Feel free to share your own holiday get-together horror stories.
One brother-in-law has no filter between his brain and his speech, and usually that makes him a lot of fun and our favorite. But out of the blue today he starts talking about how America is the best (hard disagree, but he’s American so I can give that a pass), people who don’t like America should leave (stupid, but I see where you’re coming from) and especially the blacks should go back to Africa (WTF!?!). I don’t get how otherwise nice guys can be so full of hate for a whole class of people for no reason.
Edit: A sister-in-law says that slavery was the blacks’ fault, because they sold their own. BIL’s wife says the N word is the same level as “white trash”.
The best solution, in my opinion, is to mask your repulsion and emotions. Then think about your response long enough to form a question that corners the person within their own cognitive conflict of logic from the high ground of sound ethics. The second best is to walk away and show indifference to their behavior. The opposite of love is indifference, for to hate is still to care. The indignation of indifference can be a deflationary force of peer pressure too.
My family is the same. When prejudice arises I walk away without a word. Over time, it has steered them towards more balance.
I eventually bailed early without ruining Christmas, but I don’t see how that changes anything. At least my wife understands.
Because it is all about tribalism. If you fight them in words or otherwise, you only alienate yourself as the others tribe. They are essentially testing if you are in their (mental picture) tribe. They have a diluted sense of confidence that is built up and convinced them that their tribe is meaningful and valuable. If you fight them, you do nothing to stop them. It only bolsters the walls that they feel secure within. You cannot assault those walls unless you are willing to kill the person. You must tear apart their walls brick by brick, but you cannot access the walls, only they can. To dismantle the wall, you can point out its flaws or you can convince them that those walls have no value. Walking away is the latter. Using questions to force their acknowledgement of their logic failures is forcing them to remove a brick from their own wall. The hard part is getting them to play Jenga and causing the whole thing to crumble.