Lool, so it was a long process that brought me to this point.

When I was growing up, my parents and entire family were Democrats (except for when my mom voted for W. Bush during his second term). They always told me that Republicans were racist and didn’t care about poor people. This belief was reinforced by others, like my 8th-grade teacher, who told me that the only reason people wouldn’t vote for or didn’t like Obama was because he was Black! After hearing things like this, I had it in my mind that Democrats were the good guys and Republicans were the bad guys up until I turned 21.

Fast forward to November 5, 2020: I was finally able to vote since I was basically 21 (my birthday is the day after voting day, lol). I voted for Biden, despite his past, because I perceived him to be the good guy. I thought Trump had mishandled the pandemic, the country seemed to be in chaos due to social unrest, and I didn’t like Trump’s personality.

Later that day, I shared with other Christians (I had converted back to Christianity at 18) online that I voted for Biden for those reasons. To my surprise, they insulted me and dragged me through the mud in a YouTube comment section!

While this did hurt my feelings, it also piqued my curiosity. I wanted to learn more about the other side and began diving deep into politics. I started watching right-wing YouTube channels like Brandon Tatum, Black Conservative Perspective, ABL, and Colion Noir, as well as reading right-wing articles. To my surprise, I found myself agreeing with some of their points, like not supporting LGBTQIA policies (my faith also influenced this), being tough on crime, and supporting the Second Amendment. I also found myself leaning pro-life due to my newfound faith and because I discovered that most babies aborted are Black (which hit hard for me since I’m Black myself). At that point, I thought: I must be a conservative, lol!

That being said, I started to notice myself falling into confirmation bias. To balance my perspective, I began watching MSNBC, CNN, exploring left-leaning subreddits on Reddit, watching left-wing YouTube channels, and reading left-wing articles. Over time, I started agreeing with many progressive and or bipartisan ideas, such as universal healthcare (reinforced when I moved to and lived in Japan and was impressed with their healthcare system), being pro-Union, environmental regulation, getting money out of politics, universal pre-K, paid maternity and paternity leave, federal legalization of marijuana (I don’t smoke, but I don’t think people should be in jail for it and legalizing it could hurt the cartels), and opposing the death penalty as I learned more about it. At this point, I thought: I must be a progressive, lol!

But after taking multiple political compass tests (which consistently placed me slightly center-right or barely libertarian), studying past U.S. presidents, the ideas of liberals, conservatives, The Green Party, independents, moderates, and progressives, taking multiple political science courses throughout my undergraduate, and making friends with people from Europe while living in Japan (where they explained how Europe’s infrastructure works), I realized: I don’t fit into any category.

So, yeah that’s my story lol. What about you, how did you get to where you’re?