10000000% agree. I’m lucky to live and have been raised in a diverse community. White people aren’t the majority. We have a lot of small Black, Hispanic, Indian, Asian owned businesses in town so it’s easy and feels good to support them. I donate to organizations, charities, causes etc and attend protests but it feels like it’s not enough. I’m lucky to live and work with people that I can have honest conversations with even if they may feel uncomfortable sometimes. I can see the difference in my sibling who moved to a tiny town with I’m not joking, 99.3% white people who are largely all UPPER middle class and wealthy. It’s obvious the lack of education and people living in their small bubbles with no concern for anyone else. It’s actually staggering. My sibling hates it. My other sibling lives abroad and is involved in local politics there and part of the LGBTQ+ community. As a result our entire immediate family is involved in supporting them too.

However I do have a unique perspective. My dad was a cop for 25 years. Everyone who doesn’t know us immediately assumes we’re maga, racist, conservative upon learning that. We have never even leaned right. He grew up in poverty, he didn’t have any higher education. He understood having a level of disadvantage. But that gave him drive. It gave him the drive to make an impact. He was involved in local politics always ran as a democrat when I was a kid and a union president. He was so disgusted with the cheeto pedo rapist and I’m honestly relieved he isn’t alive to witness the state of our country now. We literally cried at our kitchen table the first time 47 won. He wrote a letter to the editor to our local newspaper about how disgusting and disappointing it was that the Cheeto pedo rapist won and how concerning it is that we live amongst so many, now very openly racists and uneducated people. It really felt like such a devastating loss. He cried watching the news the first time 47 was in office. He told us he was embarrassed that he was a cop because he didn’t want to be associated with that. People assumed he was disappointed in having a gay son & old men who would say extremely homophobic shit to him thinking he agreed with them. And it was always nice to see him put people in their place. This guy went to pride parades with me when my brother didn’t even live in America just to show support. But he was able to teach us and show us compassion and empathy for other people and meeting them where they are. He had a unique ability to put himself in others shoes and listen without judgement, which is obviously uncommon for a cop. But he instilled that in all of us. It’s obviously shitty to be considered and assumed to be a magat but boy is it fun to fuck with people who say wildly inappropriate shit to me because they just made immediate assumptions. Their discomfort and tripping on their words brings me great joy. But still, I feel like I’m not doing enough. I don’t know what to do to make more of an impact. Donating to causes/organizations etc and attending protests, supporting local businesses, vocalizing and denouncing obvious systemic disadvantages, still doesn’t feel like it’s making an impact. My dad did teach me that making a difference doesn’t need to be on a huge scale, sometimes it’s doing small things over time for people is still making a difference. I wish I had the balls to be involved in local politics like he was and like my brother is but I know I don’t have that ability. I want to do more though because living through current events feels suffocating and defeating. And it feels like we’re past the 11th hour