the Third Reich. I definitely had friends in high school, but I wanted to go to college in a place that was more conservative and less diverse than I currently was. I figured my life would improve if I went to a place like that."
"So what changed? I did move to a small Midwest town and started taking German in college for real, I took history courses that kind of started to chip away at my view of the world. Studying abroad in Germany though my Junior year is what really started to break the glass on my views. I thought that my German background and last name would win me some favors over there, but people didn't really give a shit at all. I saw that modern Germany was categorically and vastly different than the one I crafted in my head. I made friends from all over Europe and the world. I had some people I cared about really roast me for some nationalist and militaristic views I had, it made me really mad at the time but eventually, I took their criticism seriously."
"I came back and finished doing some work in history classes and wrote a paper on Nazi propaganda. It was then that I really examined Nazi viewpoints through recent experience sand saw how fucking dumb they were. I remember seeing a poster and the text said that the Jews were both behind Communism and Capitalism and just thought, this is just complete fucking nonsense and the people who believe this are morons."
"I actually did go into the military, I did ROTC in college and my time in ROTC and active duty pretty much flushed the rest out of me. Getting to know, working with, and leading people from different backgrounds and getting to see things through their eyes was an invaluable experience."
"So to summarize, meeting people from different backgrounds is probably the most important for me and really actually having meaningful conversations, and not walking way when you're challenged. The thing is, I didn't just say 'you're right, nationalism and being racist is wrong I get it now' when I was in Germany. I fought back, I defended myself, I thought these people were just butthurt leftists and weren't going to take anything I said seriously anyway. But those conversations planted the seeds that grew over several months, and eventually, they made me recognize how wrong I was. Second was I always knew it was wrong to hate people, but I still did. I didn't have an online support structure to keep me in the mindframe. Had these online communities existed 10 years ago, I don't know if I could have broken out of this."
"Edit: let me just add because people are seeing this. You often hear that hate is a poison. A huge part of being such a racist is being angry that so much of the world that doesn't conform to your narrow views of what a society should look like. You waste so much energy being so angry all the time. Everytime you see a group of people in a place where you don't think they should be, or a couple of different ethnicities, or hearing different languages where you don't think you should be hearing them, you just react to this with anger it's just so fucking poisonous. Once I started to let go of this a little bit, I tried to think about these feelings and wondered why I felt them."
"Why were all of these people making me so angry? And why did I think it would be so much better if I was somewhere else? The answer, of course, were problems in my own life, my own feelings of inadequacy, my feelings I squandered a privileged background and couldn't meet my parents' expectations. Once I started making those connections and take steps to improve the things in my own life I could control, I felt a lot better about myself and felt that I had a lot more to value in myself than being just a white guy from Newport."
"Hate really is poisonous. It poisons your self-image, your impression of others, your sense of empathy, your ability to humanize problems, your ability to connect with friends and family. But it doesn't have to be a death sentence, you can break out of the negatively reinforcing thought process."
"Start by reading stories of people who are totally different from you, watch movies made by people like this, just try and kickstart the apparatus in all of us to give a shit about people. I've had the opportunity to travel to so many places since my first time in Germany and the thing I've learned above all else is people by and large want the same things, to live somewhere cool, the hang out with their friends, provide for their families, etc. I'm sorry that it took me a while to learn this, but I do hope someone can see this and start have a gutcheck moment with themselves to think differently about how you think of others."
"edit2: go figure, I have a reddit account for 5 years and my first gold is on a throwaway where I confess to having been a bad human being. Thanks for the gesture, but please, give it to someone more deserving"
7. WesternCollection2 had to leave their hometown, as many do.
"Grew up in a town with no black people. Dad was very racist. So naturally I grew up racist. Joined the military and was forced to hang out with a melting pot of races. Straightened me out."
8. TerrorGatorRex has seen firsthand how segregation breeds itself.
"I grew up as an Air Force brat, and at least on the bases we were at, racism was not tolerated. It was something I had seen in movies, but not real life. Also, for the most part, where ever we were was about 50% white 50% POC."
