I’ve just been out for food with parents (60’s) and nana (80’s) and I don’t know why I go as they leave me disheartened every time damn time.
In the short span of a couple of hours they (mainly my nana but parents will have silly views too) managed to comment on the number of black athletes at the Olympics (somehow being a bad thing), shit on the upcoming Para-olympics (quote: disabled people should just accept their lot and not try sport), protesters (of any kind) and questioning if any protests have ever been successful, to which I answered the suffragette‘s we’re pretty successful.
Complaining about people being spoilt these days at the same time as my nana confessing she was given food in a bowl at my aunties and refused to eat it unless it was on a plate (seems pretty spoilt to me). Asking for things to be like when she was younger, to which I asked if she was a fan of Nazi Germany as she grew up post WWII.
I guess I am wondering how can I come from a family that seemingly has no compassion for anybody and even less empathy for anybody different than them. They make me angry at times and I know I can be annoying my always challenging their bullshit views, but I can’t sit there and let people take utter nonsense like this.
I haven’t even covered half the awful stuff they say and their warped ideals.
Edit: The other one that irritates me is them (two women ) shitting on female athletes. Like WTF if a female wants to be a footballer what skin is it off their noses. Unless they just bitter they people have more choice to be themselves now.
I corrected my Dad on his hateful speach a few years back and he replied ”it’s my goal, just as it should be yours, to be better than my father”.
That has to be one of the most candid things he’s ever said to me.
Mine are dead, because I’m old as hell myself.
But it was quite different on each side of my family, with some minor interesting quirks.
Now, they were all nice enough. Even my one grandfather that was a fairly venomous racist was nice, even to black people. Hell, if anything he was nicer to black people than other whites. It’s an old south thing.
Obviously, tolerance was not his strong suit when out of the public.
And that was true for my grandmother on that side as well. She was less vehement about it, and more of the habitual racist. You know the type, they don’t hate black people, and don’t even really have real problems with them, but they grew up with racism being the default, and see no reason to stop using slurs just because times have changed. But she’d never say anything mean to anyone.
Kinda weird shit tbh. I took one of my friends over to her house at one point, and whenever the subject of school came up, she’d remember him and ask “how is your n****** friend?”. Wasn’t being hurtful in her mind, she was genuinely asking after him because he was my friend. The south can be fucking nuts that way. Which, when I was younger than that time, my parents had sheltered me from the n word and what it really meant, which led to some funny but problematic confusion eventually.
On the other side, both grandparents were legit super tolerant. Like, my best friend is gay, and at one point they thought we were together, so they were inviting him to family gatherings. My black friends were always welcome, nothing ever even mentioned about race at all.
My grandfather was republican, but was a one issue voter (2a rights). He was otherwise progressive as hell. Like, there was this show in the eighties called “Soap”. Billy Crystal got famous on it and played an gay man. He often said after the show would end that he didn’t understand what the problem was, “there were sailors like that under my command. You didn’t talk about such things, but they never bothered anyone, and they served their country with honor.”
I worked as a bouncer off and on as a side gig, including for gay bars. My best friend was/is gay. So I ended up being active in gay rights support. Never had to worry about it being a problem. My grandfather said he was proud of me a few times, and while neither of them enjoyed seeing me bandaged and beat all to hell when either the job or the activism got ugly, they were pissed that people were like that, and never once suggested I should stop.
Now, that grandfather had served during some of the cold war and hated Russians. With a passion. So he wasn’t free of prejudice entirely. That grandmother though, she never had anything bad to say about groups of people. And she’d tell my grandfather to shush his mouth when he’d watch the news and go on a Russia rant lol. Strangely, he never minded me being fairly friendly with socialist ideas. He’d argue the points of it, but never said I shouldn’t believe any given thing.
I loved all of them. I still do, even my racist grandfather. It wasn’t the totality of who he was, and I can love people that are flawed. Maybe if he’d lived longer, he could have changed. My grandmother that was racist did to some degree (switched to “colored” instead after my dad gave her hell once), and my dad and uncles rejected that bullshit early on, so that might have swayed him eventually. Or maybe he would have stayed just as bad, I dunno.
You said good things here. It irks me that one parent is particularly virulently racist and a spiritual bully (eg, if your belief differs or you don’t have a god belief, that belief and probably you, are demonic). Yet they aren’t rude to other races*, it’s covert racism. But when I think of all my personal shortcomings and the off the wall stuff I went through and my trauma behaviors, I can see that their behaviors are trauma behaviors. The only differences were* a NDE and ego death.
Edited for grammar
Edit 2 for autocorrect
My folks are chill. My mom and her friends are passionately cool. My dad DGAF. He’s cool, but he’s also a charter boat captain which means lots of sportsmen so he has to be able to ignore/get along with anyone. He just gives a noncommittal grunt and steers the conversation back to fishing.
My father in law is okay. Ex cop so opposite of ACAB. Spouts Fox News bullshit, but he sat out the last election because he has like 8 granddaughters and at least one gay grandson. He’s a good guy as long as you don’t talk about anything political. He accepted my kid when they identified as trans for a bit. (Jury’s still out. Don’t care, they just don’t seem committed to anything right now.)
His brothers, though, what fucking assholes. I have to tolerate them for my wife’s sake because she can’t deal with family strife but I actually had to sit in a public restaurant with one of them making buck teeth and shouting “Ching Chang Chong” when saying something insulting about Asians, then “oh but now I’m racist.” Right you are, motherfucker. Disgusting. Humiliating.
My ability to even mildly rebuke them is limited by my need to keep the peace for my wife. But if I could I’d just tell them to let me know when they are done acting that way, and I’d get a drink at the bar.
IIRC, the Americans with Disabilities Act was a product of protest. People across the country one day blocked buses and intersections, and now we have curb cuts, automatic buttons at doors, handle bars in public shitters, etc. (any corrections welcome, it was a podcast I listened to 2 years ago, I’m not American)
I wonder if your 80 nana benefits from any of those on a regular basis?
They grew up in a different era, and as people get older it’s harder for them to let go of backward ideas. Even my mother, a fervent feminist, from time to time makes transphobic comments that are born more out of ignorance than anything else. Sometimes she seems to understand and other times she doesn’t seem to want to understand. My father, on the other hand, is also generally a good person, but his machismo and homophobia are very strong. One day he had said that he would rather shoot himself if he found out that any of his children were Gay, that phrase still haunts me and prevents me from being more open with my bisexuality. I love him dearly, but he is far from perfect. I don’t know what my grandmother’s political views are, but she has always come across as loving and receptive. She taught me to Crochet even though I was a man, she insisted that I pay no attention to anyone who told me it was a woman’s thing. Despite this, she is a simple woman and very disconnected from the outside world, and from what my mother has told me, there was a time when she was terrible. Old people are… Complicated.
