Bigoted best friend?

notakid

shocked222 wrote: »

She is in her early 30's and I'm mid/late 20's.

I'm lost for words tbh. Apart from that, she has her faults but don't we all? My family saw her as a bit of a user but I valued our friendship.

Well it sounds like she is not very bright and as you said forgot you are mixed race and just tried to brazen out her slip.

I don't think you should or could easily forgive or forget her response.

Some people are so strange, I remember I worked with a girl, again not to bright but otherwise harmless in every other respect and her expressing the opinion that she was obviously better looking than a very beautiful mixed race girl in our office because she was white! Stunned silence from all, as obviously she was deluded as well as racist.

meritaten

shocked222 - this woman sounds vile hun! TBH anything like this makes my skin crawl - We are all human (most of us) and we are all the same under the skin.
I echo the advice given by your parent and godmother - and have to wonder if she picked you as her 'token' friend? as they say she is a user?

one of my neighbours was being disrespectful to another and brought out the racist card (can't remember exactly what was said - but Paki was the least of it) not realising that the person is my cousin! I told her exactly what I thought of her and havent spoken to her since. It really upset me as my cousin is a lovely, lovely person!

tesuhoha

This has reminded me of a very long ago incident. I was about 5 or 6 years old yet it has always stuck in my mind.

We lived in a terraced house and our next door neighbours were a black family. They had two young girls of about my age. They were twins. I got talking to them over the back fence and made friends with them.

When my mother discovered this she was very very angry and dragged me inside and slapped me. She called them a name, a not very nice name and said I was not allowed to mix with them. As far as I can remember this caused a major row with the neighbours and I believe blows as well as words were exchanged. This was way back in the 1950s but I remember being totally shocked and appalled at my mother's attitude, even at such a young age and I could not understand why I should not be friends with them.

I couldn't cut off contact with my mother but believe me I felt like it then.

Person_one

It does seem completely bizarre that she's happily been best friends with a mixed race woman for years and that this has never come up before.

I know this is going to sound like a massive stretch and it is highly unlikely, but I read an article the other day about a man who suddenly started being horrible to his family and ran off with a younger woman, it turned out he had a brain tumour that affected his personality and after he'd had surgery to remove it he was back to normal and was distraught at how he'd behaved.

Only you know your friend, does this seem like an attitude she's always had but has hidden from you or like an out of the blue and inexplicable personality change? Do her parents and other family members hold racist views?

shocked222

notakid wrote: »

Well it sounds like she is not very bright and as you said forgot you are mixed race and just tried to brazen out her slip.

I don't think you should or could easily forgive or forget her response.

Some people are so strange, I remember I worked with a girl, again not to bright but otherwise harmless in every other respect and her expressing the opinion that she was obviously better looking than a very beautiful mixed race girl in our office because she was white! Stunned silence from all, as obviously she was deluded as well as racist.

This happens ALOT from my experience of my peers and also works the other way round! Now I come to think of it, years ago I remember saying to my best friend that in my opinion I thought Beyonce was the most beautiful woman in the world and I remember her going "Really? Do you? But she's -" big silence then, "I don't think she's anything special." and even though I knew the missing word was black, I think I tried to tell myself that she was just being a bit jealous or !!!!!y, until last time I saw her and now I know, she actually is racist.

heretolearn_2

This must be really distressing for you OP, you are not being silly at all, and I can understand how it's confusing and upsetting to suddenly find out about this women's true opinion of you and your family. I don't have any sympathy for the idea that she may have been raised with these opinions. we all question what our parents teach us (do teenagers ever stop that for five minutes?!) and she is an adult and responsible for her own views. What she said is clearly extremely offensive and ignorant - I think we can guess at the gist of it - but her laughing and saying 'it's a biological fact' means it really is a deeply ingrained belief. There's a lot of what I would call casual racism around, out of laziness and just I don't know really, without any actual malicious intent or beliefs behind it. But this sounds like something from Stormfront, as you say, real white supremacy stuff. I hate to think where she got these ideas from. It's one thing to 'not like black people' and another entirely to think black people aren't human. Both racist but in different leagues. I don't think there is any way to get through to or influence extremists like this.