"Then my dad retired and we moved to one of the whitest states in the country. Like my high school of 1000 kids had 3 black kids. And that was the first time I saw it. Friends of mine would just casually say the n-word or make jokes about racial stereotypes. Like WTF - you live in a 100% white area where do you get these ideas?"
"My nephew now goes to my old high school. He has complained about how racist his friends are. But it’s actually getting worse - now there are numerous trucks with the confederate flag (this is New England) driving around town. Two weeks ago a student and his mother parked their truck with a huge flag across the street from the high school. They did this as school was getting out, for all to see."
9. Masterblaster2222 started working construction and stopped being racist.
"I started a construction job. Hispanics are some of the nicest, funniest people you’ll ever meet. The language barrier even adds to the hilarity. It was an eye opener that these guys are just trying to make a living and go home, just like me. Landing this job has changed my view on ALL races and I’m very happy it did. You can’t just HATE someone for their distance from the equator."
10. quivx made a school friend who changed their perspective.
"My father was a racist just like his father before him. My dad did his best to indoctrinate me and my brother with his racist ways of thinking. I believed my dad’s philosophy was truth until I entered first grade. That year I was sat next to the only black girl in my class. Naturally, I hated her immediately. Not only was she a n****r, but an uppity one at that. She was more outspoken than most kids I knew, which I considered to be rude, and her style of diction was different from what I was used to, which made it difficult for me to understand her at first."
"However as I was forced to interact with her throughout the year, I learned that she was everything my preconceived notions said she shouldn’t have been. She was sweet, kind, funny, and intelligent. She helped me grasp the concept of arithmetic and was easily the best speller in our class."
"The idea that a black person could have all of those positive attributes, especially intelligence that surpassed that of a white person flew in the face of what I had been taught all my life up to that point. Knowing that girl was the single experience that made me first question, doubt, and eventually reject my dad’s beliefs about race."
"That girl and I remained friends until she transferred schools after our third grade year. I didn’t keep in touch with her and have no idea where she is now. If you’re out there Adia, thank you for just being yourself. You are the very reason why I went down a better path than the one I was shown. I sincerely hope that you are well."
11. CoffeeCisMan had the scripts flipped on them.
"Not really racist but we joked around a lot with racial slurs a lot when I was young. I grew up in a small Idaho Mormon town and in Sunday school we were told not to date outside our race and economic levels. Being the only poor brown person in the room it made me feel pretty bad surrounded by a bunch of white girls but that awful feeling made me not want to make someone else feel like that. I cleaned up my language and dropped all the racial slurs and also dropped out of the church ever since. Also being called "ok for a Mexican" dozens of times in my youth only made me want to get away from those things even more."
12. RPGnosh brother broke down how stupid racism is.
"I wouldnt say I was racist, but more uneducated. I grew up in a predominantly white town so when I was 10 and I moved to a city that was more diverse, it was weird for me. All I had to go off of was how other ethnicities were portrayed in pop culture. Well that and my racist aunt and some other closed minded family members. So it was weird for me at first but then I realized we werent as different at all, all was alright. Plus it helped that my older brother talked to me about it before we moved."
"We were driving in our dads black Ford truck and we saw another truck very similar to his, just a different color, that was broken down on the side of the highway. He asked what I thought was wrong with it. I said probably the engine or something like that broke (remember, i was 10). He asked if i thought it was because that truck was a different color that it wasnt working and ours was. I said no, that made no sense. He said "and thats why racism makes no sense." Oddly still remember that but I barely remember us moving. Weird."
13. Synchedify had to leave their white Mormon town to view people differently.
"I grew up Mormon in a very small town. This combination provided for a rather... Unbecoming upbringing. However, once moving to a larger city, and then moving again to be near Denver, I realized that race didn't really matter and I only thought it did because I grew up in a small town of white people."
"Unfortunately my family was too old and set in their ways, but my siblings and I avoided the permanent racism."
14. SPOOFE had a road rage-induced epiphany.
"I had a moment ages ago. I was out driving, and had to swerve to avoid someone making a slow-ass right turn into my lane, like turtle-turning.
