How to deal with bigoted family

My dad has always been a huge bigot & so have a lot of people on both sides of my extended family. Basically only my mom and my siblings are cool – my mom because she's just a good person, my siblings and I because maybe we're decent but mostly from being super embarrassed of our dad. Back when I lived with my family, my mom basically put a moratorium on me replying to anything my dad said because we were fighting so fucking often. It's mostly okay now just because I don't talk to him very often but sometimes he'll still talk like an ignorant, bigoted fuckhead, and I always get hyper angry about it.

I feel fucked up about this. There's been so many times on ILE I've held back about stupid shit my family says because I'm worried "man they'll think I'm just like my family if I start sharing what they say." ie tainted by propinquity or something? Or just "she sure focuses on that wacky stupid racist family of hers," it's way embarrassing to me. I don't know.

I mean, this shit is tangible! Like, my grandma keeps embroidering these terrible racist dishcloths with really bad caricatures of black girls doing chores. Ok, my grandma made me something that is a message of love and a message of really fucked up hate at the same time. What do I do with that?

I feel ineffectual, I can't change anything about this. I feel like estrangement is a stupid option.

The reason I feel like estrangement is a stupid option is it's my family's default option for everything, so naturally I associate it with all the other stupid shitty ways they don't make sense. I'd like to think I'm above that but maybe it's the best solution, I mean 27 years of this and every year it's clearer it'll never change.

I'd say the odds that you can change them are exceedingly slim, unfortunately. best you can probably do is make it clear to them how much you hate it and maybe they'll try to at least keep it away from/hide it from you...? then at least you won't have to deal with it.

propinquity is a great word, btw

also ILX's favorite theme = 5,000 posts by noon

I don't think my position on this could be clearer. My dad doesn't respect me, anyways, so what I say doesn't matter to him.

xxp ^^^
also IIRC you live hundreds of miles away from them and their influence on your day to day life is minimal, so you're pretty much doing everything you can.

It is a conflict between feeling I should stand by my principles, feeling totally helpless and shitty, and the classic thing that always hold me back of wanting to just get along & pretend shit is normal and nice. It's the first where I feel compromised, like am I compromising my principles by still talking to my dad or my grandma?

How hardline does a person have to be to show they are not an asshole?

I try to live my life by "By their fruits ye shall know them," I can't tell if the action of talking to my dad is tacitly endorsing the existence of his fucked up mind.

Uncomfortable subject...My parents had the mild bigotry of their generation; my dad sometimes more than mild, but never virulent or even, I'd say, actual bigotry. They both said "colored" right till their deaths--which, for my mom, went right up to the Obama campaign. My mom and I would argue endlessly about Obama/Hillary; she insisted her preference for Hillary had nothing to do with race, but I really felt that there was an element of that in there. She could never articulate what specifically she didn't like about Obama; the word "arrogant" never came up, but it was kind of hinted at.

my dad is a bit of a bigot at times, homophobic and anti-islamic, but i just make clear that he's talking silly nonsense if he says any of that type stuff around me and i'm not too angry about it since he still treats people equally and doesn't let his bigotry affect others (i.e. has had gay and muslim friends, presumably this means he isn't an arsehole to people from these groups, he just has the opinions of an arsehole regarding them) and because he's a product of his environment (most socially conservative country in Latin America).

My best friend has seen the little dishcloths my grandma made me. Consequently, when she & her boyfriend were shopping for a wedding gift for me a few years ago, they saw some terrible old racist caricature cookie jar, and they joked about buying it for me. It really broke my heart that they saw that cookie jar and thought of me.

I try really hard, too, to respect their beliefs and language preferences. They are really offended by swearing and taking the Lord's name in vain, both of which I do all the fucking time, but I turn off when talking to them. It really irritates me that my dad doesn't even try to reciprocate that gesture. I've explained it to him exactly like that, too, "I don't take the lord's name in vain around you, please don't say the n-word around me." You'd think that's pretty concrete, right? It does nothing.

well if yr grandma never comes to visit, no harm in keeping those dishcloths in the bottom of a box in the attic...

In my own situation with an asshole racist father, I didn't cut him out of my life completely. I was civil but cool with him, and whenever he'd get going on a rant, we'd make our excuses and go. I never once bothered to have a talk with him about what a horrible person he was -- there wouldn't have been any point to it. He's still a racist asshole, but cancer and sobriety have softened him up some, and he finally has enough sense not to spout off around me, my wife or my daughter.

