Today’s column
January 3rd, 2010
… is online here.
I’d be curious to hear from parents who have experienced anything like question #2, which I’m sure you have — how do you handle it when someone expresses beliefs you disagree with, or uses language you disapprove of, around your child?
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It depends on the language, and the child (and the age of the child, but for examples of X-ism (where X is race, or class, or sex, or religion, or orientation or whatever) and the like I generally do about what you suggest — attempt to address it politely, rationally and negatively, and then go on. Later I review it with the child, which mostly involves explaining why something that is not hate-speech is still X-ism — the kids mostly figured out on their own that isms were Not Good.
Of course, this is assuming that I’m not totally gob-smacked in a way that leaves me, as you describe, frozen. Fortunately for this (and unfortunately for the world) it’s happened enough that I’m running out of shock and am better at actually reacting in the moment.
If it’s the words themselves I disapprove of, because they are obscene, or profane, or hate-speech, I’ve said either “please, don’t use that language around my children” or (to the child, if old enough) “honey, that’s one of THOSE words that we don’t use, even if some people do”.
I’ve mostly given up on snark as a reaction, partially out of principal but mostly because it doesn’t work and tends to indicate the underlying subject is one to be discussed, and I don’t really see any point in arguing with someone that Xism has any validity. I do, however, occasionally answer negatively phrased statements about “Them” with “um, as an X I find that offensive” whether I’m an X or not. (This obviously works best with people who don’t know me well enough to know that I’m not actually a Gay Hindu Puerto-Rican from West Virginia, but it works remarkably well at gob-smacking them into frozen silence.)
My grandmother, may her memory be a blessing, was born in 1904 and held some unfortunately racist views…she treated everyone respectfully to their face, but sometimes she said things that were just appalling.
Apparently, when I was too little to remember this, she used the n-word in front of me, and my mother told her in no uncertain terms that if she ever said that around me again, she wouldn’t be seeing us anymore. It worked, but that’s not the kind of thing you can say to acquaintances and expect it to have the same effect.
Unfortunately, “pickaninny” did remain part of her vocabulary, although she didn’t use it often or in front of anyone to whom she was directly referring. Oy.
I recently had the experience of trying to figure out what to do with the flipside of this; I’m a therapist who usually works with adults, but I have one 10-year-old client who I see with his mother, and I was halfway through talking about how people “screw up” when I realized that was maybe not the best language to be using around a child. I pretended it wasn’t a problem and just switched to “mess up” in subsequent sentences, but I definitely felt completely wretched in the meantime (his mother did not say anything to me, though).
That’s obviously different from making a non-obscenity-laden racist statement, of course, but it seems to be on the same spectrum. But while I would hope that someone would firmly correct me if I said something racist/sexist/homophobic/etc. around a child (or an adult), I was rather thankful for this particular mother giving me a bit of a break.
I’m fortunate that we haven’t experienced anything as extreme as the situation in the letter, but we had an interesting conversation with the kids in October. We were going to DC for Columbus Day weekend, and we found out that the Equality march was going to be there, too. We had to explain to them that some people believe that marriage should just be allowed between one man and one woman, and not two men or two women. My nine year old’s response – ‘That’s stupid!’. I pointed out that I agreed with him, but that disparaging other people’s opinions, no matter how much we might disagree, is not the way to go, and that there were going to be lots of people marching and demonstrating to try to change people’s minds.
I was in a vaguely similar situation right after my grandfather’s funeral. My mom and I were chatting with her aunt and uncle, and they were talking about how a town near them is really going downhill–crime, businesses closing, etc. Which apparently gave her uncle a reason to segue into a whole bunch of racist comments. No, Uncle Bill, I’m pretty sure the area is failing because there are no jobs in rural middle-of-nowhere PA, not because there are more “colored” people there than there used to be.
Thanks for mentioning in your column that the third F is freeze. I could kick myself still for not going, “Um…wait, did you really just say what I think you said?” or otherwise expressing shock or strong disapproval.
The way I tried to handle it was probably way too subtle. As the conversation progressed to talking about the one or two black kids going to the local schools, I mentioned how, the years I taught, each class had one or two black kids, and how lonely and isolating that probably was for them, to be the only one.
The point I was trying for in a roundabout way was, “Hey…people just like you…whose feelings matter…not sources of blight.” I probably failed horribly, but I couldn’t fathom saying anything harsher. I guess I’m just conditioned to be “nice,” especially in that particular situation.
I don’t know how I might handle it if I had kids, but I really like Miss Conduct’s suggestion that admitting you wish you’d done something different can be a good way of discussing things like that.