This was originally posted right after the 2016 election, but I have felt this way about “keeping up with the Jones’s” ever since I was a kid. All it took for me to be “different” was being one of the very few people in my community with red hair.
I am disgusted by the lack of empathy those in that same community have for others who also suffer and are blinded to their own biases by the prospects of shiny new trucks and mansions on a hill.
Luckily, I was encouraged to get educated by my family, but was also ridiculed for that once I went to college and learned “them big words”. I am proud of the place I come from and the sense of community I developed there. But, ...