Such a tactic might work, but I don’t know about the reasoning. They might seriously not know that they’re doing anything other than kidding around. It’s a bit much to assume they don’t have a better nature. Sometimes people just adopt a behaviour that they learned in one environment at some time or another and never grew out of it or invested enough thought to realise how it might affect people around them. Maybe that’s too much sympathy for someone being shitty but I just don’t know if I’d start with the assumption they have no better nature when there really might be a decent person behind it all that’s simply never been shown what they’re doing in a different light.
If it comes from someone they trust and wouldn’t want to offend they might take being honestly told about it seriously. Ironically though, I still think your approach could be a way to do things even if I don’t agree the person is beyond redemption and just deserves it. I’d just hope it shocks them out of it and prompts them to reflect.
They might seriously not know that they’re doing anything other than kidding around
After the last 8 years here in the US, I’m just about tired of people who claim to be ‘kidding around’ when what they’re doing is being carelessly cruel.
I have never been there so I won’t pretend to know what it’s like but I would suggest that taking that macro level pulse of the nation and applying it to your individual interactions is going to reinforce and entrench the problems you’re seeing at that larger scale.
Sure, sometimes it’s very clear what the intent is and when someone is disingenuously hiding behind a feint for ideological reasons. But without the necessary context it’s probably better not to assume the worst when they could just have blind spots. There’s no need to be charitable or generous with people that are obviously out to cause harm but if it’s not obvious, as with this story, and when there’s an opportunity for a real dialogue as seems possible with OP and their personal relationship with the person in question, it’s got to be better to reach out first before giving up entirely.
I worked in a workplace where a bunch of self proclaimed “Alpha” dudes were just kidding around. They ran the culture of being assholes to people and most just tolerate it because these dudes were untouchable.
Like a pregnant coworker would walk by and they’d go, “What a waste”.
And if you got upset, “just kidding relax. Just a joke.”
My wife told one my nephews who kept making disparaging comments at the tv “cut that shit out. In this house everyone is allowed to be the way they are”.
I think that’s a useful model for this conversation.
Yes, the difference is that this is aunt to nephew in aunt’s house. There is a definite power differential at work there, so all that’s left to do is to set the norm in a clear but respectful way.
If you don’t have that, and they don’t want to listen, then it’s hard to get through. Things are necessarily going to get either a lot more protracted or a lot less friendly.
I’m prepared to lose contact with people that are problematic or toxic, especially those with the more radical views, but it’s not nice to watch someone I’ve known for many years gradually lose all their friends for similar reasons.
The simple answer is you don’t. A person will act or think however they are going to, whether you like it or not. If its something that bothers you, spend less time around that person.
Yes but by that logic, all interaction and advice is basically attempting to control someone else’s actions. For example your comments literally tells the OP to do something different than their intention, defying your own prescription that autonomy is completely sacrosanct above even the attempt to influence someone in any form.
There’s a balance that’s struck and that’s how we are able to respect one another and live in a society. There are few if any circumstances where it’s permitted to force anyone to do something, but to affect one another’s actions through persuasion is simply an integral part of being human. If the only options available to us when the people around us do anything we don’t like is to either tolerate it, or cut ties, life would become impossible.
I found the most effective way is not to explain it all at one time, but to make off the cuff remarks that clearly show you disagree with what they said without making it sound like you’re attacking them because they’ll stop internalizing anything you say instantly that way.
I knew someone that often made homophobic comments, and I always made a point to casually reply “nah, it never really bothered me”, or “sure, but it doesn’t affect your life at all” and shrug.
For a long time they said something like “yuck, It’s just gross” or " I don’t like it", but I never pursued the topic any more than my disagreeing comments until months later they asked me “okay, seriously how does it not bother you that gay people…”
That’s the point where you can bring up logic or expand on what you think.
And again, don’t go overboard, but you can expand on the points that it doesn’t affect your life how other people choose to love or who other people choose to love, and isn’t the world a better place with more love in it?
Simple, concise, irrefutable statements that are easy to digest once someone is asking questions and willing to listen to your answer.
Then you just let them digest that.
Apparently the comment that eventually clicked in their head in my situation was “isn’t the world a better place with more love in it?” because we interacted almost daily and they didn’t make homophobic comments for a while after the one time we had a longer conversation about gay people(they had been making less homophobic comments around me since I began replying with those casual comments during this whole process, which took months probably), and then one day we went to dinner again and he explicitly told me that that comment had been rattling around in his head and while he still thought it was weird for two dudes to kiss each other, he had come to the conclusion that it was crazy for him to react so strongly because obviously the world is a better place with more love in it and besides it doesn’t actually affect his life at all.
And I just said " that’s great" or something and left it at that.
So now anytime I hear someone say something -ist, I casually but directly disagree and then let it go until the next time or unless they ask what I mean.
Anything I’ve tried to talk to in any extended manner without them expressing curiosity for first pulls their limbs and head into a shell and works on developing whatever prejudice they have to make it more foolproof and less prone to examination.
2nd:
It doesn’t always take months, I mett one guy walking his dog sitting at a park bench once who had similar prejudices and I did the exact same thing, a casual comment and he wanted to enter into a deeper conversation right away that it later became clear, had led him to critically examining his ideas.
Yeah for someone to change their whole viewpoint takes time.
Imagine if someone was gonna try to argue that your opinion on a recent conflict is wrong. Obv if it’s that confronting you’re gone disregard that. But if he says something about it every once in a while you start to think more about and then you learn and grow. Because either you come to the conclusion your standpoint is really short sighted, or you at least appreciate their perspective.
And let me be clear: whatever you learn, it will be a good thing, because the more perspective, the more experience.
I have a friend who votes for trump and we clash heads a lot about politics, but I know I will learn so much about his viewpoint it is worth it to a certain degree, and I’m not gonna try to “convince” him, because I want him to critically think about his opinions and learn what he needs to from my perspective.
If you wanna fight racism for example, be a living example about how stupid it is and how nice it feels to know you can judge people by what they do and not what they look like. Don’t talk about, just be clear whenever the topic comes up.
It’s an incremental effort that does not always pay off, but anything bigger, more sudden and especially anything hostile, always fails.
I feel like on some level the bigot knows that all they’re doing is being a bully, but it’s so much easier and comforting to be a bully than to be honest with themselves or examine themselves that they’ve never exercised that muscle.
So anything more than incremental support for a bully to be more tolerant is interpreted as an attack and then they’re like okay so I have to change this so my perspective/sense-of-self can never be contradicted again.
I guess that’s it, that the goal is not to encourage them to be a different person, but rather to encourage them to be part of something new or unfamiliar: tolerance.