This is not too far off. Only more recently it’s about Mexicans.
We live in San Diego and a friend of ours was telling us a story about how when they were moving here, at least one family member was worried for them because clearly there are marauding gangs coming over the border to kill anything that moved. They were genuinely worried for this person’s safety.
Guess they missed the part where 10’s of millions of people come here every year for vacation and somehow manage to not get stabbed to death…
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Roger That!
This is a great description. We tend to imagine a hysterical mouth-breathing “them” but all of “them” I have to encounter in my family or social groups are for all other things bright, level-headed people. But then their politics does a Crazy Ivan turn. And its safe to assume they feel the same way about me. But its definitely not education or earnings-based.
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The Nazis could not have done what they did without Reinhard Heydrich and without Kapos. It’s very sad how much some people hate themselves.
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IT’S ABOUT MS-13 I’M NOT RACIST U R ALSO MEXICO IS NOT A RACE /s
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Also MS-13 isn’t from Mexico.
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It’s amazing how many yanks who aren’t native Americans have a problem with immigration. Where did you think your white skin came from?
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God, obviously.
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The way I see it, the one causing damage to the host is the one who makes themselves unacceptable company. Would you let him go around saying we should allow sex with children or that women should not have rights? Of course you wouldn’t. But on the subject of immigration and racism he gets a pass? He needs to learn that his choices and words impact his family and the community. As it is, no one is teaching him that lesson. In fact, by doing nothing you teach the children around him that his behavior is acceptable in your family and you do it while saying that it’s less damaging to the family. I seriously question that idea. It seems to me more damage is done by normalizing bad behavior than by correcting it.
Correct because that is where you will find your middle class racists, misogynists, science deniers, counter factual people, enablers, and apologists. No big mystery there.
Nope, it’s based on simple morality. Some people are just immoral and enable immoral behavior through normalization and refusal to confront wrong-headedness and bad behavior. . Income only comes in to play when discussing the very wealthy. That’s a morality issue on its own.
We are currently having that discussion. But as many people who are currently living out the situation themselves know, things are much easier said than done.
Think about it. Sex with children? That’s a pretty firm boundary. Freeze Peach? People are still debating that.
There is no magic wand. If there were, I’d be throwing my shoulder out from waving the fuck out of it.
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The line is abusing people. That’s always been the line. It will always be the line. There is no debate that abusing people for whatever reason isn’t wrong.
No one said doing the right thing is easy. But it is still the right thing to do.
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I give up. Go ahead, help me take the splinter out of my eye.
ETA: No, no, no. Scratch that.
As this problem has developed, two people in my nuclear family have earned their PhDs in psychology, and another his master’s. Two of them are therapists. The family has been actively working on trying to solve this problem for years without destroying the family.
Your armchair quarterbacking is not helping. If you have a solid plan of action that you think know solves the racism problem at the personal level, I’d really like to hear it.
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From what I have gathered from some limited data is changes being made from 1 on 1 interactions through a sort of steered discussion. The example I am thinking of primarily dealt with bigoted responses/feelings towards homosexuals in the south, but I imagine this could be applied in other areas. In other examples exposure to the groups can change their minds or soften their views (though it can also just lead to them feeling a personal acquaintance is just “one of the good ones”).
Though I believe nothing works 100% of the time. There are people too firm in their beliefs for them to ever change. And still others continue to hold their beliefs because of the support structure and acceptance they have found with like minded individuals.
A positive not is there are many examples of hard core, swastika tattooed cretins changing their ways and actively working to help others not follow the same paths they were on. I truly hope your family member(s) have a positive epiphany in the near future.
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Yes, we’re aware. I mean, he’s not one of those “in your face” racists. It’s the ones you can’t easily call out that are the worst.
So much this. He was a VP of sales for a major manufacturer for many years that sold product to Trump-level rich folk, could sell ice cubes to Alaskans, and lives near Nashville. He’s got his own brand of support system.
For quite a while, we’d thought it didn’t go any deeper than tasteless jokes about minorities and a fair bit of NIMBYism, but once Obama was elected, the conspiracy shit started to leak out.
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Agreed; my uncles on my mom’s side are like that - covert bigots who don’t readily espouse their true feelings in ‘polite company.’
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He said they are working on it. That kind of deep change doesn’t happen overnight. Let up on the gas from the back seat, there. Please.
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Reading about what classmates had to say about him, he seems like the Mrs. Kravitz (Bewitched) of politics.
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You’re being too hard on Mrs. Kravitz. For all that she was a nosey old biddy, she wasn’t mean-spirited and the witches she saw were real ones. It sounds like Miller has been an arrogant and bitter little turd since high school. It makes sense that dozens of his family members finally decided to follow the lead of his classmates and just stop talking to him.
Your brother sounds like a sneakier sort. I wish I had a solution for you but as we both know there isn’t one. If he ever changes it will be the result of a hard lesson he’ll have to learn all on his own. All I can say is that if the slide toward fascism and nativism continues in this country he’s going to feel increasingly validated, to the point where the rift in the family you’ve all been trying to avoid will happen despite all that effort.
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This is true. The silver lining in all this is that as far as we know, he’s unique to our family. One of his sons has been heavily involved with the Democratic Socialists of America for years, and has at times been their spokesman for television spots. He’s no slouch.
The current wife and her kids know better, and are busy with a crisis at the moment, so we’re trying to help in whatever way we can despite other problems the rest of us are dealing with. Life doesn’t offer time-outs.
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