How Politics, Racism and Facebook Ended My 16 Year Friendship

[Coolest Ranger]

This is a fascinating article.

This Christmas I will not be speaking to my friend of 16 years. Why??? Well after years of reading his Facebook posts I slowly and painfully discovered that my white friend was a racist.

This Christmas I will not be speaking to my friend of 16 years. Why??? Well after years of reading his Facebook posts I slowly and painfully discovered that my white friend was a racist. Initially I tried to ignore it but as an African American man I could no longer stomach his increasingly toxic, race fueled comments that were initially veiled as just boisterous, conservative rhetoric. After debating him online for years over politics, race and social topics I finally had an epiphany. I could no longer excuse “Adam” by brushing him off as being a hyper-conservative republican. His truth was undeniable.

However, I chose not to confront Adam about it, instead I quietly un-friended him on Facebook. Weeks later he confronted me and unloaded a barrage of online insults accusing me of being the actual racist and a “radical” for calling out discrimination, something I’ve aggressively done for years on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and on my personal blog/website.

Initially I blamed Facebook and the bold frontier of social media, a place where like-minded individuals are able to find strength in numbers in pack like mentality as the source of Adam’s racism. But after deeper reflection I believe it is the rising public influence of social media combined with an unconscious internal racial/class angst within Adam and many other white Americans that has now spewed to the surface with the election and re-election of the nation’s first Black President, Barack Obama.

More at this link:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/17/1263300/-How-Politics-Racism-and-Facebook-Ended-My-16-Year-Friendship?detail=email#

[madrchsod]

1. i have done the same thing

i have unfriended people i have known for 50 yrs because of their racist shit.

[Shandris]

2. I was wondering how long it would take to run into the...

...'privilege' argument in the article. Of course his friend is a racist; when you subscribe to an ideology that says that any person with white skin is racist by default, it's pretty frickin' difficult not to 'discover' that your friend was secretly a 'racist' all along.

Now that's not to say that Adam was faultless -- far from it! He sounds like your typical closeminded conservative, and like many people in this modern 'recovering economy' who are having a lot of trouble and searching for someone to blame. Lots of people are, and the accusations point at everyone from 'The Illuminati' to the guy down the street and everyone in-between. But once you jump on the group identity bandwagon, it shouldn't ever come as a surprise when you lose most, if not all of your friends who aren't likewise in 'the movement'.

[kwassa]

6. White privilege is not an argument that all white people are racist by default.

If that is what you believe, I don't think you understand the concept of white privilege.

White privilege is also not an argument made in this article, so why are you bringing it up?

[maryellen99]

8. I know someone like that too

They weren't political but when their spouse was diagnosed with lung cancer last month they started posting anti Obama and anti obamacare stuff on FB.

[nomorenomore08]

9. "Any person with white skin is a racist by default."

FYI that kind of strawman makes you seem a bit like a "closeminded conservative." I'm not saying you are, part of your post just sounds that way.

[Arugula Latte]

3. I just told my 80-year-old mother that I despise her racist dumbshit 75-year-old boyfriend

Last edited Thu Dec 19, 2013, 11:50 AM - Edit history (1)

and that I don't want to be around him. He's said objectionable stuff before but this weekend it was one comment after another. It didn't appear that he had any idea anyone would think what he was saying was offensive. He's a dim bulb to begin with but now I'm wondering if perhaps the very start of dementia is erasing his filters even more.

It is difficult because she's definitely in the "serious" old age range (even though she's healthy) and she and he are a package deal now. Makes me sick/sad she chose this ignorant dickhead as her partner. She tries to just sweep stuff under the rug and excuse him "Oh, X just says things. He doesn't mean anything." I'm not sure how it is all going to shake out in the future, especially if they move in together. Gawd forbid they get married.

[Coolest Ranger]

4. How do you handle it

One thing I am learning about older people they do NOT want to be told when they are wrong and they will let you know it.

[Arugula Latte]

13. Well, thank goodness I don't live near them.

I try to avoid him as much as possible and I just told her as much, but when she has invites him to come visit us for a couple days, I've allowed it. I'm hoping now he won't make the trip here in the future now that I've told my mother I hate having him around me. If they press it I don't know what to do. When we visit her and he's there I try to keep the family buffer between him and me and just make the slightest small talk as possible. However, even that is fraught now. He's often still insulting even over the most innocuous things. She thinks he's just so charming.

[Baitball Blogger]

5. I feel his pain.

A wall came up between me and friends who were Republican. After the election the change in them was blunt. Suddenly, they didn't like being on the losing end of a presidential election and the only person they could take it out on, was me. Except, I wasn't about to be used as a kicking post. All I had to do was draw the line with one of them, and word spread quickly. Now there is a wall of ice that nobody seems to want to cut through. Fortunately, none of them is spewing conservative crap on Facebook or I would be doing the same thing that the poster did. Just quietly unfriend them.

Two things are happening that never happened before. The first, I no longer felt a need to blend in. And secondly, they are beginning to understand what it is like to feel like a minority, with no real voice in the process.

I see rough going in the next few years because I don't see Republicans giving up their cushy, entitled lifestyles. It is going to be difficult even after someone explains to them how they have been treated with preferential treatment, and sheltered from the difficulties and obstacles that are constantly thrown in our way. They have enjoyed the privilege for so long, that the will probably break every rule in the book to regain it.

[hunter]

7. What is "Facebook?" I saw how things were going in my Yahoo! Groups days.

I grew up in an Ivory Soap 99 and 44/100% pure white place and I don't want to reconnect with many of the people who never left it.

I'm so strongly anti-facebook I block them on my server.

Fled my hometown, never going back...

[Coolest Ranger]

11. I haven't been to yahoo in years

I hear about the yahoo comments all the time and based on what I herd, I don't want to go there. Too Conservative for my taste.

[nomorenomore08]

10. I unfriended (and otherwise cut off) my one Republican friend from high school

when he posted an event page for a screening of an anti-immigrant propaganda film. And yes, I went to the website and read all the material, and even without watching the "documentary" itself the motive was crystal clear. Quite typical "TERRORISTS AND CRIMINALS ARE CROSSING OUR BORDERS" type hysteria.

[Supersedeas]

12. he need to be called out publicly for his racism...glad it did not end with "quietly unfriending"

make this as public as possible.

[Omnith]

14. I've never liked facebook, I always come away from it feeling worse.