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

[Debater Slayer]

The culture is you take the **** out of your friends. As well as bonding it’s a mild form of social correction. If someone gets too big for their boots, or does something that’s a bit wrong then folk take the ****.

For me, “you said something a bit wrong now we will laugh at you until something funnier comes along” is better than lecturing folk or “cancelling” them.

If you tried to “educate“ someone then folk would take the **** out of you.

I see. Thanks for clarifying.

The talking that I referred to that many people I know (me included) prefer is not lecturing or "canceling," and none of us (my friend group) would think of it as "educating." It's more like friendly talk to understand each other's perspectives on such things, possibly discuss why each believes what they do regarding certain comments, and clarify boundaries if need be. There can be a lot of variation depending on the context and the people involved, of course.

Because they would either travel, work or study in Western countries and as my friends I wouldn’t want them to accidentally cause offence.

For example, if you have never met a black person (or at least many) and get your knowledge of black peoples from hip hop culture, then you can imagine the potential for unfortunate choices in vocabulary

Yep, I have seen that first-hand. I can only imagine someone from outside the West traveling to, say, the US or the UK and singing along to a rap song in public.

I think telling them about such things so that they wouldn't unintentionally cause offense is helpful.

Folk outside the West tend not to be particularly politically correct in my experience, and don’t really understand the extreme sensitivity of many Westerns.

That has definitely been my experience too. It's one reason I tend to casually roll my eyes when I express certain boundaries online and someone who has no idea about the above thumps their chest and assumes I'm a "snowflake" or "easily offended" and not merely expressing boundaries I have thought through for reasons that have little or nothing to do with mere emotions or finding something "offensive."

Where I live, if someone really couldn't handle listening to or encountering things they found offensive, they often either won't have much of a social life or will be a sheltered individual with little experience.

Like everywhere else, though, there's a lot of individual variation, and when it comes to humor involving religion, sex, or one's family in particular, I would say Western countries are usually far less politically correct than many others.

Also I always appreciated when people told me if anything I did could be perceived as impolite in their culture as these weren’t always obvious.

Same, and I appreciate it when people directly tell me if they take exception to anything I've said or done, or why they do so. I realize that some people condescend and aggressively lecture instead of reasonably and cordially discussing such things, but in my experience, those who do so tend to be people I would rather not hang out with in general due to their lack of approachability and level-headedness more than anything else.

 

[LadyJane]

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.

It's a dealbreaker. Weeding out those folks early is key.

Affording everyone full points at the outset creates a respectful tone and hopefully fosters the sort of mutual benefit of the doubt friendships seem to thrive on. People can change. Years can go by and a friend might suddenly reveal something about themselves, totally out of character, that comes as a surprise. Something that makes you wonder if they always felt that way or grew to feel that way. And lose the points they have.

It depends what you mean by found out. If I heard it from a third party I would question their motives while hearing them out. You used the word hatefully so that implies intent. A person blowing off steam and saying something in a moment of anger may not mean what they say, but still, I would inquire. Verify if it was heard correctly and see if they backpedal or double down. I would hope they were reel in-able.

I would then wonder if my weeding out process was pointless in the first place.

 

[Kathryn]

Yep, I have seen that first-hand. I can only imagine someone from outside the West traveling to, say, the US or the UK and singing along to a rap song in public.

I think telling them about such things so that they wouldn't unintentionally cause offense is helpful.

A friend of mine is from Germany and when he got to the US, he was like "Wait, this place isn't even close to 50 percent African American." He also expected to be shot or to hear gunfire at night, and neither happened. Maybe he was disappointed, I don't know.