"I'm old fashioned" and "that's how I was raised."

[cab67]

I'm tired of hearing these excuses for bigoted behavior.

I can understand that being brought up in an environment where racism was openly expressed might impress some racist attitudes on you. "That's how I was raised" would thus be a reasonable explanation for racist behavior. But it isn't an excuse. The second clause shouldn't be "so you're just going to have to deal with it;" it's "but I'm working to do better."

It's never been clear to me from which era those who claim to be "old fashioned" came. Racism and bigotry have been widely understood as character flaws for all 53 years I've resided on this planet. Although bigotry has sometimes been tolerated, it hasn't been extolled much. And though we're all apt to look with nostalgia at the world of our youth, that shouldn't keep us from understanding that progress, overall, has been a good thing.

Just my thoughts. I've run into more than one bigot over the past several weeks who tried to weasel out of his or her predicament by referring to the past as though it's a good thing.

[ProfessorGAC]

1. Good Post!

Also, I rec'd this OP.

[Diamond_Dog]

2. I was raised

in a house where my father uttered every racial epithet known to man.

Somehow, once I got out on my own, I realized how wrong that was.

People who say “that’s how I was raised” ... that’s a terrible excuse. So they’re saying they never learned anything beyond the bigotry they heard in the home?

[Tommymac]

17. I was raisied by a bigot father too.

I didn't know it was wrong until I was in Jr. High.

At that point I started to wash that shit out of my mind, not that I have gotten it all yet, and I am in my 60's.

But I like to think I have treated everyone I met with courtesy and compassion as the foundation. Unless they themselves proved to be bigots or other asshats, then if I could not walk away I'd let my Irish temper take over.

No excuse at all. Bigotry is indefensible.

'Nuff said.

[Blue_playwright]

19. I was too.

In junior high I was finally around other races and realized it was all bullshit. I see how he was raised (and his business was targeted during some of the civil unrest and he had to start over in his 30s - and was threatened at gunpoint by three black men at the time), and I see how his experiences shaped his bigotry. But there’s no excuse for it.

Oh and my grandpa was a “white knight” in leadership of the KKK. Joy. My dad claims they were humanitarians and took care of poor families in the Ozarks. I’m not sure I buy that revisionist history.

I still have to fight the stereotypes he beat into my brain for 12 years. My kids will never have to do that. If I’ve done nothing else right, I’ve taught them to be good liberals who could care less about someone’s race or their sexual orientation.


Edited to add link: http://www.the-standard.org/life/kkk-and-its-strange-history-in-the-ozarks/article_fc40d06c-d66a-11e8-86dd-bbad6c8301ab.html

[edhopper]

3. Whenever I here that

I think of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Well, abolitionists were also "old-fashioned", so that doesn't even come close to being an excuse.

Same goes for other enlightened reformers. They lived "back then" alongside the people who held oppressive beliefs, so they're BOTH old-fashioned. It's just a question of whether you choose the old unenlightened beliefs or the old enlightened ones.

[csziggy]

16. Yep - my husband's ancestor was at the state meeting when the Quakers split over abolition

We have letters he wrote home about the meeting at Richmond, Indiana, in 1842 when Henry Clay refused to free his slaves. He became part of the Abolitionist Quaker sect.

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/393239/summary

[dameatball]

5. Oddly enough, this reminds me of the "when SNL was funny" crowd. Maybe someone can explain it better

than I can but to me it sounds like this:

In the 70's I was politically/socially aware but over time I saw the wisdom and value of conservative political views. I have evolved.


But,

I am a bigot because that's how I was raised. So it is not possible for me to evolve.

Convenient explanation but bullshit.

Probably simplistic, but that's how it strikes me.

[Skittles]

6. IT WAS WRONG THEN, IT IS WRONG NOW

that's what I tell these racist assholes

[2naSalit]

9. +1

[ancianita]

7. What?? It's prejudice baggage. I thought we never tolerated childhood baggage past age 30!

Anyone after 30 who says that is still using the family's hand-me-down map out in the world -- called baggage -- which proves they're still a child in a grownup's body. Not an adult. Which is also why they don't understand or do well with travel, or with humans who're not "their people" -- the world's too big for their map.

