• GooberEar@lemmy.wtf
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    4 days ago

    I’m a white man in a rural area in the south. Black folks who don’t really know me often seem surprised when they hear me say something anti-Trump. And honestly, I understand completely.

    • joostjakob@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Do you have any insights on how that works? Is it just something rather gets passed down from parent to child? Because I would assume the education system would try to tilt everyone towards the Republican side there (I’m not from the US)

      • GooberEar@lemmy.wtf
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        2 days ago

        I have anecdotes, but no specific data or insights, I’m only speaking about my experience.

        In some respects, politics is a lot like religion. Just like most Christians were raised in Christian families and most Muslims were raised in Muslim families, it seems like most Republicans were raised in conservative families while most Democrats were raised in liberal families. Obviously this isn’t a 100% one-to-one correlation, and there’s a lot of nuance as well as a plethora of exceptions.

        As far as education, I only have my perspective of the school system I went to. Overall, I think that most of the teachers were very respectful and balanced whenever political ideology came up. As a kid I wouldn’t have noticed it, but by my teens I was pretty observant. There were definitely several notable exceptions, mostly conservative teachers showing bias and attempting to influence us, unprompted. I think the most “liberal” ideology I was exposed to was the one high school teacher who strongly advocated for LGBT folks, but that was generally in reaction to students’ homophobic actions or words. Overall, i would say that the education system pushed religious ideology more than political, but of course, it being the south, conservatism and Christianity are practically one in the same.