At the very least, take away his opportunities to hurt you -- defriend him on Facebook, don't talk to him on the phone, make sure you have an escape hatch (local motel) available when you visit them at holidays. If he starts, just get up and walk away. There's no need to officially disown him, just...take away his opportunities.

Yeah the dishcloths are in a box in the closet with my yearbooks & a bunch of other memories I hate. I defriended my dad immediately on facebook after he called me a "retard" and I sent him an email explaining why.

My dad is similar, Abbottt, and I deal with it by living far away and only talking to him a few times a year. When he starts in with the racist bullshit, I now immediately say "oops, gotta go". His behavior has nothing to do with me or who I am, as your father has nothing to do with yours. Except to serve as a strong example of how not to be.

The dishcloth thing is really hard. I don't know what I'd do.

I'm not one to recommend the severance of all family ties but I think WmC's right that you have to kind of establish some boundaries and then just remove yourself from any situation you don't want to be in. Hopefully it's possible to maintain some kind of a relationship with yr dad without having to be exposed to this kind of stuff. If he's on some racist rant 24/7 this might not be feasible tho.

my father actually had a lawn jockey in his yard at one point.

Probably I would take them and act confused and then stuff them down in the sofa cushions at her house. (xp)

Fighting won't change them. Being furious won't help you. You can't love someone regardless of their shortcomings if they don't have any.

Probably I would take them and act confused and then stuff them down in the sofa cushions at her house. (xp)

lol

reminds me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjuWBU0OQbA

If you sew, those racist towels would be good stuffing for homemade draft dodgers.

I always held fast to my principles. Instead of getting estranged and putting the silent treatment, I just talked back. My grandparents and I never got angry about it. It kinda just festered about as bad as them being Volunteers fans and me being from the Razorback side of the river.

Key word in there is respect. My grandfather knew well enough that saying certain things would piss me off, so he didn't bring them up if he didn't have to. I respected him enough to know that, look, he was a man of his times and his chances of being enlightened on a few things just wasn't going to happen.

And he wasn't hateful, just extremely prejudiced and bigoted. I may sound like I'm splicing things a bit, but my grandfather would've never been one of those white men pointing up a tree at someone who had been murdered. He never burned a cross or rode on the hillside. He just said the N-word a lot, made awful jokes and once told me that if I married outside of my race, to not bother bringing her over to his place.

(in response to that last point, I swore to him that if I ever did marry an African-American, our son would be named after him, out of spite.)

The positive thing is these people are set in their ways and you're not. They will likely die before you, and so will their neanderthal ideas of how people are defined. My grandfather died in 2000, taking his views with him. My dad's not as racist, but does nervously pipe up "¡Gracias!" to any brown-skinned waiter speaking perfect English in a Mexican restaurant. I'm not perfect, but with my children interacting with people of different backgrounds from near-birth, I'm optimistic about how they'll eventually see the world.

My family's getting there. So will yours, with any luck.

If you sew, those racist towels would be good stuffing for homemade draft dodgers
http://i561.photobucket.com/albums/ss51/tr_fudge/lazycontest-250x300.jpg

I vote in favor of freezing your dad out. I never talk to my parents unless I feel like it, and do not regret it at all. I'm come to terms with the fact that not everyone gets to have awesome parents.

-I'm +I've

abbott the way you describe how this makes you feel makes me think of ways i've felt in the past re: my dad, like i was responsible for him instead of the other way around. i feel like it left me with a legacy of endlessly re-examining my thought processes to root out any germ of parallel bigotry, not necessarily a bad thing. but the fights we had about it were way harder on me than him. sometimes you're just better than your parent(s), you know? i should say that we are currently estranged, though; i know that's not the best option for everyone.

oh poly already covered it

That really bothered me--when my dad would intentionally say stuff just to needle me. I would try, more so as I got older myself, to excuse the mild generational stuff, patiently saying that "colored" and "oriental" (etc.) weren't in use anymore. But when my dad took it up another notch just to get a rise out of me, then I'd get upset.

I would always try to be cognizant of the fact, though, that there's stuff I say right now that's viewed as acceptable which I know will be deemed quaint or awkward or even worse 20 years from now.

I would always try to be cognizant of the fact, though, that there's stuff I say right now that's viewed as acceptable which I know will be deemed quaint or awkward or even worse 20 years from now.

^^^yeah the ever-shifting nature of social mores is pretty weird/impossible to account for/anticipate

I think if you just remain flexible, accept that things change a lot, and try to always do the right thing, it won't be too much of a problem.

