4 ms·

I value what you've written, and I agree although my experience was (possibly?) the inverse. I was a poor white kid in a wealthy white area. While I lived in t

I value what you've written, and I agree although my experience was (possibly?) the inverse. I was a poor white kid in a wealthy white area. While I lived in that area, I only got to briefly attend a private school because of my mothers boyfriend. Everyone knew I was the "poor kid", and my mother, who did her best, was _obsessed_ with the fact that everyone knew we were "imposters" - not wealthy, not married, from a broken home, "gold-digger", etc etc etc. The list of victim-tokens is miles long. It was an illusion - I don't think more than a small handful of adults and certainly no kids ever held my status against me. When I lived on my own as a teenager, I had no shortage of people explaining why I was a victim due to my life experiences. Obviously, this isn't even close to the the same level of experience as racism, but I completely agree with "they never let on, and frankly I think I'm better off not having dwelt on what was in their deepest thoughts". Fearing what was in the "deepest thoughts" of others crippled many people in my life. If anything, in my experience, that fear of judgement "in a deep thought" is a _much_ larger hindrance than any actual action that was taken against us. I see echos of this in the politics of people I've met all around the country. And the great irony is that kids who grew up in wealth and surrounded by healthy parents seem oblivious or to not care whatsoever about such judgements from others. Are they ignorant or inoculated? I'm _extremely_ cautious of even inhabiting the thought that the victim mentality hurts more than the victimization, as obviously that can turn callous incredibly quickly... But it's not a _useless_ thought either.

Dracophoenix 5y ago
If you don't mind my asking, how do/did you deal with the contradiction that the very same people whose judgements and thoughts you derived your view of the world from (or felt you were supposed to) were unaffected or unconcerned with yours?
- refulgentis 5y ago
  I have a symmetrical background and experience (ty OP for sharing, I never talk about it, it's hard!), and...right or wrong...I just tell myself they went through a shorter road than I did, so I have a learned bias to being 'anxious' and nailing down every detail I had to win a ton of coin flips to get here, and thinking and planning and caring about perception was something I did to maximize my chances, and they didn't/didn't have to. I try to manage the resultant base day-to-day anxiety by noting they don't care as much as I do, they're more secure, and also noting it's a bit of a 'superpower' - I tend to be better at disappearing into esoteric subjects and reappearing in a couple months with a pristine, novel, solution to a big problem, because I obsess and master every detail.
codetrotter 5y ago
> the great irony is that kids who grew up in wealth and surrounded by healthy parents seem oblivious or to not care whatsoever about such judgements from others. Are they ignorant or inoculated? I think that we learn from experience, and experience has shown these people that judgement from others do not have any real effect on their lives. Oppose that with people in less favorable positions, who have been badly affected in real life as a result of the judgement of others. That’s where a lot of the difference comes from I think, in how different people later in life relate to judgement from others.
indigochill 5y ago
I grew up a middle-class white kid in a good family in California so was pretty much oblivious to victimhood until I went to college in Missouri where the notion of racial inequality was drilled into me to the point I actually learned to fear people of other races held a grudge against me. Although I've been aware of this learned fear and done what I can to mitigate it, this means I might sometimes fear interracial interactions which means I might not give a black person an equal chance as a white, which then comes across as systemic racism, and so it's a vicious cycle. On the topic of breaking the cycle, I had an eye-opening encounter with an Iranian Christian who said that he felt the US oppressed Iran (sanctions leading to economic and political instability) but as a Christian, he chose to forgive the US and pray that they'd see the harm they're causing. In this scenario, because he offered forgiveness, I feel more comfortable around him even despite agreeing that "my people" have been making life harder for "his", and not in vague systemic ways or hundreds of years ago, but right now in concrete ways.
- collyw 5y ago
  I grew up as a white kid in a good middle class family in the UK. I still got bullied by (white) kids at schools. The idea that all bullying is race related seems nonsense to me. Maybe it's different in the US.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - bradlys 5y ago
    It is different. Race based bullying is very much a thing when/where I grew up. (Oregon, 90’s to 2000’s) I like how I get downvoted for my own experience...
    - jukabo 5y ago
      THIS GUYS A VICTIM, DOWNVOTING IS OPPRESSION!
  - Viliam1234 5y ago
antattack 5y ago
"I don't think more than a small handful of adults and certainly no kids ever held my status against me." Seeing how kids diss kids with old iPhones or even shoes, I have a hard time to believe that.
musingsole 5y ago
> kids who grew up in wealth and surrounded by healthy parents seem oblivious or to not care whatsoever about such judgements from others I can assure you it is the healthy parents and not the wealth that create children confident enough to ignore the judgments of others. The wealthy are far more susceptible to social judgments when they lack confidence themselves.

