Think of all the persons you know personally and love. I don’t care whether you mean romantic love, filial love, fraternal or sororal love, or friendly love, but please restrict yourself to persons you have actually met face to face and know well. Natalie Portman and Taye Diggs don’t count, sorry. Anywho…are there any bigots in that list? If yes, how does the person’s bigotry affect your relationship? If not, is that because you stopped loving him or her when you became aware of their hatefulness?
You could wait for the poll if you wanted to, but since I’m not going to include one it would be kind of silly.
About 10 years ago, at the family thanksgiving dinner, with my sister’s Nigerian friend visiting, my very own mother announced in front of all us kids that if she had known that my father was a (uncommon slur word I cannot remember meaning mixed blood), she never would have married him.
Yeah, no small wonder his family hid that they had Lakota blood. My dad is 1/8th, which makes us kids 1/16th. Thanks for telling your children, all @40 years old, what you think of them on Thanksgiving, mom.
My sister is 52. She came out when she was 17, which took a lot of guts back in 1977. Our mother still occasionally says stupid hateful homophobic things.
If she wasn’t my mother, I’d have nothing to do with her.
On the positive side, she has done a great deal to help me through the thin years.
A sister who clams she isn’t but can say so very hateful things. Maybe she hasn’t looked at as bigotry. An Uncle who has now passed, but his son is a big time baptist preacher, both of them are, no longer have any ties with either ( also discovered the uncle’s son is a theif too, big disappointment)
Sure: My grandmother, my brother, my sister, my brother-in-law (I hate the fucker, but he’s married to my sister), my nephew, and my cousin, just for starters. My brother is selective, in that he seems to only hate blacks; his best friend for the past 40 years or so is an Athabaskan Indian. My BIL hates everybody who’s not like him.
I would like to remind y’all that the thread question is not simply whether you KNOW any bigots. It’s whether anyone you LOVE is a bigot, or anyone you once loved during the time while they were a bigot.
For instance, I used to live with a woman I was deeply in love with. I’m black, she’s multiracial but looks white, and I never had any occasion to think her a bigot. I was frankly shocked when she revealed to me a deep and disturbing dislike of Mexicans. Never saw it coming.
Most of my family members are mildly bigoted. For my father it’s gays, for my grandparents gays and pretty much any ethnic minority, and my other grandmother pretended to be a bigot for the entire time she was married to her late husband (something like fifteen years), but is actually not that bigoted. The late husband in question was so racist that you would be left utterly speechless and flummoxed by the things he said. He was old and half-deaf though so it’s not like you could really say much in response anyway.
I love them. How I react depends on the relationship I have with them. I’m very close to my grandparents. My grandfather rarely says anything bigoted, I just happen to know he has this attitude from a few incidents over the last 20-odd years. I will usually challenge my grandmother by telling her she is being prejudiced and then she’ll deny it because she has a friend at work who is black, yadda yadda. I’m not sure what to do with my father. We don’t know one another that well so arguing with him about sexuality still feels pretty awkward. To his credit, at least, I’ve never heard him use a slur.
I do know that my grandmother’s love for me is stronger than her bigotry. She always asks how my best friend is doing and genuinely cares, even though she knows my best friend is a lesbian. She always asks about my sister-in-law too, also a lesbian, and my close friends regardless of their minority status. I think she’s one of those people that just says the things she’s been raised to believe but deep down knows better. Helps me sleep better at night to think that, anyways.
By mother and aunt are not racist or homophobic and instilled that sense of equity in me, and I greatly appreciate that.
I’m not sure if this counts as bigoted since it seems to be a cultural thing but my ex-husband is Japanese and when he was living out here in the US, he made it VERY clear that he intensely hated all things Korean. We couldn’t eat at any Korean restaurants, buy anything from Korean companies or anything. I got an earful once when I mentioned liking some Hyundai car. He’d refuse to talk to anyone Korean, would never ever sit near them if he could help it (he went to an English language school here in Oregon) and just generally despised them. It was really horrible how deep the hatred went. It got to the point where we’d get into fights over how he talked about them in front of our daughter. I can’t say it was the main reason we’re not together anymore but it definitely contributed.
My dad can be bigoted about certain things. Well, one thing in particular - gay rights. I just avoid the subject when I’m with him. He’s an old man and nothing I say will change his mind anyway.
My boyfriend has the same problem with his sister, but unlike me he sometimes can’t help poking the hornet’s nest.
Parents, grandparents, extended family. It’s something I just accept about them. They’re products of their generation and the culture they grew up in. My small home town in rural Australia is still a place where bigotry is neither rare nor frowned upon. I’m forthright about my views when the subject comes up, and I tell them outright when I think they’re wrong, but it doesn’t diminish my love for them. They’re good people, they were just raised in a time and place where bigotry was the norm.
Sometimes I wonder what prejudices I have that my children will be horrified by.
Most of my family hate black people and Hispanics and think gays aren’t really human. I still love them. I mean, I’d have had to deal with them if I ended up with any of them but they were also mildly racist against people of Chinese descent, and I ended up with one of them, and now they deal.
My grandmother on my mothers side. She had a big influence on my life, and I was very close to her. She wasn’t often vocal about it, and never in a gathering, but from the occasional private comment I knew she was terribly bigoted against Asian’s.
I could understand where she got it from, given that she lived through WWII, and the propaganda rampant in Australia about the Japanese in that time. But I just thought of it as a little quirk of hers, and loved her regardless. I can’t say I thought less of her for it or anything.
My grandmother. She didn’t like Coloreds, Jews, Protestants, or Hungarians.
In her defense, she was born in 1900. And it was not really a hateful kind of bigotry. She just felt these people were inferior and she felt sorry for them. Well, maybe not for the Protestants - she probably figured that when they ended up in Hell it was their own fault for not paying attention to the Pope like good Catholics.
My parents are both horrible bigots, but I honestly struggle with whether I love them or not. I probably love my mom, probably don’t love my dad. I handle it by avoiding them.
She’s a bigot, but certainly not vehemently so. I think it’s more a background thing. She’ll say something racist or homophobic, I’ll gently challenge it and she’ll change her position.
Yesterday, my mum said something about the Gay Pride Parade, and Granny did a cough and said: “I don’t think we refer to those people like that!” (meaning she thought my mum had used a slur). We all started laughing, and explained that was the one you were meant to use! Poor Granny. She’s getting better, but will still come out with nasty things
