What if You Found Out That a Friend Was Racist or Otherwise Hatefully Prejudiced?

[ADigitalArtist]

The vast majority of friends I've left behind was when I left a particular religion. Their views were pretty uniformly misogynist and homophobic, but I can't honestly say thats why I left. I left because I realized I didn't believe in gods and that made me an apostate in their eyes, so the withdrawal was mutual.

There's only been a couple times I can remember ending a friendship. And the reasons were more like safety or because the friend was having an active hidden affair against the other friend.

I don't know if it's because I let my values be pretty well known to people I associate with, or because I live in a pretty liberal area, but so far a social phobia has not come up. So I can only guess at how I'd actually confront that problem.

What I can say is that I dislike being in friend groups with a black sheep. So if someone treats me well but treats someone else poorly, or is consistently backbiting other people then I probably won't hang around them. If they're nurturing private hate, it matters to me less than how they actually behave. (Intent < impact) But it does still matter some, depending on how and to what extent they're nurturing their private hate.

 

[☆Dreamwind☆]

As a mixed race person, I'd be very uncomfortable all of a sudden. Though I'd like to think they would have made themselves apparent before we came to be good friends.

 

[Kfox]

Suppose you found out that one of your friends was racist, homophobic, anti-trans, or hateful toward any given religious group. How would you respond to that, and how would you handle the friendship?

My own answer depends on many variables and is not uniform for everyone or all situations, so I'm asking out of sheer curiosity about others' thoughts.

I've always handled it by remaining their friend, but challenging them on their bigoted views; because they are more likely to listen to me than someone who is not their friend.

 

[Debater Slayer]

I've always handled it by remaining their friend, but challenging them on their bigoted views; because they are more likely to listen to me than someone who is not their friend.

What if they refused to discuss any of their views or made it clear that they didn't want to engage with any of your challenges?

 

[VoidCat]

Suppose you found out that one of your friends was racist, homophobic, anti-trans, or hateful toward any given religious group. How would you respond to that, and how would you handle the friendship?

My own answer depends on many variables and is not uniform for everyone or all situations, so I'm asking out of sheer curiosity about others' thoughts.

Unknown. I've faced that situation a few times and often it's different. Like when I told a friend of several years I was medically transitioning starting hormones she began to spewl a lot of homophobic,transphobic rhetoric tried to blame it on my autism and even tried to be a little antipagan and insist I was only pagan cuz my autism etc...

I have not contacted her since. Her comments hurt me too much but this woman is a very kind person and none of what she said was out of malice. That had hurt a lot more cuz she genuinely believes these things and thought she was being kind.

However I've remained friends with another person that is antitrans and cried on the phone telling me I was going to hell.


I will say it damages such friendships. It hurts and makes it hard to keep contact. Even if there's other aspects of the person I love

Edit: im sorry if this is not as detailed as it could be or doesn't completely answer the question. Im tearing up thinking about such situations

 

[Kfox]

What if they refused to discuss any of their views or made it clear that they didn't want to engage with any of your challenges?

Then it would be up to them to keep their bigoted views to themselves, and to refrain from commenting when I exhibit views that contradict their bigoted opinions

 

[Nakosis]

Suppose you found out that one of your friends was racist, homophobic, anti-trans, or hateful toward any given religious group. How would you respond to that, and how would you handle the friendship?

My own answer depends on many variables and is not uniform for everyone or all situations, so I'm asking out of sheer curiosity about others' thoughts.

Yeah, it'd be dependent on circumstances, though generally I suspect I just wouldn't hang around them much anymore.
I've been in that situation and it just gets too irritating.

 

[Secret Chief]

How would you respond to that, and how would you handle the friendship?

I can't see a friendhsip surviving that disclosure. I'm not one for trying to persuade anyone of anything - least of all regarding such sentiments as you cite.

 

[Searching4God]

I would discard them. You can't be racist and go to Heaven. Imagine these white supremacists.. "Jesus was white." The Church needed a white God. It's the times, not a speaking of a lie.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Suppose you found out that one of your friends was racist, homophobic, anti-trans, or hateful toward any given religious group. How would you respond to that, and how would you handle the friendship?

My own answer depends on many variables and is not uniform for everyone or all situations, so I'm asking out of sheer curiosity about others' thoughts.

