@Kiyoat Husker, I appreciate your post! Let me try my take at the same idea, but take it in a slightly different direction in hopes that
@B.B. Hemingway can get this.
I grew up, even in late high school/early college, not having any reservation with the following:
• calling people ****, retard, gay, slut, thug, etc.
• using terms like African-American and jew in jokes or jokingly referring to friends as such, or to players in the NBA, whatever
• making jokes about trivial things like, 'woman, go make me a sandwich'
• i could keep going with this, but you get the idea
As I moved to bigger and bigger places, with more people with different like experiences, I started to notice some things.
The first thing I noticed was that, even though all those bullet points might seem harmless in their individual contexts (I would never call a black person a African-American, or call a gay person a f****t, or actively seek to oppress minorities! They were just jokes with friends), there was a reason that I was fine with those jokes and terms and that language.
The second thing I noticed, or I guess an extension of the first thing, was that I was comfortable with all of that because I'd been taught, very, very, very subtly, that I was more normal and "better" than others who didn't share my normal, default, typical life experience. I felt superior to women without even realizing that that was in my brain.
I felt more reasonable and even-tempered and less dramatic than black people without a clue as to why the black people I knew seemed more volatile or dramatic or loud. I knew better than Muslims because I was a Christian and I was right about God while they were simple-minded and misguided. So on and so forth.
B.B. and others say these little things don't matter, like grains of sand on the beach. The reason they matter isn't because it actually matters in that moment - it's because they
represent something deeper when they happen.
It doesn't actually matter that my best friend and I would call each other f****t as a joking insult growing up. Neither of us are gay, neither of us are offended, no harm no foul. What actually matters is that I had a problematic view of gay people that led to me being comfortable saying something like that in the first place.