Dracophoenix 5y ago

If you don't mind my asking, how do/did you deal with the contradiction that the very same people whose judgements and thoughts you derived your view of the world from (or felt you were supposed to) were unaffected or unconcerned with yours?

refulgentis 5y ago
I have a symmetrical background and experience (ty OP for sharing, I never talk about it, it's hard!), and...right or wrong...I just tell myself they went through a shorter road than I did, so I have a learned bias to being 'anxious' and nailing down every detail I had to win a ton of coin flips to get here, and thinking and planning and caring about perception was something I did to maximize my chances, and they didn't/didn't have to. I try to manage the resultant base day-to-day anxiety by noting they don't care as much as I do, they're more secure, and also noting it's a bit of a 'superpower' - I tend to be better at disappearing into esoteric subjects and reappearing in a couple months with a pristine, novel, solution to a big problem, because I obsess and master every detail.

codetrotter 5y ago

> the great irony is that kids who grew up in wealth and surrounded by healthy parents seem oblivious or to not care whatsoever about such judgements from others. Are they ignorant or inoculated? I think that we learn from experience, and experience has shown these people that judgement from others do not have any real effect on their lives. Oppose that with people in less favorable positions, who have been badly affected in real life as a result of the judgement of others. That’s where a lot of the difference comes from I think, in how different people later in life relate to judgement from others.

indigochill 5y ago

I grew up a middle-class white kid in a good family in California so was pretty much oblivious to victimhood until I went to college in Missouri where the notion of racial inequality was drilled into me to the point I actually learned to fear people of other races held a grudge against me. Although I've been aware of this learned fear and done what I can to mitigate it, this means I might sometimes fear interracial interactions which means I might not give a black person an equal chance as a white, which then comes across as systemic racism, and so it's a vicious cycle. On the topic of breaking the cycle, I had an eye-opening encounter with an Iranian Christian who said that he felt the US oppressed Iran (sanctions leading to economic and political instability) but as a Christian, he chose to forgive the US and pray that they'd see the harm they're causing. In this scenario, because he offered forgiveness, I feel more comfortable around him even despite agreeing that "my people" have been making life harder for "his", and not in vague systemic ways or hundreds of years ago, but right now in concrete ways.

collyw 5y ago
I grew up as a white kid in a good middle class family in the UK. I still got bullied by (white) kids at schools. The idea that all bullying is race related seems nonsense to me. Maybe it's different in the US.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bradlys 5y ago
  It is different. Race based bullying is very much a thing when/where I grew up. (Oregon, 90’s to 2000’s) I like how I get downvoted for my own experience...
  - jukabo 5y ago
    THIS GUYS A VICTIM, DOWNVOTING IS OPPRESSION!
- Viliam1234 5y ago

antattack 5y ago

"I don't think more than a small handful of adults and certainly no kids ever held my status against me." Seeing how kids diss kids with old iPhones or even shoes, I have a hard time to believe that.

musingsole 5y ago

> kids who grew up in wealth and surrounded by healthy parents seem oblivious or to not care whatsoever about such judgements from others I can assure you it is the healthy parents and not the wealth that create children confident enough to ignore the judgments of others. The wealthy are far more susceptible to social judgments when they lack confidence themselves.