Challenging Family Bigotry

I don’t usually pour my energy into the sinkhole that is responding to objectionable social media posts, even when scratching the itchy impulse to sling a vomit emoji or a WATF into the comments section of someone I don’t know, feels irresistible.

But it’s trickier when you not only know but have real life connections and interactions with the authors, re-posters, and likers of problematic posts. To clarify, when I say ‘objectionable’ and ‘problematic’, I mean homophobic, transphobic, racist, and bigoted posts masquerading as ‘I am entitled to my opinion’.

The first time one of these popped up on my screen from someone familiar to me in real life I reflected through my shock and anger. Perhaps it was ill considered? Posted in haste? I decided to let it go.

The problem is the first time was not the last. Over a couple of years there have been enough to show they are more likely to spring from strongly held, hostile beliefs rather than accidental misjudgements.

How then do I react?

Although not extremely frequent, each fresh post is another pebble in the shoe of my conscience, and prompts a quote from a speech given by Chief of the Australian Army, Lieutenant-General David Morrison to roll around in my thoughts:

‘The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.’

It has become impossible for me to just keep walking.

Silence feels unacceptable and challenging these Facebook posts in the comments section would just pour oil on a bin fire I don’t want to give oxygen to. So, this is where I am at:

I don’t believe the people I know who engage in this content are bad people.

It just seems they might be struggling to see beyond their own cramped worldview and demands. They seem to feel threatened and instead of learning to open themselves up to explore their uncomfortable feelings, they clamp down and slam shut the door to curious compassion.

We all love our comfort zones, but when our comfort comes at the expense of the health, safety, and wellbeing of others we need to question whether it is worth it.

I am not going to quote specific content I’ve encountered. But I will probe and push back on one troubling often cited reason for the defensiveness in many of these posts.

The authors claim they don’t want to be made to feel responsible for ‘things’ that happened at the time the British invaded Australia. The lack of awareness that these ‘things’ are still happening and that ‘things’ is a slimy euphemism for ‘atrocities’ leaves me lost… and unhelpfully debating whether to reach for something heavy to throw or a bucket to vomit into.

Then there is the point that this approach to historical events misses completely:

No one is directly responsible for their ancestors’ actions.

But whether we had responsible ancestors or not we can all reflect on the impact those ancestors’ actions had, and still have, on others today. It is the only way to move forward with awareness instead of entitlement.

None of us live in a vacuum. We all have effects on each other. Turning away on the grounds that we weren’t around when something bad happened in history, guarantees bad things continue to happen.

Between the ages of six and thirteen I grew up in Germany, where high school students had excursions to former Nazi concentration camp sites. This was not to make the students whose forebears were responsible for the horrors perpetrated in those camps ‘feel responsible’ but to educate all students about this horrendous period of their country’s history.

It was to prevent the next generations from walking into their future with blinkers on about their past.

Those who have only ever lived in one community might have to work harder at gaining a wider world perspective. It might feel uncomfortable to slip on glasses and see beyond the brand of fierce, Australian, colonial, patriotism that has inflicted and continues to inflict so much trauma on First Nations people and their countries.

When I dig beneath my initial outrage and frustration over these social media posts, I am left…frustrated by my current indecision and the frayed end of this post. I like clean excisions and neat stitches.

I would prefer not to create family rifts but am also not conflict avoidant enough to rule out cutting people from my life whose values and world view feel so incompatible with mine.

Would I make this decision based on social media posts alone? Probably not. I am cautiously open to respectful conversations with the people involved but unwilling to engage in meaningless conflict for the sake of it.

As for future social gatherings, I think I may struggle to just play in the topsoil of pleasantries when I can’t unsee the sinister seeds threatening to sprout from below the surface.

You may also like to read:

Honoured, Grateful, And Guilty: A Tangled Family History