Another one is "I'm grown, I'll do what I want." "Grown" is the 'tell' that they don't know the difference between being grown and being an adult.
I used to tell my high school seniors: insisting you're "grown," is like saying you're a "lady" or "gentleman" -- if you have to say it, you're not. Then we got into why.

[Raine]

8. Unless you're about a hundred fifty years old there is no way

no matter how you were raised to use that excuse. Even if you were raised that way outside influences show you what's right and what's wrong!

[Karadeniz]

10. My father grew up in one of those towns where blacks, except latrine cleaners, had to be gone by

Dark. When we moved to Japan ca. 1953, we had Japanese maids who went on vacation with us. He never said a word against them. Mother loved them, so when we moved to DC, she cultivated a group of Japanese. Not a word. In Hawaii, we were the only whites in the Filipino church...not that he went often, being president of the local golf assn! But he never said a word against the Filipinos. Before leaving Hawaii, he changed a bunch of jobs that had always been staffed by people from the Mainland to being staffed by locals. In Turkey, we had Turkish or Greek chauffeurs, maids, houseboy...I never heard him express discomfort at being surrounded by people of different color, religion, nationality. I had a Turkish boyfriend. Years later, he encouraged his brother to propose to his Korean girlfriend.

Using one's raising as an excuse to not improve requires either laziness or stupidity or fear. I have always appreciated having parents who didn't plant hate into us.

[Biophilic]

11. How one is raised and how one behaves are not the same thing. It's called choice. nt

[Dem_in_Nebr.]

12. I'm 68 y/o

and how I was raised was to treat all people with respect -- bar none.

[czarjak]

13. . Lame excuse if ever there was one

[lambchopp59]

14. All progeny of my parental units recoiled at their racism... and tendency to vote against their own

interests and especially ours. Heaven rest their deluded little souls.
O lordy do I know the sort of which you extoll. "Gran'pappy voded fer duh bubblicans, daddi voded for duh bubblicans, ah vode for duh bubblicans and ah make damn sure mah chillins will too." "Glook."

[dsc]

15. I wouldn't go so far as to say that racism has been understood to be a character flaw since 1967

we still had segregated public schools as late as 1970 (de jure) and into the late 1970's (de facto). Boston's new mayor is about the same age as us and was in the first desegregated class of her middle school. In short, the Civil Rights era is a lot younger than we give it credit for being since we largely weren't really paying attention in the early and mid 1970's being that we were kids.

[cab67]

22. Understood

I guess I was thinking about overt bigotry. At least in the parts of the country I've lived, if one had racist opinions, one didn't speak of them except around close friends and family. We're not supposed to be racists anymore dontcha know.

Moreover, a lot of the systemic racism out there is driven by people who might genuinely not think they're racists at all. This includes some of the de facto segregation you mentioned (though not all of it). They may not understand the impact of their words or actions on perpetuating privilege, or they may argue - in some cases out of sincerity - that they're worried about crime and drugs among impoverished people. They'll say it's not about race - why, they know all kinds of black people who live middle-class lives of virtue, and there are a lot of white lowlives in the country. Of course it's about race, but a lot of people would be offended if you pointed this out.

(They should be offended, I think.)

[RANDYWILDMAN]

18. both are terrible, the old fashioned is worse

if your parents yelled every racist word in the book that is not ok and you can evolve and be better.

The old fashioned is code, for the past is just better.

When white men ruled everything and other people had their place.

[monkeyman1]

20. served in the military .

well shit , i served in v.n. in the jungles for 3 yr's in the central highland's in the mountains . i had the honor to serve with every race ,creed ,color , religion you can imagine . racism was not a issue then & should not be "now" ! we trusted each other with our lives. right now i wouldn't trust some of the people in this country as far as i could throw them ! there no such thing as privileged . you have to earn it - period . i'm not just talking about what party you belong to or what . people ,bend down reach between you leg's & pull your head out of your fucking ass !!! 4 yrs of this bullshit need's to stop. all the war's we've had , we don't need 1 here. if ya don't like it here ,move to Russia or somewhere else .