There are things I used to say 15 years ago that I don't say anymore because I am not an asshole who refuses to change.

can you just stupidfilter your dad

xp

Hopefully Harry Reid and Joe Biden will post here sometime today.

@*#& My Vice President Says

Abbb -- This is an awful situation & it sucks that you have to struggle with his stupid bullshit & all these questions that it raises for you. I can't give advice from experience -- my dad says some wince-inducing shit sometimes but not to the level you're describing.

I'm not totally convinced that estranging yourself from him is the best option, especially if doing so would jeopardize other familial relationships.

You can't change him. The only thing you can learn to do is change how you react to him -- and that takes work. Do you want to do that work? Is it worth it?

abbb how did you *not* become like this?

My brother called and said my parents are fighting about me :/

I turned out not like this I think because of PBS and teachers setting good examples.

Also, my dad seriously is an embarrassing guy in a lot of *other* ways, there's plenty of reasons zero of his kids wanted to end up like him. Even my siblings that stayed Mormon are unusually tolerant for Mormons (meaning they don't think Glenn Beck is the new prophet).

well okay but i had pbs and decent teachers but you seem like an extreme example of awesomeness out of a landscape not known for such

Aw man I am so far from that but thanks :)

(I hate myself for using a smiley.)

estrangement can be emotionally risky but sometimes it's the only thing that works. I didn't speak to my father for 7 years because he was an overbearing and offensive presence in my life. we've since reconciled and have a really good relationship now, one I don't think would've been possible if he hadn't been sent to the wasteland.

but estrangement is easier to pull off if you're the only child of divorced parents. sounds like you'd have a tough time doing that, what with the siblings and such. plus you think it's stupid anyway.

elmo was very wise here: You can't change him. The only thing you can learn to do is change how you react to him -- and that takes work. Do you want to do that work? Is it worth it?
That really is something to think about.

elmo is very wise. he's the siddhartha of providence.

oddly enough, he's also its bacchus.

Definitely the two guys I want on my team in the form of one guy.

i volunteer for power forward

and/or steppenwolf

When my sister was 13 and I was 17, I dated a guy with a 13 year old brother. My sister and his brother had similar tastes and both played the violin, so I always joked that they should get married. Ten years later, he's out of the closet, and he remembered the girl from years ago he was supposed to marry – she was on the local news talking about how evil gay marriage is. Love you irony.

I won't be able to talk to any of my Mormon family someday if the Mormon church keeps getting increasingly more fucked up (read: politically active), as I feel it has in the past couple years.

It at least makes me feel better that to my Mormon family, I am a huge embarrassment! No joke, I want everyone who thinks like that to see me as not in line with them in any way.

a little nervous about T'giving dinner this week, tbh -- all my dad's siblings are in town and they may not be hip to the detente that's in place. and I've been hugely angry about how the world is going lately, so if they start spouting shit I may not be able to keep from trying to make 80-year-olds cry

jeez, I'm sorry abbott...in my immediate family it's just my dad who's like that, and even that is gutwrenching for me.

I feel ya with the thanksgiving dinner situation, WmC. The last couple of years, and this upcoming one, are the first years where I haven't been home for Thanksgiving, and I've made the same joke each year at dinner about being thankful that I'm not with my family.

Abbott, I feel u! My father has been retired for over ten years now & as he drifts further into old age & his own comfortable sociopolitical niche (populated by fellow midwestern evangelical-republican senior-citizens), what was once a relatively subtle disdain for various stripes of the Other has grown slowly into outright bigotry. I've never been one to hold my tongue when he expresses his various opinions (usually something I'll overhear him complaining to my Mom about b/c he generally does not bring such things up w/ me deliberately) & family visits these days often involve a series of climactic verbal exchanges - not that that is anything new, mind. It's just that, these days, it happens b/c dad is being cantankerous about something racist, xenophobic or homophobic instead of just being generally cantankerous.

xpost to self
which is of course a terrible thing to say I guess, I owe them so much for everything they've done for me. But at the same time they are so hateful and terrified of everything that isn't rural missouri

Abbott, I feel u - & WmC, ZS etc. as well. Yr posts had not yet appeared when I started writing mine & I have yet to go back & read the entire thread (tho I'm glad to know it exists b/c I too at times feel embarrassed among likeminded ppl, knowing that certain members of my family, who I love & who take care of me etc., are basically, you know, also THE ENEMY)

god abbott that must be hard

i mean i know i'm pretty out of line with most of my family re: israel stuff, and that sort of shreds me sometimes, but in a lot of other ways we're on the same page, so i can't imagine how hard it would be to hold opposing views on most everything

There is nothing you can do about your dad's bigotry, or that of other family members. There is nothing to be ashamed at in your ineffectuality in this instance. Nor are you required to overlook it, or to condone it. But this seems to be a case where a Christlike forbearance toward his personal failing is the best option you have going for you.

