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I’ve seen a couple of documentaries about men who used to hold hardcore r**ist views and how they completely changed their minds and decided to dedicate the rest of their lives to helping other people and spreading messages of peace and love.
And I think that if guys who used to be that into a r**ist subculture can do it, there’s hope for everyone out there.
AskReddit users who used to hold r**ist views talked about how and why they changed.
Let’s check out their stories.
1. A big lesson.
“The Army forced me to live with black people.
Turns out I didn’t h**e anyone, I was just afraid of what I didn’t understand and had some very stupid notions passed on to me from my dad and his dips**t friends.
I will forever be grateful for the opportunity to understand a greater sample of people than my tiny hometown afforded me.”
2. Changed for the better.
“From birth I was raised to be r**ist in a ra**ist household in Virginia. I was ignorant. I used the “N” word, antisemitic, h**ophobic, r**ist language everyday.
My immediate family and extended family all share the same ignorance. At family gatherings if one of my older cousins let slip they were dating someone new, the first question would be “Is s/he white?” Followed by laughter, but the question was serious.
Then I started middle school. 6th grade. On the first day of class I set down my backpack against the classroom wall (like every other student) while we found our desks and had a small Meet & Greet w/ new classmates. I made sure to only speak to the kids (white) whom I knew from elementary school.
Our teacher told us to take our seats. I’m 42 yrs old and I remember this like it was yesterday. I picked up my backpack, found my desk, before I could open my bag the girl behind me told me she liked my earrings, her Mom wouldn’t let her get her ears pierced until high school.
Then I heard another voice from further behind me say, “Ms. Kay, this isn’t my backpack”. The backpack sitting on this girl’s desk was identical to the one sitting next to my desk. We both opened our backpacks and realized we’d grabbed the wrong bag.
Internally I rolled my eyes in disgust, this girl was a “N”. But I was taught to never let it show. So we met each other to quickly exchange. Her smile was beautiful. She wore glasses the same shape as mine. She wore her hair in a pony tail, just like mine. In our back to school shopping we picked the exact same backpack and we picked the exact same Nikes (pink/white).
Her name was Jacinda. I found myself genuinely smiling back to her, and giggling like young girls do. That day she asked to sit together during lunch, and we sat beside each other for lunch every single day of middle school. She was my very first best friend. Jacinda taught me about her Sunday School classes (my family never attended church), we talked about everything important in the life of middle school girls.
She wasn’t allowed to attend my birthday parties, and I wasn’t allowed to go to hers, but we always celebrated together at school. I loved her so much. When it was time to go to high school I continued in public school and her parents chose to homeschool her. I thought homeschooling was the coolest idea. Jacinda was (is) brilliantly intelligent.
God, she was going to do great things for this world. Long before the age of social media, we lost touch sadly – but I still think of her often. After meeting Jacinda I never used another r**ist or derogatory word. Meeting Jacinda changed my life for the better.”
3. Small town in Iowa.
“I grew up in a very small town in Iowa. Couple of hundred people. All white.
So I guess I was raised not to discriminate against people that were different from me because we were all the same. Once I got older and moved to the city, oh yeah. R**ism is alive and well in Iowa.
I didn’t fall into that trap. I didn’t understand it. Ended up in Alabama. My best friend was black. We just had the same sense of humor and liked the same things. I credit him with my kids being non r**ist. He would crack jokes about racial things and they would be shocked.
As they got older they just rolled their eyes. Funniest thing was one of my daughters date shows up and he opens the door and introduced himself as her dad. He moved to Michigan. I miss Charles.”
4. Quickly realized.
“It’s simple really.
I was raised in a r**ist family. Growing up I was kinda r**ist.
Once I actually spent time with people of different races I quickly realized how stupid that is.”
5. Just plain dumb.
“My dad has some pretty xenophobic points of view and that definitely rubbed off on me when I was younger.
Meeting actual people of color through my teenage years made me realize I was being dumb.”
6. Just jokes…
“I grew up thinking I was not a r**ist. I didn’t think badly of blacks or Hispanics. But r**ist jokes didn’t hurt anyone.
Then I moved to an area with about a 90% Hispanic population. The little things that weren’t r**ist, were. The “How many Mexican” type jokes were hurtful and I felt bad. So I stopped.
The easy same thing with blacks , Asians etc, etc. was about the same time.”
