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.
Not sure if this is particularly relevant to the discussion at large but I saw you mention you were a former tradcath.
If you don't mind me asking, what's your relationship with religion these days? I think the church is an underrated way to get people on board with leftist ideas in ernest because it is one of the few communal practices remaining in culture, and its the reason so many people are motivated to give to charity.
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