I’m 100% sure that my black sheep family member was just born an asshole, and talk radio told him for decades that it’s OK to be a racist asshole, so he leveled up to that quickly. His bad decisions as an adult were his alone based on greed and short-sighted “I’ll get away with it!” racist-privileged assumptions.
Everyone else in the family is mostly relatively fine, and no one would have gone out of their way to traumatize child 4 of 5.
Exactly. The black sheep is simply someone that doesn’t fit in, for whatever reason.
Sometimes they are the one nice person in an asshole family, like OP implied, but equally they could be the one asshole in a nice family.
“Black Sheep” says nothing about the individual identified as the sheep. The only constants in the situation are that the large group, the family, will always think they are in the right and there is something wrong with the sheep, while the sheep will always think he or she is in the right and there is something wrong with the family.
This. Black sheep at age 10: yeah, I gues smistakes were made by the family.
Black sheep at age 50: That guy had 30 adult years to go to therapy and get his act together. At a certain point one can’t blame their messed up childhood anymore.
Turns into a generational thing as well: “I only messed up raising you because my dad messed up raising me and his dad messed up raising him”. Nobody takes the responsibility to fix anything and instead just blames everyone before them.
I’m 100% sure that my black sheep family member was just born an asshole, and talk radio told him for decades that it’s OK to be a racist asshole, so he leveled up to that quickly. His bad decisions as an adult were his alone based on greed and short-sighted “I’ll get away with it!” racist-privileged assumptions.
Everyone else in the family is mostly relatively fine, and no one would have gone out of their way to traumatize child 4 of 5.
Exactly. The black sheep is simply someone that doesn’t fit in, for whatever reason.
Sometimes they are the one nice person in an asshole family, like OP implied, but equally they could be the one asshole in a nice family.
“Black Sheep” says nothing about the individual identified as the sheep. The only constants in the situation are that the large group, the family, will always think they are in the right and there is something wrong with the sheep, while the sheep will always think he or she is in the right and there is something wrong with the family.
Who is really in the right will vary.
This. Black sheep at age 10: yeah, I gues smistakes were made by the family.
Black sheep at age 50: That guy had 30 adult years to go to therapy and get his act together. At a certain point one can’t blame their messed up childhood anymore.
Turns into a generational thing as well: “I only messed up raising you because my dad messed up raising me and his dad messed up raising him”. Nobody takes the responsibility to fix anything and instead just blames everyone before them.