7. Poisonous ideas.
“I was not raised by r**ist parents but you can’t help growing up with r**ist messages all around society and tending to believe some of them. I had ideas about indigenous people, Muslim people, all sorts of poisonous ideas.
When I got into my early twenties I started to make good money and began traveling, and all of my r**ist notions disappeared with that. Nothing made me realize how similar human beings are regardless of race, than traveling.”
8. Native people.
“I definitely had some r**ist ideas about native people in my city growing up. There are a lot of native addicts and vagrants but it’s very much a result of a system that’s rigged against those communities.
I didn’t know any of that growing up so when I saw a group of drunk, native people in the park or something, I was generally unimpressed or even frightened.
And I definitely applied those feelings to all the native people I came across. It’s hard to change those reactions but we can all identify the bad reactions and try to curb them.”
9. No indoctrination.
“Grandfather on one side would drop jokes with hard Rs, grandmother on that side would talk about how (whisper) Mexicans were ruining South Dakota long before complaining about illegal immigration was mainstream.
Father wasn’t nearly that far gone, but after one failed relationship with a Chinese woman he encouraged me to marry a white woman, and my mother once vehemently objected to my sister having an openly gay man as a roommate.
So where did it all go wrong? Basically, I traveled to different places and met different people. The town where I grew up had a pretty large Indian population, and I had an Indian best friend growing up (he was also a bit r**ist at the time, frankly).
Went away to Boston for a summer, and through some random set of circumstances found myself going to a black church for the summer. They were just like the white church I had been going to, one kid wanted to grow up to be a programmer just like I wanted to at the time, etc etc. Went off to California for school and was exposed to a wide variety of people.
Hispanic roommate and Hispanic RA freshman year… one was an a**hole, one became a good friend, and I realized it had nothing to do with their ethnicity. Made a good friend sophomore year, and he later came out to me, and either I wrong the whole time about Josh or I was wrong about whatever leftover prejudices I had about gay people.
Now I’m married to another Chinese woman, one of my best friends is black, another is gay, one of my daughter’s best friends is Hispanic, and I’m still here in the bluest part of CA.
There was no liberal indoctrination in college like conservatives are always b**ching about. There was just meeting people and realizing that whatever reasons I had for disliking them or distrusting them from the beginning were false.:
10. Helped you understand.
“When I was going into college I was ignorant, bitter, and certainly not on a good path.
I had a roommate in college who was a person of color, who really helped me understand and put into context a lot that I had been ignorant about.”
11. Dismantle your thought process.
“My situation was complicated growing up. My father was the son of an Italian immigrant with Egyptian roots and he was so ungodly r**ist towards anyone not considered white as he considered himself white.
The thing is, my dad has dark brown skin, dark brown eyes and black kinked curly hair. He looked EXACTLY like the people he was r**ist against. And he hated Arabs…. all Arabs…. and he is part Arab. This was so confusing. He also hated gay people, Muslims, “commies” and any type of alternative lifestyles.
My father hated black people the most. He told me if I ever brought home a black boyfriend he would disown me. He told me, as a small child, that if I misbehaved I would be sent to live with a ****** family in the ghetto.
He was equally misogynist and held onto a strong patriarchal mindset.
I admit, as a kid I repeated his words. All the other kids did too on my neighborhood so I thought he was right. It wasn’t until I was literally in my 30s did I realise the internalized r**ism I still held onto.
All my partners and friends were white my entire life. I felt unsafe near a group of black men. It was only until I moved to northern Europe that I realized that I am not considered white here and experienced r**ism myself and oooooo wow what an eye opener.
I began to dismantle my entire thought process and honestly, I am so repulsed by my father now I can’t even speak to him without feeling disgusting inside. He’s really old now and much more calm and probably won’t live more than 10 years. I have not returned to my birth country to see him in almost 7 years because I am so angry at him.
Because of his r**ism I missed out on friendships, relationships and understanding cultures different from my own. I am making up for it now as the immigrant community that I live in is amazing and supportive but I will never get back that lost time and I will never know fully the extent of damage that my hateful words may have done to people who didn’t deserve it.”
12. Changed your mind.
“Joined the military, left home and experienced cultures around the world.
I was severely lacking in cultural awareness due to growing up in a small town surrounded by openly r**ist people.
Luckily, my children are able to grow in a completely different environment than the one I did.”
Now we’d like to hear from you.
Do you know anyone who has changed their radical views like these people did?
If so, please tell us about it in the comments. Thanks in advance.
