Andrew Gaertner
1 min readSep 7, 2022

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I think white childhoods are traumatic in many of the predictable ways. Isolation, physical abuse, narrow expectations, loss, scary experiences without support, and so on. Everyone has hurts that they move through as they grow up. What separates some white people out to make them more dangerous might be access to power over other people.

I have a friend who grew up owning class and she talks about how owning class children are after shut off from parental love and affection. They are raised by nannies and sent to boarding schools and expected to be seen and not heard. I wouldn’t know about that. To me I would have liked to have had more money growing up and not have the stress of lower middle class life.

I think there isn’t really a point in trying to decide who has more childhood distress. Anybody who had any sort of hurt, if it isn’t processed and healed could turn around and act out patterned responses that can harm others.

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Andrew Gaertner
Andrew Gaertner

Written by Andrew Gaertner

To live in a world of peace and justice we must imagine it first. For this, we need artists and writers. I write to reach for the edges of what is possible.

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