My bias and where it comes from

I grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina - as in I've never lived anywhere else, except for my dad's place which is actually in Alamance County but he still works for the University and we hardly consider Alamance County our home. If someone knows anything about Chapel Hill, he or she probably knows two things - the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is there and it's known as a liberal enclave, a "bubble," within the rest of North Carolina. I've heard people refer to our little town as "The People's Republic of Chapel Hill" and read about Former U.S. Senator Jesse Helms suggest that this "zoo" be "walled off" from the rest of North Carolina.

Chapel Hill, and more so Carrboro where I actually spent most of my time, is completely different from anywhere else in NC I've been so far. I think growing up here gave me many of my ideals, my liberal ideology and lack of religious persepective included. Teachers I had in elementary school probably fostered liberalism and never pushed religion in the classroom, though I do remember a preschool teacher I had telling me that when I sneezed God was coming out my nose. So I'm not saying that nobody in Chapel Hill is religious, or conservative for that matter, I just never really cared. Also, my parents are not from North Carolina at all. My mom grew up in Berkeley, California, and my dad just outside Washington D.C. - another typical Chapel Hill trait, everybody's from someplace else.

As I've said many times before, I'm not a religious person though I deeply respect those who are. I did go to church at one time, up until I was about 11 years old, but I lost interest and opted to stay home with my older brother instead. My mom was and is always the religious one in my family, my dad not so much. And since my parents divorced when I was very young, I spent everyother weekend with my dad and never went to church with him. I think this again has added to what beliefs I hold now.

I'm also a typical white, middle-class female. My family's not wealthy, both my parents and one step-parent work for UNC-CH, and in Chapel Hill, where taxes are high to pay for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools (rather than Orange County) and home prices have been on the rise for years, it takes quite a bit to be considered wealthy around here. I think I've been fairly aware of my socio-economic situation, especially in my last two years of high school when I had a teacher who taught us to look at our own bias and see things through other people's "lenses" and root for the underdog.