My first thought: “Dammit, probably some old asian lady.”
"I drove past and it was an early-20s white dude just like I was. Even looked a lot like me, too. That gave me a crystal clear “holy shit that was racist as fuck” moment."
15. Finding common ground through anime helped treestick change their perspective.
"Finding out that most black people are huge weabs too. Goku done more to end racism than the tumblr crowd ever did."
16. BigGrundleBundler realized we all have people we care about.
"I wouldn't say that I am 'racist' exactly, I have no hate in me for anyone.. but I had some 'hesitation' or 'reservation' in how I would act around people of cultures I did not understand. I guess you could say I 'walked on eggshells' to avoid offending people. the fact that I had this hesitation bothered me."
"I talked to different people I knew about this, and was able to get over it by realizing that while it is true I may not be able to relate with every new person that I meet, everyone has loved ones (friends/family/etc) that they would do anything for. I may not understand why they dress or speak or act in certain ways, but I do understand the love they have for their family/friends, and I understand that a lot of people will do things they do not enjoy in order to benefit their family/friends in the future."
"So I guess I realized that I share a lot in common with everyone and that helped to remove my shyness."
17. A natural disaster lead to AskMeAboutMyDogplz's enlightenment.
"Been waiting for this question! So I was born in Alabama, still here, and come from a deeply "white Christian" family."
"When I was younger I was told to stay away from blacks, Mexicans, Jews, and Muslims. Funny enough, not only did I grow up learning to call blacks the "N" word, but Mexicans, Jews, and Muslims were followed by the "N" word. (Yep, literally, Mexican "N" word is what my dad taught us to call them)"
"Well anyways, my deep hate for non-whites/non-Christians was deeply rooted thanks to my parents. Until in 2011, a tornado outbreak swept through the south. I did a lot of voluntary work, met some black people, but was still worried about being around them."
"Until about a week or two later when our school reopened. We had a lot of new kids from various areas that were damaged. Most of them black. So the next school year I get partnered up with this black girl in our history class, and I'm mostly focused on our project, but we ended up talking for a while."
"She ended up being my first girlfriend a few weeks later, and after I met her family and learned what they went through because of the 2011 outbreak, plus her parents were from Birmingham during the civil rights movements, I started to learn that love is more powerful than hate."
"That ability to make someone smile, there's nothing better than that. While me and her broke up later on, she had a massive impact on my life. I still live in Alabama, and I still hear racist remarks from my parents, and from strangers. They will pass away, and sure they may have already left behind their mark of hatred. But hate can be erased with love."
18. Theearthhasnoedges watched their dad deal with his trauma and let go of inherited hate.
"My father used to be quite racist. I don't blame him though. That's a behavior that was beaten into him by my grandfather. I once heard a story from one of my family members about how my grandfather beat him so badly he couldn't go to school for a week just because he caught him walking home from school with a Chinese boy."
"This was just burned into him from a really young age and it stuck for years, but ultimately what changed him was life experiences. He slowly got over it by being forced to work closely with many people of many races. Eventually he was able to see that in the end we're all human and no man is greater or less than another because of their origins or skin color."
"This coupled with counseling for his childhood traumas and that fact that my sister was with an African immigrant for 10 years and has now been with an Afghan for over a decade. He realized with all this that nothing was worth losing his daughter."
"For an oldschool hardass like my dad, admitting that flaw and actively searching for help to better himself is a huge deal and I have huge respect for him. Not often a racist piece of shit concedes the argument and admits they're wrong."
19. insertcaffeine brought up the important fact that everyone has subconscious racism to unlearn.
"Former "I'm not racist!" white woman here.
Reading a book called The Hidden Brain by Shankar Vedantam changed my mind. It's about unconscious bias. It helped me understand that humans are drawn to people who look and act like them, and tend to distrust people who look different. This is an ancient impulse designed to protect tribes of humans from being attacked by outsiders, which may have helped in our hunter-gatherer days, but has no place in a global society."
"I took the Implicit Association Test discussed in the book, which showed that (surprise surprise) I had some implicit bias."
