Dealing with racist relatives

In My Humble Opinion
41

I have any number of family members that are racist (uh, let me count, pretty much everyone I know) and pretty much all my relatives except my parents and two aunts are varying levels of misogynistic. The most disappointing is my brother-in-law, who should know better but is comfortable in condemning an entire group of people on one really bad encounter (lost a lot of money in business, got cheated out of technology he developed).

I deal with it by ignoring it. Most of the time people seem to manifest it in terms of racist jokes and I find the most effective way of shutting down that line of conversation is to not smile at the joke so it falls with a heavy thud. Sometimes I think particular relatives also do it just for the shock value, so doing the protest/lecture deal just feeds into their shtick.

Half the time I feel family (not immediate, but extended) really try to goad me into a reaction (i.e. dating in general, dating white people, position of Indian women, marriage, having children) by making statements they really don’t believe in or taking positions they don’t care that much about because I used to be really reactionary and fiery when I was young(er). These days I just give a distant “oh really? I’ll give your opinion all the thought it merits” attitude and they give up with apparent disappointment that we’re not going to have some screaming, melodramatic Indian family-drama.

42

I have had to deal with this sort of thing my whole life. My father is Jewish and my mother was Italian Catholic, yet my live-in grandmother used the word “sheeny” on a semi-regular basis, though never in his presence. My father and my brother are more passive racists, more like, “I don’t hate black people but I don’t want my daughter/sister marrying one either,” while the uncles and cousins like to make racist and homophobic comments at Christmas dinner just to see if I’ll react.

I have made my feelings clear to all these people. They know if they make such comments that at best, I’ll sigh and roll my eyes, at worst I’ll tell them how ignorant and back-asswards they sound. At this point, most of them know it’s not worth it to start the whole thing up, and if they do, it’s jokingly and I just tell them to shut up, how it’s not really cool conversation over dinner.

It still sucks, though. Good luck with it. I don’t think you should have to sit silently and listen to it. Tell them how you feel, and if that has no effect, look as uncomfortable as you feel, maybe excuse yourself if it gets to be too much. Eventually, most people catch on.