Sometimes I don't understand my grandparents

[Breezy du Nord]

While they obviously are smart about somethings (they know that * wants to take them for all their money and is a total dipshit) But on other things they're a bit behind the times.

For instance, when I told my grandpa I was going to Mexico, he says "Oh. You know, one of the nurses in David's home is Mexican," (my uncle David is mentally retarded and lives in an adapted home part of the time) "But she's still real nice."

:shrug: My dad heard this and kinda laughed and I really don't think my grandparents are awful people.

Maybe I should just leave it alone. I mean, it's just that he's old.

Right?

[NaMeaHou]

1. He could have meant

not a racist thing, but a language/culture thing. It's not the same.

Grandparents deserve the benefit of the doubt. Unless they are evil, of course.

[Breezy du Nord]

3. Not evil, I don't think

He was never one of those real cranky grandparents. He only yelled when he had to)

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Be understanding

by some people's standards, calling a Hispanic a "Mexican" is being nice and polite. He probably meant well and felt himself to be quite enlightened.

[nini]

4. They're not awful.. they're from a different time.

I doubt he meant it negatively.

He obviously doesn't have much contact with other cultures/races and doesn't know enough to anything other than what he did to comment on your mexico trip. My grandparents were the same way. They were not racist but they just didn't know many minorities because people were more separated back then.


If he was awful, he could've said much more insulting things.


btw: enjoy your trip :-)

[Breezy du Nord]

5. I did

That was back in sept 2002 and thank you, I had an excellent time.

[leftist_rebel1569]

6. My grandma does that...

she always makes comments like that about the Somalis or the Mexicans in St. Paul whenever I bring up stuff like other countries or some kids from school or whatever, so I know what you're talking about. It bugs me, but she's a good person (although she watches faux news and supports bush...)

[Breezy du Nord]

7. that's at least a nice thing about my grandpa

He really hates bush.

[NaMeaHou]

8. Hell, my mother still makes comments about negroes

and I was married to an african-american for a long, long while. I still love and respect that woman, but my mom comes from small town, middle america - the version that can't understand how people can just be people.

The way things are going in this country, don't expect a great re-awakening any time soon.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. True story

I was a freshman in college, and my grandmother came to visit. When we went to lunch together in the school's dining hall, she looked around, spotted a table where a bunch of black students were sitting, and commented, "The darkies here aren't too bad looking."

I glanced around in horror, but no one had reacted, so I whispered,"They don't like to be called 'darkies.'"

"Why not?" she responded. "That was the masters' pet name for them on the plantation."

"And you think they enjoyed being slaves on the plantation?" I hissed back.

She looked startled, as if she'd never though of it that way.

Well, my grandmother was born in 1899, and there was no significant black population in Minneapolis as she was growing up. Even at the time that incident occurred (1969), Minneapolis was a much less diverse city than it is now, and she literally had no contact with people of other races. Instead she had spent most of her life exposed to Uncle Tom's Cabin and Amos and Andy and Stephen Foster songs.

Middle class white knowledge of Latinos is even farther behind the times.