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”.

  • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet
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    English
    514 days ago

    It’s just ignorance. Yes it sounds hateful because we understand the pain this type of thinking has caused throughout history. They don’t. They don’t understand other perspectives, and in their minds they are the embodiment of America, so any other perspectives are “the others”. Trying to give them a history lesson, or engaging them on any sort of intellectual level is likely to push them away, they’ll feel like you think you’re smarter than them, and you’re belittling them. What they really need is to spend some time with people of other ethnicities. The Army was absolutely fantastic exposure for me and a lot of my Army brothers. We all entered Basic Training as ignorant little boys who thought we understood things, and left as men with an actual understanding of other people’s lives. Sharing hardship with people who aren’t like you is such an amazing opportunity for personal growth. Of course this isn’t really something you can offer them, so unfortunately I don’t have any answers for you. A lot of times these types of people will stay locked into this mindset unless something happens that forces them out of it. The best I can say is to try to remember that it’s probably not actually hate, and try to educate them little by little, sharing diverse perspectives with them.

    • @Pappabosley
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      014 days ago

      There’s more than enough resources out there for people to learn how to treat their fellow humans as equals. At this point it’s wilful ignorance, the last few decades were trying to nicely- nicely educate them, at this point i say screw them and their ignorant views, leave them behind society and focus on the new generations