Quote:
Originally Posted by Ammi
...there was a video I watched recently and the gist of it was that not being racist ourselves is not enough, it's also not walking away from racism in the knowledge that it's there...(obviously we all have knowledge that it's there..)...but if you or any of us walk away and say bye, you're a bigot etc and not someone I want to communicate with.. then surely that's walking away from prejudice and just leaving it there, there to deepen and maybe spread as well.....just 'distancing' from it and distancing isn't 'facing reality' of something existing...better to try and understand it surely, those fears/'uneducation' etc that are often the cause...
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This makes sense to a point but the problem I have with that is, I've learnt never to rely on my own expectations. I've had to accept that I can rarely change peoples opinions and if I try, ill just end up in a depressingly frustrating place. We can educate people about why we have the opinion we do, provided they want to be educated but when it comes to things like racism, people tend to be entrenched in their already dyed in the wool opinion and lived with those thoughts since they were old enough to understand their parent/s own prejudices. Taking away those opinions also takes away the safety net of all those friendships they have forged with like minded people.
There's a man I work with who is a long established islamophobic. He's always trying to educate us about why he's that way but most of us just roll our eyes and tell him to shut up. Every time someone puts their view across to him he, just like them has a barrage of ammunition to back up his side of the argument.