Jack,
Saint Paul, MN.
My mom is an expert in manipulation and fake kindness, always sounding kind to hurt and control and shame.
Because of rampant child discrimination across cultures, it was not hard for my mother to convince others that she was right, or to uphold the illusion of a happy “white suburban family”. For holidays, she would buy toys and tell my relatives to buy gifts she knew I hated. She built up lies about my identity, and when I got angry and rejected them all she said I was spoiled and arrogant.
Now I’ve moved out on my own, and am in a transitional living program. Although many people now understand my case better, I have experienced quite a few times the notion that my child abuse wasn’t as bad as black kids (it was mostly black people telling me this when they brought up race), that ‘white kids’ have it easy or treat their parents like shit or it’s the kid’s fault, that they have no problems and their families are too nice. People said I came from white privilege because my middle class over-abundant materialism was a suffocating cage used to control and destroy me. How is this privilege?
