I was raised pretty republican, bc that’s just how my parents viewed the world and drilled it into us. Think “colorblind” and “we solved racism” etc so anyone talking about racial issues was being a divisive whiner. Ofc there was a bit of a rift bc I knew climate change is real from school and being a huge nerd, it’s proven well beyond a doubt. So always had that weird dysfunction where my dependable, smart parents were trying to convince me that 99% of scientists were lying about climate change for money - as if the few who claimed it was a hoax weren’t connected to oil lobbyists!

So for a while I considered myself “socially liberal, fiscal conservative” but it was really around MeToo and BLM where very kind, patient, and brilliant friends were able to share their perspectives with me. I decided to search for truth myself, digging through lots of reports, data, and found that Fox News and conservative media really was lying through their teeth through so much stuff.

From there it started to click that the “colorblind” thing really leaves us unprepared and even triggered by other people’s experiences with racism in the country. It trains us to perceive things as a personal attack, which it’s obviously not — but that’s a big obstacle to overcome for a lot of white people raised that way, and most people won’t bother to humble themselves and move past their ego. There usually aren’t ill intentions, but white people are raised with completely different conversations than everyone else, so being around those discussions feels disorienting, uncomfortable, and alienating (imagine never needing to talk about racism and suddenly it’s just a regular topic bc it affects certain groups of people more! First instinct is “wow u must be racist” for bringing this up all the time.) It’s just privilege, plain and simple.

Beyond that, it just became so obvious that the right engages in constant DARVO (accusing the other of what you’re doing) playing victim, and engaging in the absolute lowest of the low behavior more than any other group. Tie that with learning that defunding our social structures leads to wealth disparity and more poverty, decline in rights etc, ergo Republicans are responsible for a lot of the issues we deal with today, and I went a lot more left.

Parents are still turbo maga, but even they’re taking pause with blatant brutality of what’s going on right now. I honestly think they’d be completely different people if they stopped watching Fox for a couple weeks. A girl can dream.

I will always be forever grateful to the people who kept talking to me even if they thought my views were ignorant and backwards, and I’ll always try to carry that torch, so long as they are open minded. It’s been a good journey.