Chuck said that a while ago, and to be fair, he was probably drunk when he said it. If that's still his position, he should try living in the South for a while. Racism is the mental Coca-Cola of the South: even though it's horrible for you, they guzzle it down like it's going out of style. The bible belt is a giant turd of blatant racism covered with a razor-thin veneer of gentility and religious hypocrisy. It's one of the main reasons I left Virginia. Bible thumpers and the least-trodden "Don't Tread on Me" crowd? No thank you.
Last year when we were visiting Ashland, Katy had the privilege to witness some of it. She was in the train toy store with Ryan, and the store owner was obviously ignoring a single black mother and her children in favor of the white folk. The owner wasn't interested in turning on the model train sets for the black kids, unless, of course, they were going to buy something. If Ryan had asked, guaranteed that that fucker would have run those trains. Afterwards when she told me about it, I just shrugged and said "That's Virginia." Seems standard operating procedure down there. Particularly given that at the same store, she also witnessed another employee praying for one of the customers pain to go away. Literally praying at the register. Ugh, enough to make bile rise in my gullet.
Evangelicals, man. They'll swear up and down that they aren't racist. But the more they deny it, the more it seems disingenuous. Having grown up in that environment, it came as absolutely no surprise to me that a horde of pious posers came out in droves for Trump. Hypocrisy is what these so-called "Christians" do best.
And all of us do this to a degree. All humans are racist. We are tribal monkeys. But there's a big difference between taking responsibility to recognize and accept this, and the idiocy of ignoring or refusing its existence. At least have the decency to say "Damn, that was racist" to yourself when you think, say, or do something you know is racist.
Or, at the very least, if you happen to be an evangelical Trump voter, do me a favor and paste a picture of Trump to your bathroom mirror and take a good, long, hard look. Welcome to your new identity......bitch.
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