So...where I grew up at least, and at the school I went to, it would have been basically impossible to form any friendships or associations with anyone if I was going to strike out people who didn't show some level of what would now be considered racism, homophobia, anti-trans or anti-religious/non-religious behaviour, I would have had no friends, no associations, and would've hated myself I suppose. I certainly wouldn't have been able to associate with my own parents.

Now, to be clear, I'm not suggesting for a moment I hated other groups, nor that the world surrounding me did. But my point is that anyone over the age of...I dunno...has gone through a journey where ignorance of certain things becomes (hopefully) replaced by a deeper understand and recognition of one's own roles and responsibilities in this life.

So...rather than focusing on what someone said, I'd be more focused on the context in which it was said, including their background, and whether I thought their statements were of ignorance or hatred or they had the propensity for growth.

Ultimately, to my mind, some of the strongest proponents of speech control or thought control are more harmful than people making ignorant statements. People are people, flawed and imperfect. I'll judge them, don't get me wrong, but I'll do it on the whole as much as possible.

[Edit] In rereading the OP, I think you were suggesting levels of anti-whatever behaviour that were hateful, rather than 'merely' ignorant and hurtful. I could handle levels of that for a while if dialogue was open. Mostly this would be where someone hated atheists. Or perhaps white males. Groups I'm a part of.

 

[Debater Slayer]

So...where I grew up at least, and at the school I went to, it would have been basically impossible to form any friendships or associations with anyone if I was going to strike out people who didn't show some level of what would now be considered racism, homophobia, anti-trans or anti-religious/non-religious behaviour, I would have had no friends, no associations, and would've hated myself I suppose. I certainly wouldn't have been able to associate with my own parents.

Now, to be clear, I'm not suggesting for a moment I hated other groups, nor that the world surrounding me did. But my point is that anyone over the age of...I dunno...has gone through a journey where ignorance of certain things becomes (hopefully) replaced by a deeper understand and recognition of one's own roles and responsibilities in this life.

So...rather than focusing on what someone said, I'd be more focused on the context in which it was said, including their background, and whether I thought their statements were of ignorance or hatred or they had the propensity for growth.

The above applies to my experience and perspective too, as I said in post #50, except that I also used to have views that I grew up with that were hateful toward certain groups until I was exposed to different ideas and discussed as well as debated them (which started back in 2011, when I joined RF).

What would you do if you saw strong reasons to believe that someone didn't have the propensity for growth in terms of ignorance or prejudice even well into their adulthood—for example, in their 30s to 50s (or older)?

Ultimately, to my mind, some of the strongest proponents of speech control or thought control are more harmful than people making ignorant statements. People are people, flawed and imperfect. I'll judge them, don't get me wrong, but I'll do it on the whole as much as possible.

Who do you see as "some of the strongest proponents of speech control or thought control"? What characterizes their beliefs, and how specifically do they try to control speech or thought (e.g., through legal coercion, social means, or something else)?

[Edit] In rereading the OP, I think you were suggesting levels of anti-whatever behaviour that were hateful, rather than 'merely' ignorant and hurtful. I could handle levels of that for a while if dialogue was open. Mostly this would be where someone hated atheists. Or perhaps white males. Groups I'm a part of.

Yes, I intentionally focused on hateful prejudice, although I realize that in some cases—but certainly not always—it overlaps with a degree of ignorance or fear.

What would you do if a hateful person refused dialogue? Also, what if they hated groups other than white males, atheists, or any other groups you were part of?

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

If someone genuinely was hateful then that might be a problem, but a bit prejudiced or mildly bigoted I don’t really care.

Most folk with diverse friendship groups understand that prejudice and mild bigotry are pretty common across the board.

Same. A lot of the people I know or interact with say ignorant, prejudiced stuff at times. It's normal, really. There's definitely clear levels of severity with this sort of thing.

 

[Debater Slayer]

Same. A lot of the people I know or interact with say ignorant, prejudiced stuff at times. It's normal, really. There's definitely clear levels of severity with this sort of thing.

I agree that there are levels of severity.

At what level of severity would you personally draw a red line, as far as friendship goes?

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Now I'm gonna gate h a t e.

*Crickets* It's very quiet hate. Lol.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

I agree that there are levels of severity.

At what level of severity would you personally draw a red line, as far as friendship goes?

If their words or behavior is seriously violent and dehumanizing towards others. At that point, the friendship is over. I stop talking to people if their beliefs get too disturbing for me, and I'm fairly tolerant of extremism and oddness.