I'm so sorry about the pain losing a friend will cause you (even a bad friend) but I can't see how you could continue with her. You'll get over it. You may always feel sad that she let you down, you may miss her in some ways, but for your own self-respect it's over. My 'best friend/surrogate sister' ran off with my husband. I hate her for that, but there are still times when I feel sad it worked out that way, as I miss her friendship (more than the husband, lol). But she was the one who chose to betray me and end our friendship. this woman has betrayed everyone you love and she has ended your friendship. How could you continue? Every time you saw her or heard her voice you would remember all this.

shocked222

Person_one wrote: »

It does seem completely bizarre that she's happily been best friends with a mixed race woman for years and that this has never come up before.

I know this is going to sound like a massive stretch and it is highly unlikely, but I read an article the other day about a man who suddenly started being horrible to his family and ran off with a younger woman, it turned out he had a brain tumour that affected his personality and after he'd had surgery to remove it he was back to normal and was distraught at how he'd behaved.

Only you know your friend, does this seem like an attitude she's always had but has hidden from you or like an out of the blue and inexplicable personality change? Do her parents and other family members hold racist views?

I really don't want to sound horrible but my friend isn't very intelligent and in the past, some of the things she has read or heard, she has REALLY got the wrong stick of, she also has several "beliefs" that are completely made up and bizarre (though not offensive) but they account for maybe 2% of our actual friendship and I just thought she was a bit kooky and sweet. Even in the way she said the things she did as horrific and evil as they were it was like she had no idea that she could possibly think they could be seen by ANYONE as wrong - in her idea she was completely in the right, it was complete fact as far as she was concerned. It was like somebody who had read Mein Kampf and saw it as a really good book, which was entirely true and scientifically accurate.

And that is why i'm in shock.

notakid

As you said she isn't very bright and probably needs to feel she is superior (without any effort or understanding) in some way to others because deep down she knows she is lacking.

From what you are saying her opinion on anything/reasoning isn't one of the things you like or admire her about as she often seems to get the wrong end of the stick.

I know its not easy, but try not to be hurt, pity her in her stupidity. She's lost a good friend due to her own ignorance. This type of person is always going to shoot themselves in the foot.:cool:

shocked222

heretolearn wrote: »

This must be really distressing for you OP, you are not being silly at all, and I can understand how it's confusing and upsetting to suddenly find out about this women's true opinion of you and your family. I don't have any sympathy for the idea that she may have been raised with these opinions. we all question what our parents teach us (do teenagers ever stop that for five minutes?!) and she is an adult and responsible for her own views. What she said is clearly extremely offensive and ignorant - I think we can guess at the gist of it - but her laughing and saying 'it's a biological fact' means it really is a deeply ingrained belief. There's a lot of what I would call casual racism around, out of laziness and just I don't know really, without any actual malicious intent or beliefs behind it. But this sounds like something from Stormfront, as you say, real white supremacy stuff. I hate to think where she got these ideas from. It's one thing to 'not like black people' and another entirely to think black people aren't human. Both racist but in different leagues. I don't think there is any way to get through to or influence extremists like this.

I'm so sorry about the pain losing a friend will cause you (even a bad friend) but I can't see how you could continue with her. You'll get over it. You may always feel sad that she let you down, you may miss her in some ways, but for your own self-respect it's over. My 'best friend/surrogate sister' ran off with my husband. I hate her for that, but there are still times when I feel sad it worked out that way, as I miss her friendship (more than the husband, lol). But she was the one who chose to betray me and end our friendship. this woman has betrayed everyone you love and she has ended your friendship. How could you continue? Every time you saw her or heard her voice you would remember all this.

I'm sorry about your husband and your best friend, heretolearn, that's the ultimate betrayal because you lose the two adults you are closest to in one go - it's horrible and I understand how you feel.

As far as I know, (and i'm close to her mum and siblings) they aren't members of the national front or anything, I think she is alone in this. But who knows what goes on behind closed doors? As you say this isn't casual racism (I've even heard my dad make a racist comment and told him off about!). She has a firm belief that black people are, her words, "less evolved than white people and when you see them up close you can see they resemble animals more closely than white people." :mad::(

Hermia

shocked222 wrote: »

All I can think is that she "forgot" I was mixed race?! And (stupid me), I didn't want to be accused of "playing the race card" by turning round and saying "erm, have you forgot I'm half black?".

I'm also a mixture, but am very fair-skinned (my mum is the palest woman in the world and diluted all my dad's genes!) and people make racist remarks in my presence assuming that I won't mind 'cause I'm basically white!

I would not be able to be friends with any bigoted person, but I'm a arty-farty liberal sociology graduate so I can't imagine they'd want to be friends with me. I can understand how upset you are. It's hard to discover someone is not what you thought they were.