"So, from then on, I made it a point to ask myself: "Am I worried about that person because they're actually acting sketchy, or because their skin is a different color than mine?"
"Now, I'm less "I'm not racist" and more "I don't want to be racist." I know that I've been living in a racist society. I know that marrying a black man doesn't give me a free pass or absolve me of racism. I know that my brain, like all human brains, can be full of shit sometimes and it's up to me to challenge my first impressions of people."
20. -storytime- quickly saw that Nazi punks were still fans of black music.
"Moved away from home. Got into the punk/skin scene here and just wanted to fit in. It took me years to realize the guys I looked up to were listening to tons of music from people they claimed to hate and that they too just wanted to be a part of something. A short time after that I realized that for myself, it wasn't something I actually wanted to be a part of. I was hating something because I was either afraid of it or didn't understand it and that made me feel weak. Also, at the time, the last thing I wanted to be was weak."
"Not very long after I kind of cut ties I realized as well that the guys I thought were tough were actually kind of pussies. They would talk a big game behind closed door or in a crowd of like minded people but if they were alone on the street it was completely different. They wouldn't stand up for their "beliefs" and I knew why. Because they knew those beliefs were wrong(and fucked up to be honest)."
"Still took me another period of time to realize we are all humans going through our own shit and life is too short to hate for zero reason."
21. tacosandrose learned more about systemic racism through a more thorough dive into history.
"I was never one who would say the N word or thought people of other races were beneath me or anything, but I did not understand systemic racism, or the impact that racist policies throughout history still have on people today. In other words, I was that, "Slavery is over. Here's an MLK quote, but affirmative action is bullshit. I have a black friend." white person. * cringe *"
"So anyway, what changed all that was first of all, joining the Army and actually living among people of every race, religion, background, and persuasion, in reasonably close quarters, for a few years of my life. When you actually get to know people well enough that a few of them will tell you how things really have been for them, it's really eye-opening. That was what showed me that no, things actually aren't equal now, even though the laws would make it seem as if they were. We're still experiencing the world in very different ways."
"After I got out of the Army, and went to a state university for an engineering degree. Two really important things happened there."
"First, my history professor, when I was a freshman, was a black woman who told the side of the story that you don't hear about much in most history classes. Sometimes I was skeptical of what she was saying, but I'd always Google it, and it turned out she was right. This opened my eyes to the fact that there's this whole story of our country that most of us never even hear, and that there are real and ongoing reasons for policies like affirmative action, and that concepts like reparations actually aren't crazy when you consider the ongoing economic impact of policies like Jim Crow laws."
"The other thing that happened which opened my eyes was when I was a junior, I got pulled over by a cop for speeding on the way to class, and was talking with my classmates about it. My experience as a white woman was that I got pulled over, and given a warning. My white male classmates said the police officers in our town (this was in the south, just for reference) were usually cordial with them, but always gave them the ticket. "
"The one black woman in the conversation said the police were a bit rude to her and she always got the ticket, and the two black men had some real horror stories about this stuff, how they were always made to get out of the car, were sometimes asked if they could search the car, etc. It was just so obvious how differently we were treated."
"From then on, I made more of an effort to understand where POC are coming from when they say something is an issue rather than just thinking it's not an issue because it's not an issue for me. I used to not believe people on stuff like that, which was pretty fucking racist of me, but just learning more about it and listening to people's experience really changed my mind."
22. comrade-lostlk had a lightbulb moment about their own hypocrisy.
"Use to be pretty racist when I was in my early teens, I fell for all the usual “whites being replaced” trope. One day while browsing /pol/ I had to ask myself. “If we’re defending the white race, and complaining about interracial marriages, then why are all of us obsessed with Asian girls?” Then everything else came falling down."
23. Said1942 stumbled upon a video that broke down race as a social construct.
"I wasn’t a self-proclaimed “racist”, I actually was very certain I wasn’t racist at all. But then as I got older, I realized I had some underlying assumptions about people of color that weren’t correct, and were racist."