If he is openly bigoted toward someone who is present, while you are also present, take their side and do so with dignity and feeling. If he is just generally expressing hostility or condescension toward the objects of his bigotry, but no one is present who is directly insulted, then it's ok to let it slide rather than initiate a fruitless argument with predictably stupid and irritating results.

It's time to hate the sin but lover the sinner. That's the best I can figure it.

i might get shit for this, and i understand why, but one of the best lessons i've learned about my own life in the past five or six years is that i should stay as far away from my family as possible. even my parents.

this is the first year i'm not going 'home' for christmas. instead, i am spending it with my best friends in my home, here in oakland.

in other words, i'm kind of supporting the idea that bloodlines are somewhat negligible, at least to me. my friends are my family.

that said, it obviously does suck to have a bigoted family. i know.

bigoted blood family, i should clarify. none of my friends (family) are bigoted. we just like smelly dogs, booze, and having fun too much for the rest of the world.

hey tabes, you wouldn'[t ghave happened to run into a punk chick new there from thde northwest named b3thany, would you?

the iconoclast tho I may be, I always want to follow the trad American holidays of Thnxgiving and Christmas and be with family back east.

Whilst my parents and sister-in-law hold beliefs of Palin-level abhorenceness, my bro and said sister-in-law always bring down enough wine(like 5+ bottles to start) to make the holiday far more passable. And we all get the young dorkling nephews enough Duplo to blow their minds, so the convos don't drift towards political matters.

this her: http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs455.snc3/26057_122090604467633_100000000818982_320462_3024931_n.jpg

that's the only one i know. she's rad.

so much ink for the holiday season

I thank god I don't have embarrassing family but I don't mean to sound smug, I almost married someone whose uncle refers to blacks as "gorillas" and believes some races are better than others. He wishes no one knew about it, believe me. Had enough of that growing up, said it's either me or your uncle.

well, here's my thing: my parents and i get along, but i can't talk freely. i;ve also hidden books i'm reading behind other books, lied about where i'm going, and so on. homophobia sucks.

the rest of the fam that knows (everyone except grandma) is cool, but they're so vanilla and subtly racist (and about 90% idiot) that i can't deal.

in other words, there are worse families. but everyone makes their own choices about how to deal, and so.

my (gay) brother cut himself off from the family two years ago. he never told me or my (v accepting & loving) parents why.

huh. that's sad.

i told my parents straight (ha) out in august: "if you continue to condemn who i am and how i live my life, then forget it." they apologized and got all tearful, but i'm making them wait til after the holidays. i'm going to be on the east coast in february, why should i go because SkyDad compels me?

shit, curtis. that's really fucked up.

it really is. i mean, if they were like my parents, then duh, but maybe he has some sort of issue? i don't want to speculate here, but i know lots of gay dudes who hold grudges against their parents long enough that they need separation after a while.

that is, no matter how loving and accepting parents may be, there might be cracks? do you still talk to him?

naw, that ain't her.

that's so sad abt yr bro, crut

I am sorry about your families, nothing worse than having to listen to prejudiced bullshit at the holidays. About my ex-fiance, I walked out on him, I spent $900 on a fancy hotel for an entire week without telling him, thinking it would get him to come around. It didn't. I wish I had that money back now.

Holy cow, Pillbox, our family dynamics are very similar. My parents are a little younger, and you'd have to change fellow midwestern evangelical-republican senior-citizens to fellow small-town, racially homogeneous republican/tea party 50-somethings, and add my mom to the mix (this fact breaks my heart nearly in two bc I love my mom so much but she is like the poster child for the insidiousness of unexamined privilege (she's a bonafide tea party member, and when I expressed concern over the inherent racism of some of her adopted party's views, she said "How can you say that I'm racist? I cry when animals get hurt!")) but besides that, your experience mirrors mine.

I also have extended family who thinks it's HILARIOUS to drop the n-word around me to demonstrate how I am one of them PC libruls.

