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A reminder that when I say folks my age (esp. white folks) have bigotry in their past they need to process and account for, I'm not saying we all did blackface or things that overt. But there was a lot of ambient bigotry we grew up with, and that's thing.
Call it the "Sixteen Candles Effect." In the 80s: a sweet little comedy about a girl's first crush. Today: OH MY GOD the racism and sexism and date rapeyness. The movie hasn't changed, we have (I mean, hopefully). But it's worth noting that was an acceptable baseline then.
Growing up, you look to your culture for what's acceptable to do and say. So a lot of us one way or another have done/said things we wouldn't now. It doesn't mitigate it, but it explains it, and we can admit and accept it's there, own it, and keep improving.
If you believe you're someone who never did/said bigoted things: Great, but have you checked with others who knew you, especially those who were on the receiving end of ambient cultural bigotry? People I knew in the day reminded me of things I forgot. That was... a thing.
Again, this is not to excuse things like blackface and overt racism -- never acceptable, always to be held to account. The point is, you don't have to go *that far* to have participated in bigotry, or to admit and account for it and to do better for yourself and others.
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