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Are your grandparents and parents nice or tolerant people?

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.

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Mine are dead

Maeve ,

hug

amanneedsamaid ,

Yeah, my parents are perfect, my grandparents are like ~80% there. One side is a bit religious conservative (thankfully anti-Trump), and the other side’s grandfather has an odd idea that all black people naturally don’t want to work. Other than that one sentiment, he isn’t racist in the slightest, but he insists that’s the case.

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

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.

Maeve , (edited )

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

vfreire85 ,

that’s a great testimony.

intensely_human ,

If your grandma grew up post WW2 then she did not grow up during Nazi Germany.

I know that’s just one detail but you got it wrong and it makes me wonder if you aren’t highly motivated to misinterpret what she says.

Have you tried directly telling her how you’re hearing what she’s saying, instead of going straight to the sarcasm?

dubyakay , (edited )

My father was very anti-categorization, and actively challenged anyone with such mindsets. He’d stare people down on the subway that glanced at him. He’d call out anyone that made a remark about him regarding anything and labelling him or anyone else as “you people”. He went into great detail in his explanation to me that people, even when homogeneous ethnicity, will categorize others automatically based on traits, often putting individuals into catch-all boxes mentally. And how it can or could be overcome.

At the same time, he loved a good ethnic joke. Even self-deprecating ones. One of his favourites was:

The Scotsman takes his son to the market fair. They buy a watermelon and consume it with gusto.

A year later they go to the market fair again. The son asks if he can have a drink. To which the Scotsman replies:

Beer after melon?

Lettuceeatlettuce ,
@Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml avatar

My grandma used to be, but years of Facebook right-wing propaganda has poisoned her.

Now she spouts conspiracy talking points about the “trans agenda” immigration, and so forth.

My parents have always been pretty right wing but covid pushed them even farther.

They aren’t hardcore MAGA nuts, but they are pretty pro Trump, especially my dad. They also buy the propaganda from Fox news hook, line, and sinker.

xilliah , (edited )

Her chip must be malfunctioning again. It happens sometimes with the strongheaded ones.

There.

Fondots ,

My mom is nice and tolerant, she’s pretty much the archetypal mom, she’s friends with everyone, caring, etc. she doesn’t always “get” some of the more modern “woke” ideas like trans gender identities, institutional racism, etc. but she makes an effort to understand them and generally keeps an open mind, and probably most importantly understands that she doesn’t necessarily need to “get” something to be accepting of it. As an example, one of my sister’s best friends since childhood is some sort of nonbinary, and my mom had a really hard time wrapping her head around they/them pronouns, and just kind of generally didn’t understand it. That said, she still makes an honest attempt to use the correct pronouns, and understands that regardless of how they refer to themselves, what they look like, etc. it’s still the same person my sister has been hanging out with since preschool, who is always welcome in our home and is essentially regarded as her 3rd child, and that’s really the important thing.

My dad, in general, I’d say is somewhat begrudgingly tolerant. I suspect that if he wasn’t stuck with my mom, my sister, and me he probably would have gotten sucked down some alt right Fox news rabbit hole, but since we’ve all been around he’s kind of accepted that he’s wrong, but hasn’t necessarily gone so far as to try to be right. He’s kind of the picture of “old-person racist” he doesn’t outright dislike people of different races, but he doesn’t try very hard to see past stereotypes either. As far as being nice, in general he’s awkward, not unpleasant but not really someone who’s oodles of fun to talk to, but when he gets a bug up his ass about something he’s an asshole.

My grandfather on my mother’s side died before I was born, everything I’ve ever heard about him makes him sound like a fun, nice guy, though people often don’t like to talk ill of the dead, so hard to say. As far as how tolerant he was or wasn’t, I can’t really say, the two data points I have are that

  1. He’d loudly complain about the “dagos” when the local Italian church had their feast because people would come in from out of town and just kind of have picnics on any open patch of grass including their front lawn and leave a bunch of trash behind, and really while the slur was unnecessary, I can totally get why that would upset him. He didn’t have animosity towards Italians in general, it just happened that the out of towners littering on his lawn were Italian.
  2. My mom played with black kids growing up, and was kind of surprised when she got older that the civil rights movement was a big deal because she lived through it and she never remembered there being any fuss about the black people in town, so at the very least my grandparents weren’t outwardly racist in her youth.

Beyond that it’s kind of hard to say.

My grandmother on that side I wouldn’t exactly say was nice, she was a loud, cranky busybody, and by most accounts was pretty much all her life. I may be a little unfair to her because her personality and mine just didn’t jive very well, but still I think most people could agree that she was a little extra. She also got a bit racist in her old age, and it’s hard to say if it was just the dementia talking or not. She did live a pretty interesting life, traveled a bit, and had a pretty active social life, so at least some people found her pleasant to be around.

