We have several here on the board. I am not talking to you.
I would like to ask people who are not racists if they have ever had friends or family who were racists and if so, how did you handle that relationship. Because I don't know how. I find it just as difficult here as in real life to tolerate the ignorance and ugliness being spewed by such people.
I have a cousin who is no longer speaking to me (good riddance) because I told him I couldn't stand the ugliness anymore. It's like he doesn't know how to even shut it off, discuss anything else - he's all about the hate. And frankly, I don't get it. He is not 'all that,' that he should be denigrating 'those people' all the damn time.
Plus, it's almost like he's using it as a weapon, trying to gouge people into reacting, so he can start up again. My aunt and uncle are bewildered, they don't know where all this shit is coming from. He was raised better than that. I don't know much about M.S., but I doubt that it's affecting his brain to this degree.
Blah.
Anyway. Anybody else dealing with what I'm up against?
I can empathize with you Boop. When I was a kid growing up with my Grandparents in Montana, I had to listen to regular speeches from both of them about how anyone who wasn't a WASP was lazy and no good. My aunt married a Hispanic, and I (as well as my aunt) had to listen to them refer to him as the "****", "*******", or any other name. There were also a lot of Native Americans in Montana, and I would also have to listen to them speak lots of racist crap about them as well, even though I had friends in school who were Native American.
I also remember the day I left for the Navy when I turned 18. My Grandparents told me as I was getting ready to leave that I would meet lots of good people in the Navy, some of which would turn out to be lifelong friends, and that I could bring any of them home with me when I came back for leave, just make sure they were white.
How did I deal with it? I kept an open mind when I got to boot camp, and found out that we were all in the same deal, no matter if you were brown, black, yellow, white, red, or whatever.
Whenever I went home on leave (by myself), whenever I would hear them go on about how useless people of other ethnic groups were, I would simply smile, ignore what they said about them, because I knew better, as many of my friends weren't white.
I didn't get mad at them, I forgave them for their ignorance, because they never took the time to get to know people of other ethnic backgrounds. Me? Because of the environment that the military put me in, I knew better and thought about that.
Bigots aren't necessarily bad people (my Grandparents were pretty good people), they're just ignorant of what other people are like because they are afraid to get out of their own comfort zone and learn about others.
In some ways, I pity bigots and racists, because they have willfully shut themselves off from people who very may well be the ones that could teach them useful things.
My room mate in "A" school was a black man from LA named Leslie, and he's one of the people that helped me get through school because he understood the material better than myself and helped me understand it as well.
Other friends of different ethnic groups have helped me along my career as well. YNC Murrill was one of the best teachers I ever had, and working for a black PNC at Newport RI really helped my career as well.
So...............if you have a relative that is a bigot, just think of all the people you know who are your friends that you like and have been helped by, secure in the knowledge that your relative is just ignorant.
I mean................you can't know about something that you refuse to learn about.