People feeling comfortable being racist around me and I fucking hate it.
So I'm a white man mid 30s grew up in the northern midwest shaved head due to receding hair line with a beard. So I grew up in a small town in the midwest like 99% white, my family (aunts and uncles) ended up marrying people of different racial demographics, and had my cousins who are mixed race. However they also don't live in the small town where I grew up either so no one I went to school with knew that I had family that even though I'm 100% white my family is not. So growing up in the 90s into 2000s didn't really experience that much racism.... Until my dad (my mother and father got divorced) got with my step-mother, she's only 8 years older than me so we're the same generation but anyways she started saying racist stuff, and she's the type of person saying she can't be racist because she has a black friend, unfortunately her racist comments were not a deal breaker for my father, and to be clear the people who married people of other races were on my mothers side so she hasn't been around them. But it doesn't stop there, first class reunion I go to there's only 15 of us there and the one black guy from our class came, after he left one of the redneck dudes was like why did that n***** come here? Out loud in front of everyone I left after that because fuck that guy. Then at work this is where it gets into toeing the line of racism like I was talking about when my ancestors came to America back in like the 1600s they were indentured servants and before I got to the end where apparently it only lasted 3 years because the thing they were sent there to get ended up not working out for England so they just got released from their servitude one of my co-workers decided to go on a rant about how because white people came here under indentured servitude that black people shouldn't get reparations completely unprompted. Would he say that if there was a non-white person in the room, nope but because we're all white he's like you know what I'm going to be a racist now. There's been more times those are the times I can't remember well enough, but it happens way too much where someone gets either completely racist or toeing the line of racism around me. The worst thing is they know what they're saying is racist because they're completely silent about that stuff when someone of a different race is around. I've literally never said anything that even gets close to toeing the line of racism. Growing up I thought racism was nearly gone, going from a teenager to adult I realized it's very much alive they've just been hiding it. While not all white people are like this, but if you're curios there are definitely people who may be pleasant to you up front but behind your back they're racist. I'm not making this as a post for your pity towards me, just informing a bit and venting a bit and wish I had the right words to say in those moments to get people to stop.