"What really changed my whole perspective was a video titled something like “Race Doesn’t Exist” and I was like, well that is dumb, but I clicked on it."
"Among other things, the video showed a photo of Barrack Obama, and some famous white person i didn’t know. The narrator said “Racially, what is the difference between these two people?”
"In my mind, I was like, “well one is black and one is white.” The narrator said, “both of these people have one black parent, and one white parent.”
"And that’s when it hit me. “Race” doesn’t exist. Humans have a spectrum of skin color, some darker some lighter, but it doesn’t make any difference where you are on that spectrum, you’re just a human."
"We made up “races” to categorize people, but they’re all just made up boxes. There’s nothing different between a black person and white person other than how much melanin is in your skin. That’s it."
"I realized I had always had these underlying assumptions that people of other races were “different” than me. And then I realized they aren’t, and it changed the way I think about it and interact with my fellow humans."
24. MCPatar's story changed at the movie theater.
"I grew up in a small white town in Central Ohio. This place was incredibly homogenous. All white, all Christian, and very few members of the LGBTQ+ community, at least those that were out of the closet. My friends and I made gay jokes, Jew and Muslim jokes, and all kinds of racially charged jokes."
"Then I got a job at a movie theater in a nearby city that was more diverse. And that changed everything. I worked with and interacted with people of all different races, religions or lack thereof, and sexual orientations. One of the coolest people I worked with was Jewish and bisexual."
"On top of that, the customers changed me as well. I would have a black man come up and be talkative, cheerful, and considerate, and the next one would be a white man who was rude, dismissive, and aggressive. Or with an Asian man and an Indian woman. Or vice versa. That job taught me that your impressions of people based on any of those factors I mentioned can and usually do turn out to be complete and utter nonsense. It's not about the labels society puts on them, because at the end of the day the only thing that matters is if a person treats other people well."
25. Suo_Jure escaped a neo nazi gang.
"I used to be a Neo Nazi, I fear for my life from the group I left . The criminal elements are hypocrites as they are against drug use but were manufacturing heroin and I was addicted to that. I had to join the army to get clean and far away. It’s like any other group , they used race as a uniting factor and brainwashed propaganda as a factor. The drugs kept me chained, and the racism was seen as a loyalty, that whole blood and honor garbage."
"What changed my heart can be had as a religious moment of clarity and the love I had for my little cousin of mixed race. I didn’t want to be part of that and I realize gangs of whites or blacks all operate on a similar BS principle. For anyone reading this , you can get out, and you can get away, message me if you need support ! Free yourself from these degenerates!"
26. kingofvodka's teenage racism was killed with kindness.
"I was a bitter, racist neckbeard as a teen. I don't think I ever really hated other races, but I certainly ate up those 4chan statistics about them. It made me feel superior."
"Then one day at school I got partnered up with a black girl. She was so sweet and nice to me when everyone else treated me like shit that it caused some serious soul searching. She'd make jokes, tease me when I was prickly or rude in response and just treated me like a human."
"She was singlehandedly responsible for me not only reversing my opinion on other races, but also for me realising that I didn't have to be like I was. It was like she gave me a snapshot of what life could be like, and it made me realise what I was missing."
"Many years and hours of self help later, I'm a pretty normal guy with normal relationships who doesn't hate anyone. My biggest regret is that I never got the chance to thank her for it."
27. Theyrodeon2469's series of unfortunate events led them to a change of heart.
"New account because people know my other one and I don't like to disclose this about myself.
In 2005, my senior year of highschool, my father who was very distant throughout my childhood because he had active warrants on him in my home state was murdered by two black youth. He was attempting to buy drugs to sell in order to come visit me for my birthday. It went south and the younger of the pair shot him and threw him in a ditch on the highway. He walked then crawled for about a mile before bleeding to death."
"I got to witness the trial, when asked why he told his younger brother to kill my father. He said "you can't trust a fucking white man". Their family testified with similar beliefs and that led me to view that every one of them hated me because of my skin."
