I grew up in a rural area in the South among farmers and factory workers. I am well aware of what --some-- churches teach, but my father's church doesn't teach these things, our church growing up didn't, my mother's in Virginia didn't. But you are correct regarding education, and that is one of the main problems. My mother happens to be…
I grew up in a rural area in the South among farmers and factory workers. I am well aware of what --some-- churches teach, but my father's church doesn't teach these things, our church growing up didn't, my mother's in Virginia didn't. But you are correct regarding education, and that is one of the main problems. My mother happens to be a retired English teacher who teaches other teachers how to teach AP English. She has been around the country teaching these workshops and she has said that "white flight" is partly to blame. The people who have been convinced that "coastal elites" are "forcing" them to accept "gay lifestyle" and other euphemisms for things they don't personally agree with have formed their own private schools. As white people they generally have much more money so they pay to put little Alice and little Bob into their isolated echo chamber church schools and home schools where their precious ears and eyes are shielded from world, and from science, and from critical thinking of any kind. The best teachers are going there because the pay is better. My mother reports that, for example in Mississippi the teachers in the public schools are "poorly educated and not very bright." The failing American public school system is everyone's fault. It's stupid to pay for this with local taxes. That's precisely why we still have de facto segregated education where some schools the kids have to share textbooks and others have paid-for trips to Washington D.C, and guess what demographic dominates in each one? How can any BIPOC or otherwise disadvantaged person get a leg up when their game of Life difficulty is set to "Nightmare" level through no fault of their own. Your story is just one example and another is your debate opponent who has had it even worse, it seems, and still hurting and recovering. You aren't going to convince people to change their morals but you could make them less entrenched and more accepting if they weren't having such a hard time economically. To do that, we need to fund education differently and better. We also need to address the addiction problems. We also need to address joblessness which was already bad in some of these areas and now far worse. But their intolerance has driven BIPOC and LGBTQ people away.
I don't particularly care for generalizations. Even though these kind ideas ring true, there's more to it than that. Take the example of my stepbrother who did grow up around Black people, he works with them, but he's a staunch Trump supporter and a born again Christian. On the other hand his sister, my stepsister, is not that way at all. She's left leaning and is a teacher's assistant. They were both raised by the same people, my dad and my stepmom. There are lots of families like this all across the South, and it's not just white people suffering from these types of problems.
I remain convinced that addressing people's economic and health care (physical, mental, addiction, etc) needs first will provide a basis for calming fears, which can be built upon for the remainder. People without hope for the future aren't going to be reasonable.
I grew up in a rural area in the South among farmers and factory workers. I am well aware of what --some-- churches teach, but my father's church doesn't teach these things, our church growing up didn't, my mother's in Virginia didn't. But you are correct regarding education, and that is one of the main problems. My mother happens to be a retired English teacher who teaches other teachers how to teach AP English. She has been around the country teaching these workshops and she has said that "white flight" is partly to blame. The people who have been convinced that "coastal elites" are "forcing" them to accept "gay lifestyle" and other euphemisms for things they don't personally agree with have formed their own private schools. As white people they generally have much more money so they pay to put little Alice and little Bob into their isolated echo chamber church schools and home schools where their precious ears and eyes are shielded from world, and from science, and from critical thinking of any kind. The best teachers are going there because the pay is better. My mother reports that, for example in Mississippi the teachers in the public schools are "poorly educated and not very bright." The failing American public school system is everyone's fault. It's stupid to pay for this with local taxes. That's precisely why we still have de facto segregated education where some schools the kids have to share textbooks and others have paid-for trips to Washington D.C, and guess what demographic dominates in each one? How can any BIPOC or otherwise disadvantaged person get a leg up when their game of Life difficulty is set to "Nightmare" level through no fault of their own. Your story is just one example and another is your debate opponent who has had it even worse, it seems, and still hurting and recovering. You aren't going to convince people to change their morals but you could make them less entrenched and more accepting if they weren't having such a hard time economically. To do that, we need to fund education differently and better. We also need to address the addiction problems. We also need to address joblessness which was already bad in some of these areas and now far worse. But their intolerance has driven BIPOC and LGBTQ people away.
I don't particularly care for generalizations. Even though these kind ideas ring true, there's more to it than that. Take the example of my stepbrother who did grow up around Black people, he works with them, but he's a staunch Trump supporter and a born again Christian. On the other hand his sister, my stepsister, is not that way at all. She's left leaning and is a teacher's assistant. They were both raised by the same people, my dad and my stepmom. There are lots of families like this all across the South, and it's not just white people suffering from these types of problems.
I remain convinced that addressing people's economic and health care (physical, mental, addiction, etc) needs first will provide a basis for calming fears, which can be built upon for the remainder. People without hope for the future aren't going to be reasonable.
^Even though kind --of-- ideas...