Every day, the world is changing. Today, people like my parents are resisting owning smart phones (my uncle did until earlier this year when he purchased his iPhone 6 Plus, and my aunt, the most antiquated person on earth, in her whiny tone yelled at him and said, “You said you’d never get a smart phone! Now you have a smart phone! You’ve sold out!”). Last spring, I was resisting downloading the Snapchat app (I finally downloaded it in June). During the rise of the internet, many households refused to buy a computer and thought e-mail was the rudest and most impersonal form of communication possible. After reading Jeannette Walls’s memoir The Glass Castle a couple of weeks ago, I decided to start reading her follow-up semi-fiction novel Half Broke Horses about her grandmother, who grew up during the 1910s and 1920s. Her parents resisted buying an automobile, saying that these freaks going around in cars would go nowhere, that automobiles were just a fad that would soon die out, that they would be putting innocent people selling horses out of business. Yes, those were real economic problems to consider for families who sold horses and carriages as a means of transportation. But where do we draw the line at resisting change and progress and giving in to it?

It’s one thing to resist a smart phone or an app because you don’t want to “get with the times.” You’re not oppressing someone’s life by doing this. It’s another to actively fight against things like the right to an abortion over 43 years after it was supposed to have been fully made legal due to the Supreme Court Roe V. Wade decision. It’s different to not accept the fact that all people regardless of color or sex should be equal, to call innocent public servants like Michelle Obama an “ape in heels” the way this West Virginia mayor did over Twitter. In other words, this mayor wanted a black First Lady out because she saw her as a disgusting animal, and she wanted a “refreshing” white woman back in the seat of the First Lady of the United States – Melania Trump. And then to outright deny the fact that there was any racist connotation is to live in a world without seeing clearly, to be blind to your own subconscious or conscious prejudices. Oh, and we can’t forget about this jerk Dan Johnson who just won his Kentucky state legislative seat in spite of the fact that he depicted both the Obamas as chimpanzees in some hate-filled commercials for his campaign. He also denied he was racist and that his imagery had anything to do with race. It’s really amazing that you can use such blatantly racist images and then deny that they are racist at all. Only an ignorant white person would do that who has never experienced any racism in his life.

As someone who has lived one either the West or the East Coast all her life, I have often been accused either in person or via articles I’ve read of living in a blue “bubble,” of not being aware of what people in rural middle America are facing. I’ve been accused of being a “Coastal elite” who thinks she is better than those who live in the middle of America, in the South, or in the rust belt. But this is my response to that: On the coasts, you’d never have someone bigoted like that WV mayor or Dan Johnson be openly racist and win an election because we don’t tolerate blatant racism here. I do not accept the idea that if you are a racist or sexist person that you are a “good” person. Maybe the people who get mad at individuals like me who live on the coasts should face the fact that America is changing very quickly, and we’re a melting pot that is supposed to be accepting of all people of all colors, ethnicities, nationalities, and genders, and just because they aren’t white, that doesn’t make them dangerous or lesser as a human being than you. Maybe they need to expose themselves to people who look different than them. They should accept the progress that is being made where America is not just all white people who accept dated gender roles and stereotypes, that not all career women are anti-family, that people who accept gay marriage don’t necessarily want “everyone else” to be gay.

It is so hard to accept change in society, isn’t it.