Thread by @ijbailey

Let me tell you what grates on my last nerves: Being lectured to about conservatives and Trump fans by people who spend their downtime in Paris or are living in liberal bastions in California.
A thread.

I teach in a blue county in purple North Carolina while living in a red county in red South Carolina. Trump supporters are my literal neighbors, people I went to church with for years, folks who had my kids over at their houses, mine over at theirs.

I could look out of my window and see plenty of Trump flags and posters, and even Confederate flags. I'm friends with a couple who have a Trump and Confederate flag in their garage. I celebrated their daughter's graduation at that house. Our kids are close friends.

I spent nearly two decades in a white Evangelical church as one of its few Black members. My kids were baptized there. I grew up in a rural area that was all Black and white, but mostly white. It was a Sundown town.

A friend of mine lost a sister in the Dylan Roof shooting in the church my wife and I attended our first church service together. Other friends were screwed over royally by the FBI for years, accused of horrific crimes they didn't commit. It nearly destroyed their family.

Friends of mine right now are wondering how they are going to recover from the pending shuttering of an extremely vital paper plant. My hometown was nearly destroyed when a wood plant shut down. Several members of my family worked there.

I have a white police officer friend who shot a Black man - and I defended her. I've invited into my class a white officer who shot a Black man and nearly another so my students could hear from officers like them directly.

I know of white Evangelical pastors who were absolutely shocked that many members of their congregation abandoned most of what they though those congregates believed to follow Trump. How do I know them? Because they are friends.

I've been a journalist in my region for a quarter of a century, including reporting on the manufacturing industry, the local real estate and housing markets, as well as doing investigations of the child protective services system.

Yes. I'm a professor at an elite college where most of the students lean left. A semester ago, while teaching, I learned that one of my younger brother's was likely going back to prison after serving 16 years for getting involved in another shooting after being released.

A grandniece of mine just lost her father in a different shooting. A niece of mine is an honors student and track member despite losing her mom to gun violence when she was five, and her father to prison.

This isn't new to me. That's why I didn't laugh the way some national journalists did when Trump began running for president. I knew it was extremely possible he could win. Why? Because I knew, intimately, the kinds of folks most likely to support him.

I don't have to be lectured to by anybody who believes they know my world better than I do. That's why I also know that "wokeness" isn't what's moving them. And neither is it economic angst. They simply like what Trump is selling, his rhetoric, his "fight." All else is noise.

My recent thread about 2+2 and trans people and stuttering isn't something that turns them off. How do I know? Because I've been talking to them about such things for years, in church, in race relations sessions at local libraries, in good-natured debates on the sidewalk.

I know it's not "too sophisticated" for them - because I've seen them literally engage with it time and again, and appreciate the intellectual exercise. It's my critics who mistakenly believe they can't handle such intellectual exercises.

That's why I also know their distrust in media isn't primarily about supposed "liberal media" or mistakes. They trust media they want to trust. They trust Fox News because they want to, despite all the things Fox gets wrong. Period.

Many of them - like many of the rest of us - are expert at rationalizing ways to believe in things they want to. They believe in Trump because they want to, and they can easily tell themselves the ugly crap he says and does is either not real, just a joke or won't become reality.

There's not a damn thing I can do about that. There's not a damn thing you can do about that. You may not like it, but that's the reality we face. And despite all I know about this issue, I don't know how to change it.

I did the anti-woke thing before "wokeness" became a household word. How? I spent years teaching the absolute "colorblindess" message many people who are so proud of themselves for doing so now. And I did it in the toughest place in the country to do so.

I went the "good Black person" route, forgave racist their sins, including some who used the n-word - as a slur, not while reading "Huck Finn" - as well as other things.

And guess what happened? They thanked me and patted me on the head, and instead of using me as an example, they said my wife and I "didn't seem like Black people." Nothing I did moved them to reconsider any of their views.

Even after the Charleston massacre, right after participating in interracial dialogues and prayer, they eagerly went to Trump rallies where Trump would say the most racist crap imaginable, and they kept flocking to him anyway. The blood of 9 Black people could not move them.

In the immediate aftermath of George Floyd, they took down a few Confederate markers, as well as removing words such as "plantation" from the names of their high-dollar housing developments. But after awhile, they put them right back up.

This is what I know. This is what I experienced as a Black man who has grown up here all my life, and as a journalist who has been doing this job for more than a quarter of a century. I didn't have to parachute in. I've always been here.

Despite that, I hear from critics from elsewhere certain if only I listen to their unearned insights, that that would make all the difference. It's BS.

That's why I know that abandoning vulnerable "minority" groups or no longer being "woke" is the answer to reach them. It's not. It's never been. It never will be.

https://x.com/ijbailey/status/1856463195952820454

Every time I drive home from my teaching job, this is what I see: Rows and rows of Trump signs, fields and fields of white cotton, and the prison where my family spent much of my youth visiting because that's one of the prisons where my oldest brother spent 32 years.

I also encounter one of the largest Confederate flags on the face of the planet at a Harley-Davidson shop. That's before I get home to see more Trump signs, including entire stores dedicated to him. And yet, some of my critics accuse me of being in a liberal bubble.

On my way to visiting the school where my son began college, I experienced the same damn thing, even the day I had to drive up when his white roommate, armed with knives, called my son the n-word. But I'm supposedly in a liberal bubble and require their insight to get out.

I know the advice I get from a lot of these folks - who don't know what I know, haven't experienced or seen what I have, and continue to - is phony and toothless.

The truth: The people OK excusing a literal violent attack on our Capitol will not be moved even if the most distorted version of "wokeness" ended tomorrow. But Very Serious People don't want to deal with that truth. It doesn't fit what they want to believe about this country.

Oh, and if you want to use the "patriotic" trope. Multiple close family members have or are serving in the armed forces, have been cops, and some high school friends are prison guards as I type this. And some of them are Trump fans and anti-BLM. Liberal bubble my ass.