"Growing up in the south, I was already kind of prejudiced and that amplified it. I hated blacks with a passion. In my school, there were four and the rest were white. I was one of the most active bullies. When I opened my business, I put a sign that said "proud to be white" in opposition to a neighborly black business. The owner came to talk to me and I refused to speak with him. When he left, I flew the Confederate flag as well."
"When the KKK came to March in my hometown, many businesses refused to give them hotel rooms or shelter them, I let them camp out in my yard free of charge as long as they picked up after themselves. When our local court voted to remove the Confederate flag from the lobby. I helped share a petition to remove the "Black lives matter" flag from it as well. And I offered a free drink with a meal to celebrate when it was."
"A few years ago, I was in an ATV accident that really damaged my brain(wear a fucking helmet guys). My insurance didn't cover a lot of things. For a while I walked with a crutch. Business started to dwindle and things were looking quite grim. I made the decision to shoot myself several times but never could go through with it."
"When one day I called to try to negotiate my medical bills, the hospital and debt collectors informed me that it was paid for. About a week went by and the store owner's brother came to visit. He told me that he had learned about my father and he was sorry. Despite how miserable I had made his brother, he paid for my bills. And he was honest with me when he told me that he did it because it was the right thing to do but that he hated me with a passion."
"I broke down and opened up to him and we were able to understand each other. I'll never forget what he said when I told him what the people who killed my father said, " they sound Just as stupid and racist as you are". And it took that to make me realize that all of my actions made me the same person to them that those two teens were to me."
"That was three years ago and I've learned a lot. It's taken a lot of opening up and understanding. I made amends with the shop owner as well and apologize to everyone I've terrorized in High School in college. It's really took a lot of humbling and I can see why a lot of people would rather double down. I've lost a lot of friends and many other things because of who I am now. But I'm glad everything happened to me to change who I was."
28. FelixTheGamerFTG was changed by a stay at the hospital.
"It was about 3-4 years ago, I was a massive racist fuck. I grew up in a white only town, all my relatives far right. So normally I was exposed to beliveing that the whites are superior. When I was 13 my uncle signed me up for some KKK recruitment or some shitterly like that, I never went because I was ill, but it still stuck to me. And when I was 15-ish I was fully racist. Refering to blacks as n***** or animals. My friends and I once acctually beat up a mexican kid (something I can never forgive myself)."
"Anyways one day I was driving with my older brother in our pickup truck, when all of the sudden he lost control of the wheel and we crashed off-road. The truck rolled about 4 times before landing on the roof. My brother was severely injured, while I broke a few ribs and my left leg. Blood splattered all over the truck I was about to faint. When I saw a car pull up next to us. Out of the car exited a black woman in her 40s, she rushed to our truck and pulled me out, she couldnt get my brother out. I fainted."
"I woke up in the hospital about a day later. With my family surrounding me, next to me was my bro, he looked like a mummy. After a couple hours my family left. My brother and I were left alone. I was hungry so I clicked the "call nurse" button. And the nurse that came was black. I was not in a position to be racist so I started talking to her like a normal person. (for the first time I was talking to a person of color like a person)"
"After some time I became friends with the nurse, calling her sometimes just to talk with her. My brother couldnt speak, but I could see that he was a bit pissed. Then one day my family came to visit again. I was very thirsty so I called for the nurse again. She arrived and my dad's eyes went up in flames, yelling how a "animal" could work in a hospital and treat his son. He consulted the doctor and she was forbidden from coming to our room."
"I was let go after 2 months, I never saw the nurse after the incident. But I realised what I was dealing with, my family is a bunch of racist assholes. When I came back to school, I instantly tried making friends with the black kids, but the damage has been done. Due to my previous behavior they wouldnt hang out with me, and my old friends abandoned me because I was trying to make friends with black kids."
"We moved to the large city 7 moths later. There I instantly made friends with the kids of color. Which was a shock to both other kids and teachers. That day when I came home I was yelled at and grounded "forbidden" from hanging out with them. I continued to be friends with them."
"My parents are still a bit pissed about everything, but soon im going to uni so I can hang out with anyone, no matter thier race, religion and other bullshittery."
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