My Dad Wasn’t Brainwashed by Conservative Media
They fed him exactly what he’d been waiting to hear
I hear a lot of apologetic white progressives who insist their parents or grandparents have been “brainwashed” by Fox News or other conservative media. I hate to break it to you, but in most cases, that’s simply not the truth.
The fact is your parents or grandparents are consuming exactly the messages they want to hear. They are terrified of the browning of the US, they believe this country belongs to white people, and they’ll do whatever it takes to keep things that way. That means voting for like-minded bigots and sending money to fascist organizations like the NRA that will uphold their worldview.
After four years of trump, I now fully understand what people meant when they talked about the Civil War being the war that turned “brother against brother.” The fact of the matter is, some of us in this country think bigotry is disgusting and immoral, and some of us don’t. There really is no gray zone here — either you believe Black and brown Americans deserve access to every Constitutional right afforded to white Americans — or you’re a bigot.
That truth is a hard pill for many white folks to swallow, especially when their beliefs clash so hard with their relatives whom they love. It’s not easy to admit…
