So, I went to small Christian private schools from Kindergarten through my Junior year. This provided me with a great education resulting from a lot of personalized attention and small class sizes. When I say small class sizes, there were rarely more than 20 people in each grade. The schools consisted of preschool through 12th grade, so it was not unusual to go to school with the same people your entire grade school experience. You spent a lot of time with these kids and literally grew up with them.
As I mentioned, these were Christian private schools. I believe that in addition to the quality of education, I benefited from the Christian principles taught in the schools. Since graduating and moving to a different city, I've placed a lot of those values and my relationship with God on the back burner. I'm not proud of this, but that's a different blog altogether.
On to what annoys me! In this day and age of social media, many of my old class mates have found me on facebook or myspace. It seems it does not take long for them to say something really offensive. They'll circulate something about how unjust society is towards white people or they'll use a derogatory term for people that are gay.
Now, I know I moved off to a "liberal school" in a "liberal city" but it just doesn't make sense to me that these people that come from the same Christian background I do should be so judgemental and discriminatory. It gives me impressions of them that I won't go into here. I can't and don't claim to be a wonderful Christian, but it seems elementary not to hate people based solely on a category they fall into. Christ certainly didn't teach hate, but outside of Christianity, plain 'ol good people shouldn't think/feel/act this way.
Why should you have to live in a liberal city to find kindness and acceptance? What is it about my old classmates that causes them to discriminate against groups different than them? I don't believe that that is what we were taught. I've stood up to them a few times and I've been met with excuses or weak arguments supported by more hatred and/or ignorance. There've also been times when I've just deleted them without standing up to them. I regret those times. I also regret that this discrimination adds to a separation between myself and everyone I grew up with.
So, my pet peeve for today is the fact that the most offensive, discriminatory peers in my life come from a group of people that I grew up with. It extends to my inability to understand why they are this way. Finally, the gulf it creates between us (at least in my head) is really annoying.