[mountain grammy]

21. K & R

[RockRaven]

23. Just other ways of saying "I'm not even gonna try to justify my unjustifiable behavior"

with a little bit of "don't hold me accountable for my words/actions" implied...

[DBoon]

24. My people used to torture captives, cut their thoats, and bury them in the bogs

"I'm old fashioned" and "that's how I was raised."

[tirebiter]

25. I am quite old fashioned

When I met my wife I was so drunk I saw double but I only took one of her home.

[TheFarseer]

26. Can you give an example?

I’ve never heard that kind of thing to explain racism that I can think of. I’ve often heard it to explain sexism or borderline child abuse. I’ve heard, for instance, “the wife should cook the family dinner every night. That’s how I was raised.” But I can’t say I’ve heard, for instance, “black people sit in the back of the bus. That’s how I was raised”

[cab67]

29. I've witnessed it myself.

Some contexts:

"I just don't think black people and white people should get married. That's how I was raised."

"I know liberals don't like certain words and want to censor us decent folk, but I've used [insert racial epithet here] my whole life, and I don't think it's offensive. Times were, you didn't get uptight just because someone spoke their opinion. But maybe I'm old-fashioned."

"Look at those people - they're on food stamps, don't want to work, want us to give them everything. Not me - I work for a living. I'm not like those people. That's how I was raised." ("those people" are almost always African American.)

"Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I don't care where you come from - if you move here, you speak English."

[TheFarseer]

30. 3 & 4 definitely

1 it’s possible people around here think it, but know enough not to say it in mixed company. 2 I know a few people that will use the worst kind of racial slurs if there’s only white people around.

[BobTheSubgenius]

27. "My father, his father, his father before him...all Sons Of The Confederacy."

"If it was good enough for my great-great-grandfather, it's good enough for me."

[Marthe48]

28. Members of my family were racists

Even if they were helpful to individuals, they said terrible and ignorant things about groups as a whole. Growing up, I lived in a white suburb near Cleveland, Ohio. I met one black woman, a nurse, who came to our house to give my great aunt a Vitamin B shot. We called the nurse Mrs. and her last name, which I can't remember. She came once a month for a few months and then another nurse took her place. I liked both nurses, and I missed them when thy stopped coming. My Dad had a grocery store and we had occasional black customers come in, My Dad would watch them like a hawk, and then say snotty things when they left. I don't remember any of the black customers acting like hoods or threatening or shoplifting. There was a white family that came in, and they shoplifted so bad, that my brothers and me had to literally walk with them through the aisles to make sure they weren't stuffing canned goods into their pockets. I think my dad finally banned them. I might have been a quiet kid, but I paid attention. By a certain age, I was able to judge a person by how they treated you, not what they looked like. I tried to convince my parents and other members of my family to change their outlook, but I didn't have much luck. My brother got a job as a hospital security guard and he worked with an older black man, that my brother ended up thinking the world of. I think that getting to know someone who was a family man, worked for a living, was dedicated to his work, did change my brother's outlook. After high school, I got a temp job at a Blue Cross Blue Shield office. It was a big open room, I worked all through the day, and didn't meet every other employee, most of whom were black. I got to be friendly with the young ladies and mature women who worked back in my corner, and they were all black except the oldest lady. I only worked there a summer, and I think because I was only 17, I got away with some social faux pas that less patient people might have gotten angry about. When I went to college at OSU. I stayed in touch with some of the girls, but lost touch after I was married. That was right around 1968-72. I knew I did not want to be like people in my family, but I didn't have any guides to help me understand what I was trying to do. I'm very grateful to black friends I have who hung around while I got to the understanding that people are people. My friends are people who are nice to me, and that's all that matters. I hope I'm as nice to them.

[ck4829]

31. But you'll never hear "Call me old fashioned but the CEO-worker pay ratio seems a little off"