 

[Debater Slayer]

If their words or behavior is seriously violent and dehumanizing towards others. At that point, the friendship is over.

What words would you find to be seriously violent and dehumanizing toward others?

I stop talking to people if their beliefs get too disturbing for me, and I'm fairly tolerant of extremism and oddness.

I think that (not talking to people after a certain threshold of discomfort) is understandable. There's no point in a friendship if it brings much more discomfort than companionship, in my opinion.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Suppose you found out that one of your friends was racist, homophobic, anti-trans, or hateful toward any given religious group. How would you respond to that, and how would you handle the friendship?

My own answer depends on many variables and is not uniform for everyone or all situations, so I'm asking out of sheer curiosity about others' thoughts.

For me, it probably depends on a few factors.

If the person held those negative views based on past trauma, I'd be inclined to give them a pass. If the group the person hated was the church that was complicit in their abuse as a child or the ethnic group that controlled the government that slaughtered their family, I'd probably give them a pass and just avoid talking about it.

The other factor is willingness to change. I can recognize that I've held intolerant views myself in the past, so it's a bit hard for me to fault someone for holding views that were somewhat more intolerant than mine or is a few steps behind me on a similar journey... but they have to be on the journey. If they're married to their status quo, we likely wouldn't stay friends.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Suppose you found out that one of your friends was racist, homophobic, anti-trans, or hateful toward any given religious group. How would you respond to that, and how would you handle the friendship?

You probably mean acquaintance, not friend. I would already know the views of people I would call friend, and bigots would not be among them. I wouldn't have a personal relationship with such a person except possibly in a very limited way, one that would exclude such matters from our interactions, such as a bridge partner.

I'm fortunate to live in a place that doesn't appeal to such people very much. We're in Mexico, which frightens a lot of conservatives to even visit much less move to, and I live in a very liberal, gay-friendly, relatively irreligious retired expat community, and the minority who have expressed homophobic or MAGA opinions in local Facebook groups, for example, have been corrected often enough and intensively enough that they have learned to keep such opinions to themselves.

I contrast that with where I emigrated from. My last eleven years as an American were spent in rural Missouri, where just about everybody was a conservative Christian, and we were in the minority that had to stifle expression. I didn't try to change those people's minds, but they also weren't friends.

So yeah, if someone runs too far afield of my atheistic humanist worldview, there's no incentive to spend time with them or try to change their minds. We've known formerly friendly conservative Christian Canadian and American acquaintances mostly through the bridge club and my wife's former huge garden club, but those relationships (and the garden club) ended with the pandemic and the vaccine and mask wars. We didn't discuss politics or religion before that, but now, those people won't say hello or make eye contact when we encounter them on the streets, and we are neither offended nor feel any loss.

Would you have been open to continuing the friendships provided that both of you could be open toward discussing (but not arguing over) such relatively controversial topics?

Maybe, but when does that ever happen? What bigots want to discuss such matters open-mindedly? We're not talking about children in my case. Raised by a conservative father and a liberal mother, I was a bigot once myself parroting my father, who used racial slurs for blacks and Mexicans. My peers had to school me, and I gave up those attitudes and words. But at my present age and situation, I'm not encountering young people to counsel, and my peers are pretty set in their ways, so such conversations as you suggest not only wouldn't occur, but they also wouldn't be productive if they did.

 

[Debater Slayer]

For me, it probably depends on a few factors.

If the person held those negative views based on past trauma, I'd be inclined to give them a pass. If the group the person hated was the church that was complicit in their abuse as a child or the ethnic group that controlled the government that slaughtered their family, I'd probably give them a pass and just avoid talking about it.

The other factor is willingness to change. I can recognize that I've held intolerant views myself in the past, so it's a bit hard for me to fault someone for holding views that were somewhat more intolerant than mine or is a few steps behind me on a similar journey... but they have to be on the journey. If they're married to their status quo, we likely wouldn't stay friends.

How would you determine whether they were on the journey or married to their status quo?

 

[Debater Slayer]

You probably mean acquaintance, not friend.

I meant a friend, but I can see what you mean about not becoming friends in the first place with someone who has specific views.

The question is partially based on the fact that some people end up revealing certain views later on into a friendship, as opposed to before it could even start, or have some changes in their views, whether the changes cause their views to be more hateful or less so.