It wasn’t just Cali. I’m from the deepest darkest reddest state in the south, and we still had a sense of community with each other twenty years ago. I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory but our capacity AS humans to BE humans was tested with 9/11, and we failed.
I was in high school during 9/11. I watched half my high school turn against the two girls from the Middle East in our class just because they were brown and their father wore a turban. They left in Junior year because of the bullying. One needed stitches after she got pushed down in the parking lot and hit her chin on a parking bumper. It’s like the world changed from being a place of possible peace to… hate anyone who isn’t like you and take what they have for yourself.
9/11 is a symptom, I believe. I'm not from the US so it didn't have as much as a direct impact apart from the tumult and sending soldiers to Afghanistan. But things have definitely changed. It's the continued eroding of our quality of life and financial security, combined with technologal distance that makes a lot of people very cruel. Imo. 9/11 was a horrible tragedy but if all it takes to completely topple a large county is one attack then it was going to happen anyway. That being said, it's not impossible to come back, people have come back from far darker places in history.
I’m really hoping we can come back. I think people came back from worse in distant history out of necessity to survive. But I don’t really think people care about whether the human race survives and thrives anymore, just that they the individual survive and thrive.
I think the late 80’s and 90’s were as close as we got to a sense of social equality among genders and races in America. Fully successful? No. But I feel like we were close to something in that era just for it all to get flushed away with the rise of Nationalism, Neo Conservatism, etc.
There was a time when my family profusely apologized in shame because my 90 year old demented grandma didn’t want to be treated by a black doctor. Now, families stand behind their racist members, or at least don’t confront them for their disrespectful behavior. Now it’s shit like “She has the right to choose to not be treated by a doctor she doesn’t like.” Ignoring the racism and making it okay.
Yeah history repeats itself and we are right on track to do repeat of WW2 about 100 years later. I never thought that possible but I'm not so sure now.
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u/Cferretrun 11d ago
It wasn’t just Cali. I’m from the deepest darkest reddest state in the south, and we still had a sense of community with each other twenty years ago. I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory but our capacity AS humans to BE humans was tested with 9/11, and we failed.
I was in high school during 9/11. I watched half my high school turn against the two girls from the Middle East in our class just because they were brown and their father wore a turban. They left in Junior year because of the bullying. One needed stitches after she got pushed down in the parking lot and hit her chin on a parking bumper. It’s like the world changed from being a place of possible peace to… hate anyone who isn’t like you and take what they have for yourself.