To my fellow quadlings who are so much more than friends,
At 3:30 in the morning I am compelled to tell you all how much I appreciate you. I just got home from a party where people a) discussed dating outside of one's race as if it were a topic that needed to be discussed b) made fun of Obama and c) said the n word. How upsetting. I can't believe there are groups of people who still say these things. People from our generation, too! I am disgusted. Luckily I was able to leave. Whats even more frightening is that this is the second situation like this I have been in this year. Over the summer I was camping with an old friend from high school and her boyfriend's friends were telling stories littered with the n word and complaining about immigrants. And these were two completely separate groups of people. How do I manage to find these people? Sometimes I am torn between staying in touch with my conservative friends (because I don't like to let politcal differences get in the way of friendship if I think that someone is genuinely a good person and because I believe in all kinds of diversity - and who knows, maybe I'll let a little liberalism rub off on them) or abandoning them all together. I seem to run into this ignorance that is so hard to tolerate too often with conservative groups. It really saddens me and makes me fearful for progress.
Anyway, its pretty late for a long rant so I apologize for all of the errors I probably made :)Hopefully you get my point through my rambling... I am so glad/comforted to know that each of you are in this world. Thanks for being your awesome selves!
Whew! Stewart Colbert Rally tomorrow - time to make fun of everything I just complained about!
Liz
3 comments:
ah yes, the third-life crisis. the post-college time when we begin to contemplate the existence of non-liberals. non-pacifists. non-streakers. i know it well. in my opinion, your choice to continue the friendship is the best alternative: offer narrow-minded friends an alternative path. i have heard very few people use the n word in real life, other than Mark Twain. i can imagine it's jarring. take a shot, keep it together, and stay the course.
yay liberal lizzie. yay un-predjudiced us.
cheers! heading back out to the bar in my jammies!
Agreed. Two thoughts:
Recently, someone made a joke that was seriously off-color. I politely interrupted them and said, "So what I think you meant to say was that he was tight-fisted, right?" It wasn't a situation where it was possible to confront him per se, but it did let him know he couldn't use jokes like that in front of me. That's the only method I've ever found that doesn't lead to a big thing, and if you want to stary friends... (That being said, sometimes it isn't worth it. I once threatened to kick a bunch of friends of a guy I was dating out of my car if they continued to use the language they were using. Needless to say, the guy and I didn't last much past that. Drunk idiot.)
Secondly, it can be really hard to be the liberal voice in the room every time! In Midland, I've never dealt with the n-word or anything offensive like that, but political views there definitely run against my grain. I pick my battles, argue when I feel super strongly, and otherwise change the subject. For your own sanity, sometimes it just has to be done. :)
Love you liberal Lizzy!!!
PS I talked with Molly on the phone a couple days ago while she was at Abby's. Fun!
Jeeze... I mean, I live in a liberal mecca, but that's most likely not going to be true for me in the future. When Paladino made those comments about "not wanting children to be brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality was an equally valid option," it made my vision go slightly red - and then I saw a few comments on FB from "friends" [ugh] who supported that.
Most of the people that I've met who support the tea party or are horrified by the idea of single payer health care have had belief systems that seem cobbled together from a mishmash of sound-bites, half-understood pseudofacts, a religious nonsense. It's easy to dismiss them from Ivory-Tower-Ithaca [where college education is de rigueur and debate is encouraged] but I'm afraid of that transition to the Real-World if it's going to bring with it a sea of such people.
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