I grew up a middle-class white kid in a good family in California so was pretty much oblivious to victimhood until I went to college in Missouri where the notion of racial inequality was drilled into me to the point I actually learned to fear people of other races held a grudge against me.

Although I've been aware of this learned fear and done what I can to mitigate it, this means I might sometimes fear interracial interactions which means I might not give a black person an equal chance as a white, which then comes across as systemic racism, and so it's a vicious cycle.

On the topic of breaking the cycle, I had an eye-opening encounter with an Iranian Christian who said that he felt the US oppressed Iran (sanctions leading to economic and political instability) but as a Christian, he chose to forgive the US and pray that they'd see the harm they're causing. In this scenario, because he offered forgiveness, I feel more comfortable around him even despite agreeing that "my people" have been making life harder for "his", and not in vague systemic ways or hundreds of years ago, but right now in concrete ways.

I grew up as a white kid in a good middle class family in the UK. I still got bullied by (white) kids at schools. The idea that all bullying is race related seems nonsense to me. Maybe it's different in the US.

Bullies typically choose a kid that somehow differs from the rest of the group. How specifically that kid differs, that depends on the specific group. In some groups, it will be the kid of a different race, in other groups in will be the nerdy kid. If there are multiple candidates, the bullies will probably choose the "safest" one, that is the one with smallest risk that someone will intervene and punish them.

The culture can have an effect on evaluation of the "safest" victim. If everyone knows that no one important will care about a black kid being bullied... And in a different town, maybe everyone knows that no one important will care about a kid from a poor family.

I agree. The bullies bully those who are can be portrayed as different. Can be redheads, size, a cleft lip, or even - as in my school - the girl who's parents had plastic flowers in the back yard.

I don't think bullies usually care about race or power, they just want to be respected by their peers - using a distorted definition of respect. Of course there's also a group that are just psychopaths, but I don't think they care about race either. For them it's just a means to an end.

And finally, yes, racists do exist, I personally think that's passed down from adults.

It is different. Race based bullying is very much a thing when/where I grew up. (Oregon, 90’s to 2000’s)

I like how I get downvoted for my own experience...

> the great irony is that kids who grew up in wealth and surrounded by healthy parents seem oblivious or to not care whatsoever about such judgements from others. Are they ignorant or inoculated?

I think that we learn from experience, and experience has shown these people that judgement from others do not have any real effect on their lives.

Oppose that with people in less favorable positions, who have been badly affected in real life as a result of the judgement of others.

That’s where a lot of the difference comes from I think, in how different people later in life relate to judgement from others.

> kids who grew up in wealth and surrounded by healthy parents seem oblivious or to not care whatsoever about such judgements from others

I can assure you it is the healthy parents and not the wealth that create children confident enough to ignore the judgments of others. The wealthy are far more susceptible to social judgments when they lack confidence themselves.

If you don't mind my asking, how do/did you deal with the contradiction that the very same people whose judgements and thoughts you derived your view of the world from (or felt you were supposed to) were unaffected or unconcerned with yours?

I have a symmetrical background and experience (ty OP for sharing, I never talk about it, it's hard!), and...right or wrong...I just tell myself they went through a shorter road than I did, so I have a learned bias to being 'anxious' and nailing down every detail

I had to win a ton of coin flips to get here, and thinking and planning and caring about perception was something I did to maximize my chances, and they didn't/didn't have to.

I try to manage the resultant base day-to-day anxiety by noting they don't care as much as I do, they're more secure, and also noting it's a bit of a 'superpower' - I tend to be better at disappearing into esoteric subjects and reappearing in a couple months with a pristine, novel, solution to a big problem, because I obsess and master every detail.

"I don't think more than a small handful of adults and certainly no kids ever held my status against me."

Seeing how kids diss kids with old iPhones or even shoes, I have a hard time to believe that.