one day we were hanging out, when somehow the topic of the Roma people came up and he referred to them by the derogatory term that starts with a G. I figured he was just ignorant of it, so I told him that it's really not cool to say that and that he went on a whole rant about how romani were "bums" and that "all they did was steal" and that "you would agree with me if i met one." He gave a few anecdotes about how he saw a romani person in line at a grocery store and said they stank, giving this as justification that they are all "bums." When I kept calling him out on saying the G slur he told me to grow a pair, because "people are gonna say stuff you don't like." I was really confused and shocked as he had shown me nothing of this and I was pretty sad. I feel so angry that this kind of discrimination is so god damned common among americans. I cant wait to get out of this hellhole
"If you said that about a black person you'd be a social pariah" usually works for me but I don't know if it's different over there in america. Pointing out that what they're saying is literally identical to anti-black racism is usually a shock to the system but tends to sink in at least a little bit.
i said that, and he said "no i love black people" and continued spewing the most vile, nasty shit
honestly witnessing the frictionlessness of this kind of socially acceptable racism really makes me wonder just how thin the taboos against overt racism actually are. like white americans used to just say that shit about black people all the time what, 50 years ago? and now supposedly we're post-racism because they learned that you can't say the N-word?