On my dad’s side, my grandmother died when I was a kid. She was always very nice, I can’t say how tolerant she was, that just never really came up. That said, she had been a drinker for much of her life, and from what I understand her kids from different marriages got treated pretty differently, and she was pretty nasty to one of my dad’s half sisters, doted on another, and my dad was kind of somewhere in the middle, and some of that favoritism kind of spilled over to my generation, she never treated my sister or I badly, but I can see now that she favored my cousins over us a bit.

My grandfather is probably the most interesting case here. He was very much one of God’s own prototypes. He had a lot of personality, and was never one to shy away from a fight or argument, so if he was nice kind of depended on if he liked you or not. He was a bit of a womanizer, so on one hand he could be at least superficially nice when he wanted to be, but also didn’t necessarily respect women the way he should have, though he was never violent or abusive to them.

As far as tolerance goes, there were plenty of people out there of all colors, creeds, and classes that he didn’t like for a great many reasons, some good, some not so good, but I never once heard him make a disparaging remark about someone’s race. Having served in the Pacific in WWII, he did have sort of a weird grudge against Japan that he never let go of, but it was more against the county of Japan itself, not of japanese people, not of japanese countries, and certainly not against japanese Americans. Terms like “colored” or “jap” never quite left his vocabulary, but they were never said with any malice, they were just a holdover from a time when those words were more acceptable.

He worked as a bus driver for most of his life. On one of his routes, there was a stop near a business that employed a lot of black women. There are still some older black women in the area who remember him for driving the bus because he was the only driver who would wait at that stop to make sure they could catch the bus when they got off work because the bus came at the same time they would be leaving, other drivers would just keep driving if they weren’t there when the bus came.

I doubt he ever thought too deeply about this, but given his age, he would have started driving a bus at around the same time the civil rights movement was really picking up steam and when bus boycotts and freedom riders and such were happening in other parts of the country (were from the north and the local buses had never been segregated in our area.) which is kind of wild to think about.

He ended up in a nursing home in his last years, had a black roommate for a while that he got along great with, there was a lot of black staff there that he spoke highly of and they all seemed to get a kick out of him (he was probably one of the more cognitively with-it, and certainly one of the most ambulatory patients there, coupled with his naturally big personality he was kind of a novelty, and he honestly kind of thrived in a nursing home environment, he didn’t have to worry about cooking or cleaning and he thought that was pretty much the best thing ever)

BirdyBoogleBop ,

My Grandad is quite progressive. My Dad on the other hand is. Not. Most of that side of the family is quite progressive.

My mothers side is a mixed bag Mum is progressive, omi definitely isn’t and the aunts and uncles are all over the spectrum.

BudgetBandit ,

Funnily enough, they don’t hate black people, only refugees and those who steal our jobs, but not everyone, just those stealing low paid jobs, the doctors are great because (idk)

Dad’s just islamophobic, well, less phobic and more islamo-hating, but only if they have X children and don’t work.

I just hate everyone equally.

CouncilOfFriends ,

My parents are still very Mormon, which means being openly bigoted is bad manners. That said, I don’t think I ever visit without my dad saying something about climate change being a hoax, illegals voting in California, wildfires being part of some AntiFa conspiracy, etc. Can’t tell whether he sincerely believes this nonsense or is just trying to get a reaction. I try not to engage other than asking where he learned about it and how he’s tried to fact check it. These discussions are not productive, and I don’t visit unless it’s a major holiday or someone’s birthday.

CoolMatt ,

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?

Feathercrown ,

Very. I’m lucky that my family is mostly liberal.

HEXN3T ,
@HEXN3T@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

“When will there be straight pride month?”

No.

Tekkip20 ,
@Tekkip20@lemmy.world avatar

No? Why?

mutter9355 ,

Name one place in the world where being straight is illegal.

pendulous ,

And we all know you can’t celebrate things that aren’t downtrodden

wuphysics87 ,

Depending on how old you are, and whether you are financially dependent on them, I would tell them to go fuck themselves. I’d also tell your grandma the world is changing, she’s gonna die soon, and there’s nothing she can do to change either one. Flip them the bird and walk out.

Obviously, personalities are different. This might not work for you, but you can’t just fight back with facts because they refuse to play that way. If they want to throw this kind of shit your way, you have no obligation, nor should you, play by the rules of “they go low, we go high”. That’s always been bullshit anyway. Especially in a situation like this.

RBWells ,

Mine are old, but I have in-law and ex-out-law old people around and it’s a mixed bag. Certainly nobody who would complain about the mix of Olympic athletes, but ex MOL will complain about welfare queens even though she herself got welfare to get through nursing school and has to know that statistically that’s how most people use it. And they will gather and whine.

I think my kids see me as progressive, their dad as actively and harmfully regressive, their stepdad (my husband) as old and not able to keep up with change, too conservative but not hateful.

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