I feel like some of my life-long friends have been slowly falling down into a racist suburban american paranoia ideology.
For example: I've lived in a lot of neighborhoods as an adult that are less than 99% white. Therefore where I live is "ghetto". That my friend will somehow be a victim of random acts of crime for visiting. That they can't visit after dark etc.
Or sometimes they'll just pull statements out of the air, usually with little to no prompt. Like In a group chat, someone brought up the month of June, another friend said "is that Juneteenth? Do we need to pretend to care when that is?" Very thinly-veiled "humor" and that's being extremely generous by even pretending to call it that.
The instinctive answer is "find new friends lol" but I don't like that answer.
First, because I genuinely believe my friends are good people, and want to do good, despite their ignorance. Second, the basis of most racism is that I believe they fear what they don't understand. And sure, there sure be some onus on them to attempt to learn. But how?
Third, I hope that by challenging their views in a constructive way, perhaps they might reconsider even for a moment how they view the world. And forth, if I found new friends, this people would continue to exist, now unchallenged by opposing thought which will only further incubate themselves in their sinkhole ideology.
So what are some ways to approach this? If I say the obvious "like this is racist as fuck", it's only going to make them defensive. And it's kind of dumb I even have to be gently cognizant because white people see racism as an immortal, intentional act. So the conversation goes nowhere if you call a white person racist since they'll automatically get defensive.
I'm kind of rambling at this point. Would like to hear ways everyone here tries to save friends you see sinking down the suburban pipeline when it comes to micro (and semi-macro) aggressions.
Probably best not to directly respond to their racism. This is when they'll have their hackles up and feel like they have to defend themselves, especially if there are others watching (like in a group chat) and their reputation is at stake. Also when you'll get the typical "lighten up," "it's just a joke," "have a sense of humor" reponses. So as shitty as it sounds, unless they are or are about to harm someone, or they're really going overboard, just let it slide.
It's best to change their behavior outside of these situations, and preferably when they're alone. They might not have much investment in these beliefs, but because others react positively they continue this shitty behavior. When they're in a situation out of their comfort zone that can allow them to reflect on their behavior, and not being asked to defend themselves, you'll have much more progress. In this situation you'll also be able to tell if they are really invested in their racism, and sincerely hold racist beliefs, or if it's really just not serious, they're not invested, and it's really just because they don't know how else to act, people react positively, they want to fit in, etc. etc.
An anecdote: All the boys when I was in middle school were really into the whole South Park-brained "wanna hear a joke? Women's rights!" type jokes about women and feminism, and my neighbor was definitely one of these guys. So we were sort of part of the same friend group, except he always fit in really well and I felt like I didn't fit in, and a lot of it was these jokes - I didn't watch South Park, I didn't really think these jokes were funny, I didn't get them, but I wanted to fit in really badly and I thought maybe I didn't get these jokes because I didn't understand what feminism was. So one day I'm walking home with my neighbor and I straight up ask him, hey, what actually is feminism because as I understand it's just equal rights for women, which like, seems like a good thing? But then why do most people seem to not like it if its a good thing? And this guy was just like, yeah uh I have no idea what feminism is, I think you're right though like that's all I know about it too. Pretty much "idk why people don't like it."
I wasn't trying to change this guy's mind or anything, but if I was that would've been the situation to do it. If I had confronted their sexist jokes head on it would've been a dogpile of people clowning me, but talking with this guy alone he clearly didn't understand what he was saying, knew about as much as I did, and was just saying these things to fit in and make people laugh. Its better to talk to people outside of the groupthink, where they're more likely to talk sincerely and not put up a facade