Thread by @MurielVieux

I wasn't always woke

I grew up with prejudices and preconceived notions just like everyone else. I learned to judge people based on stereotypes that permeated my culture just like everyone else. I was an ignorant foolish girl.

My saving graces were my love of reading, my thirst for learning and listening.
When you love to read, you will read anything and thus you will read things that will open your mind and feed you new ideas to combat the ones you are taught and take for granted.

I too once thought that being part of the LGBTQIA+ community was a choice. And even though I'm black there was a time I thought blacks were lazy that's why they weren't rich... yes me I could have been a Candace Owen!

Listening is one of the greatest tools of learning a person can have. Not just hearing, but listening, absorbing what is being said. You listen to learn, not to answer back or to argue. You need an open mind to listen though.

You don't become aware or change your mind overnight... it takes a bit of time... until one day you find yourself arguing against what you had once believed and grown up with.
That's when you know you're woke.

Being woke isn't something dirty or shameful, it's simply becoming aware, it's understanding, it's growing up, it's shedding your preconceived notions learned as a child and replacing them with truths.
It's learning how to discern those truths from everything around you...

Reading a book about a gay child will not make you gay, it will however teach you the truth about gays... I never understood much about transgenders until I saw a 1997 movie called "ma vie en rose" not to be confused with the Edith Piaf movie.

Everyone grows up with biases, we all learn to judge others from our cultures, no one is born woke... yet. Maybe one day we will live in a world where there are no prejudices, where they don't permeate our culture but until that day comes, we have to be able to wake ourselves up.