Thinking about going home for Christmas ties my stomach in knots.

crüt that is really sad!

"How can you say that I'm racist? I cry when animals get hurt!"

o_0

answer: "Hitler was a vegetarian."

I really thought that my youngest brother was going to come out to me a few weeks ago. He had to tell me something "private about his sex life" that he couldn't tell anyone else. So many times I had to reassure him whatever he told me, I loved him and respected him, etc. etc. (Which is true, that kid is the best!) What he finally revealed is that he watched looked at some gay porn four years ago. Was he a bad person? (No.) I forgot how fucking stressful it is to have any sexuality at all around my family. Poor kid.

(And commiserations to all those with bigoted families. I'm glad that my bigoted racist sexist homophobic father refuses to even speak to me due to the fact that refused to grow up to be anything like him.)

"How can you say that I'm racist? I cry when animals get hurt!"

Yeesh.

...due to the fact that I refused to grow up...

well, here's my thing: my parents and i get along, but i can't talk freely.

We can discuss anything but my sexuality. We can even discuss other people's sexualities.

my dad makes a few dodgy jokes, but i don't think he's a proper bigot, really. my nan is a bit daily mail, but at 84 what are you gonna do? usually i just roll my eyes, if there's any reaction at all.

it really is. i mean, if they were like my parents, then duh, but maybe he has some sort of issue? i don't want to speculate here, but i know lots of gay dudes who hold grudges against their parents long enough that they need separation after a while.

that is, no matter how loving and accepting parents may be, there might be cracks? do you still talk to him?

This is what I've assumed. I think maybe being around us just brings up bad memories of his awkward closeted childhood and he is focusing on ~living lyfe~ or something. idk. I don't see why it's such a burden to at least call your mother once in a while and let her know you're ok..

Last time I saw him I ran into him at his workplace. He was "busy" and couldn't talk & he said "I'll Facebook you!" Still waiting for friend request to be confirmed. This was several months ago. I would go see him in person again, but I don't want to push the issue too hard since he clearly doesn't want to talk to me.

(sorry not trying to derail thread)

wow Abbbottt (and others) i'm truly sorry you have to deal with that. every time i get enraged at the ignorant popping off at family gatherings, i should really be thankful that it's seldom and hardly what i would call "bigoted." just idiotic talking points usually. i typically counter by calmly reciting all the times Reagan raised taxes, or how much his admin expanded government. i also think my parents harbor a secret fear that if they piss me off real good i'm perfectly willing to skip any and all family events until the end of their days. i would say these fears are unfounded, but it's a pretty decent (if unspoken) bargaining chip.

(i used to be a real bastard)

i'm grateful my parents don't give a shit about politics and say things like "doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in." my nan's a tory because my grandad was, she doesn't seem to need to offer any sort of deeper explanation than that.

crut, that is hard. i think that most of my ill-feeling towards my parents comes from resenting them telling me when i was a young teenager, 'you can't know you're gay, you're too young.' i lived in fear of them for years as a result of multiple conversations about this issue. i even 'ran away' when i was 16 because they couldn't handle my relationship with this guy. a few months ago, all this resentment came out, and while we're on okay terms right now, i am certainly making a point in not going home for the holidays.

i guess what i'm saying is that your brother will probably come back at some point— even with an extended family of friends (which i definitely have as well), one needs a support network to fall back on...

This is what I've assumed. I think maybe being around us just brings up bad memories of his awkward closeted childhood and he is focusing on ~living lyfe~ or something. idk. I don't see why it's such a burden to at least call your mother once in a while and let her know you're ok..

estrangement can be emotionally risky but sometimes it's the only thing that works. I didn't speak to my father for 7 years because he was an overbearing and offensive presence in my life. we've since reconciled and have a really good relationship now, one I don't think would've been possible if he hadn't been sent to the wasteland.

I have come to loathe christmas mainly because the family gets together, drinks heavily and espouses unbridled prejudice at ear-shattering volume. I've been quietly putting up with it for a very long time but my patience (and hearing) ran out this year. Considering walking away and catching a cab home the next time this happens.

my family of origin is hell. I don't even wanna go into details about how bad it is right now I'm just grateful for a thread about hell family members. bigotry is an ingredient in it for sure, mom always seems to really relish the time in our phone calls when she'll get to mention the news items she got forwarded to her & offer her analysis. turns out political correctness is the real enemy per mom. I lack the strength or whatever it takes to opt for complete estrangement and actively envy people who've taken the step.