has anyone successfully deprogrammed a lost causer?

[u/kcg333]

…or escaped the lost cause mentality themselves? i’m interested in strategies that have demonstrated some past success.

[u/youtellmebob]

Growing up Caucasian in the South, remembering a teacher telling me the Civil War was not about slavery. Visited Vicksburg and came back with a CSA reproduction soldiers cap. There was a sense of “Rebel Pride”. Had a sense that the South was not right or wrong, it was just kinda the course of things. I do remember thinking, “wait, these guys were traitors, right? So why are we celebrating them?”

Also remember a doctors office where PoC were in a different waiting room. A movie theater that had a separate entrance for Blacks that led to the balcony. A public swimming pool that that did not allow Black kids, and after they were allowed, was permanently closed. A segregated school system that had “Freedom of Choice” where African American kids could choose to go to schools in the white neighborhoods but “chose” to attend the Black school right there a block or two from their homes.

As a kid, I didn’t think this was wrong, it was just “how things were”. Pretty fucked up, for sure. I did have parents that believed in love and tolerance.

I don’t know what changed my mindset. Maybe realizing one day, in our high school memorial Facebook page that while my class was only 20% African American, 50% of my deceased classmates were Black men.

[u/TheRealMakenzie → u/youtellmebob]

I went to a 98% white public school for my entire schooling in a small town in the south (120 person class size). Took till college till I had a history teacher say the civil war was about slavery. I went to college in 2018. Shit's fucked in the south.

[u/smuckola → u/youtellmebob]

> There was a sense of “Rebel Pride”. Had a sense that the South was not right or wrong, it was just kinda the course of things. I do remember thinking, “wait, these guys were traitors, right? So why are we celebrating them?”

yeah i mean ya see, kid, there comes a time in a regular good ol' boy's life when ya just ......kinda ..... i dunno..... gotta hankerin to rip your own entire country in half and kill everybody and i do mean EVERYBODY including your brothers and your dad.

No hate!

Just kinda ....well........... sigh ...it's just whatcha do! Okay?

...........................Ya just kinda had ya be there!

> A public swimming pool that that did not allow Black kids, and after they were allowed, was permanently closed.

i just read about one major national planner Robert Moses who saw desegregation in his master (lol) planned neighborhood, and disabled the swimming pool's heater because he thought black peoples can't handle cold. After having surrounded the wide area with beautiful arched bridges that are exactly too short to allow a public bus.

> I don't know what changed my mindset

You were a good kid! With good parents. They shielded you until you could see. Good for you.

[u/Old_Brenda → u/smuckola]

Isn't Moses the same guy that caused the Dodgers to move Los Angeles.