I’m a young white man and I grew up in the Deep South (Alabama/Mississippi). I had just started eighth grade when I moved to a very small town in Mississippi.

I’m a young white man and I grew up in the Deep South (Alabama/Mississippi). I had just started eighth grade when I moved to a very small town in Mississippi. On my first day a group of white kids invited me to sit with them. They decided the best way to break the ice would be to tell me heinous racist jokes. For example, somebody would tell a “joke” about how they’d like to hang Obama from their Christmas tree and everybody would burst into laughter. All that is to say that I don’t think their opinions are different than those who raised them. They were children and had to have learned it from somebody. But they would never express their racism outside of small white groups because they knew at some level it was wrong. At some point in my teenage years I noticed a shift among these “friends”. They had joined online groups that echoed their sentiments and argued that it wasn’t wrong to be racist but rather it just makes you “woke” to go against the crowd. They think they’re just seeing the world differently. One guy in particular would say heinous racist things and immediately follow it up with something like “I’d rather die than live under communism”. He had become radicalized. He was no longer a closeted racist boy. Now he’s a fully grown racist man filled with vitriol.