Letters to the Editor
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To AKA Smith
You are a very forgiving person to still feel a kinship with your brother.
If my sister had a problem with Asian people, I would never be able to talk to her again, for obvious reasons. I am currently going to have to deal with that problem with my grandfather's wife (I think it was hard for my grandfather at first, but he has accepted and come to love his bi-racial great grand children, which are the only great grand children he has).
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Is this really that hard a question?
Come on folks, you don't need Tennis's silly relativism to answer this one for you. They Might Be Giants covered it just fine over a decade ago:
"I feel like a hypocrite talking to you / And your racist friend ... Your friend apologizes, he could see it my way / Can't shake the devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Or, as another bunch of nerdy white guys put it, "racism is schism on the serious tip."
Racists have something rotten at their core values. If they say or imply or hint at something racist and you don't call them on it full out, you're enabling their hatred, you're a hypocrite. And can you really be friends with someone you have to call out all the time? Nope. DTMFA.
As others pointed out, this is the kind of moral quandary that only a bunch of white folks living an all-white life could have. If you're black (or Asian, or...), or have black/Asian/etc people around you, this is a no-brainer. So not only should you DTMFA, you should have a long think about how you ended up in such a place to begin with.
And Tennis: stop trying to save everyone with hugs. Some folks aren't going to get the hint until they're ostracized.
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Such a hard one!
I am aware that we live in a racist society and are all affected by it, and that helps take away some of the anger for it. It helps it seem less willfull. On the other hand, we also live in a society that's been challenging those ideas in a mainstream way since what, the 50s? And I'm getting a little impatient with those who haven't caught on yet. At this point, it's a choice.
In my experience, a person who choses to judge people according to skin color, etc., has something inside that is not at ease with the world. Why does someone need, in the face of all the opposing evidence, to harbor a belief that some groups of people are superior over others? It's THAT that has always ended my attempts at friendships with people who buy into racist beliefs. I've never seen it be just that one thing - it always extends into a whole way of looking at the world that I just want to extricate myself from.
I think Cary is a bit romantic here, but if it works for him, and it's doing some good, I can't naysay it. If it works for the LW, if they have enough to balance it out, I can't naysay it. That's going to be their journey, and it'll work itself out. Friendships, like all relationships, ebb and flow. I just know that for me, I pick friends that are a refuge from the ugliness of the world. It makes me happier. This is not to say that these folks are evil or subhuman or not worthy of respect as people - that would be committing the same crime to them that they commit to others. But we don't have a duty to be friends with everybody. In fact, it's impossible - energy for friendship is limited. There's nothing wrong with choosing friends who are a balm to the soul, with whom you share solidarity on the deepest values, with whom you don't have subjects you have to stay away from.
It's not about humbling ourselves and not feeling superior to others. It's about pleasure, comfort, and understanding.
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What Would Buddha Do?
There some buddhist deal about you can learn more from your enemies than your friends. I think we could stretch that a bit to mean you learn more from those you disagree with than those you agree with.
Personally I'm no expert. I will say your friend sounds at least as open minded as Bill Cosby. Of course thats not saying much.
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CARY, YOU'RE MISSING THE POINT
Cary's moral relativism dance would be more respectable if he were black or Jewish or some other minority. As he's of the same racial group as the racist here, he has the luxury of skirting the issue.
The fellow said that he hated when a black announcer started speaking "jive" with a black athlete - but evidently has no problem with them when the announcer speaks like him - or Condoleeza or Colin (and probably Dubya when he mutilates the English language). Does he hate it when Hispanics speak Spanish to each other? When the Chinese speak Chinese? Racists often have ignorant views about more than one racial group. The fellow is not only a racist, he's a fascist: unless others are like him, they are less than he is.
Intolerance normally makes for a limited individual, and I have little time for those. This racist says that he thinks blacks are less intelligent, but he displays ignorance himself. I can be friendly with ignorant people, but never true friends. This is because I have to respect a friend's intelligence. If the other person is intellectually feeble, then our connection is weak. And a racist is intellectually feeble.
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Yankee bigotry is on the british model - contemptuous, not virulent
the "You People" sort. and like the british, they don't much like jews either. when i was sixteen i spent a summer in new hampshire. they were only bigoted under stress. it hurts, of course, when it comes from a friend, but it wasn't especially traumatic.
i think if you can like two people who don't like each other, you can manage it easily. after all, it's all theoretical, there just aren't many black folks there. it's easy for me to understand AKA Smith's attitude, fetboy's is harder. after all, he needn't bring everyone together, but cutting off all communication with someone who loved you as a child seems, well, cold. but not quite as weird as the LW, who's asking *Cary* for permission (or marching orders).