Living in the South – especially in Mississippi – makes being a somewhat liberal-minded individual hard. It’s not that Mississippi is exactly oppressive; it’s just that there is one way of thinking for the majority of people. I won’t lie; most of my family is completely against Barack Obama being president (for reasons I don’t ask about – I don’t want to get into a fight with 95% of my family), they don’t feel it is necessary to go too far off from one’s family, especially if you’re a girl, and, while everyone depends on me to be the “educated one,” my family actually wants me to be the “educated Conservative one.” For many years I knew I was different in many ways – not just politically – and I struggled with that, because I knew I wouldn’t have the support of my family. Then, when I was in my early teens, I did a complete 180 from my family. I was an ultra-liberal, ultra-feminist, ultra-annoying little kid who barely knew what she was talking about in the realm of politics. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t exactly ignorant of what went on around me, I just had a completely unrealistic idea of how the world should be. After about a year or so, I started to calm down. Today, my views are nicely blended: there are some ideas I’m conservative on, and others I’m more liberal-minded about. I’m now far less inclined to argue with my family on every little thing I disagree with them on (many of my family members are older, and they remember a different time, and their beliefs are just a reflection of that). I both respect what others have to say on topics I don’t agree with and understand that, misguided or not, if I were to say that their opinions are wrong just because they don’t agree with my line of thinking, then I would be no better than my right-wing, conservative kinfolk.
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