I’m a south Asian girl and one of my best friends is also south Asian girl. We’ve been friends for many years
I will start with why it started to bother me and how. Specially to prevent non-white trolls that will reply to my post from justifying this:
Throughout all the time we’ve been friends, she’s been making racist remarks to and about white people. I was fine with it before, to be frank, because I was young and impressionable. A lot of south Asians I know, both in real life (classmates, family, friends) and online creators, make these kind of jokes and without repercussion- so I considered it ‘normal’. I thought these remarks were funny and maybe even ‘relatable’, just because I was so used to it. As a note, I didn’t make these racist remarks, even when I was young, because deep down I always knew better; what I’m trying to say is that I simply went along with it as a happy bystander.
I grew out of that mentality by realising over the years that the herd mentality is damaging, immoral and illogical, so these jokes/remarks are unfunny
The kinds of things she says:
She follows the herd mentality (something I hate, because I find herd mentality stupid) and uses the same annoying jokes that every other south Asian uses about white people. Things like (translated): It’s so annoying in this train because it’s filled by white people hahahaha, be careful that the white man isn’t attracted to you, ewwwww how could you like white men? Ethnic men are so much better, white people stink when it’s raining (this is an opinion I know, what I find racist is the tone of her vicie when saying this)
I’ve tried correcting her. I told her “that’s racist”, “you shouldn’t say that”, “you wouldn’t say the same thing about another race”. But every one of my attempts is shot down by the same annoying, illogical “I don’t care”,”I really couldn’t care less”, “so what?”. Which makes me actually resent her because, I try to be consistent in my values, and if I say I dislike racism, then I dislike all kinds of racism. She’s not consistent. She always talks about race and how much she hates racism, but when it comes down to white people, she can say the most ignorant things and justify it, despite evidently knowing that it’s bad based on her “I don’t care” comments. Even worse, when I try to tell her, she shuts me down and tells me that I’m defending them just because I’m “whitewashed” (and even if I were, so what?), or even just because I’m attracted to “Ghora pakoras” (meaning white men in a derogatory way) even though I don’t have a preference
Despite this, I don’t want to cut her off, of course
1) We’ve been friends for many years and we’ve always been there for each other. I have genuine (platonic) love for her and wish her to always be by my side
2) If I cut her off, which I’m not going to, then that means I have to cut all friends (south Asian or not) that are racist to white people, to be fair. I already said that casual racism to white people is common, so that means I’m gonna be lonely, because I’ll have to cut pretty much all my south Asian friends. I don’t want to be moral if it comes at the expense of loneliness, to be honest, specially if it’s already common and there’s nothing I can do to change herd mentality
I am confused on what to do. On the one hand I’m not cutting her off, based on the reasons I gave- that’s for sure. I know it sounds bad but it’s how I feel. On the other hand, no matter what I do to tell her to stop saying these things, she doesn’t care; even suggesting the reasons for me pointing this out are illegitimate (being whitewashed, being attracted to white men etc- which even if I was, doesn’t make what I’m saying illegitimate). Overall, I’m torn on what to do because there seems to be no solution, but also I don’t want to be a bystander because that’s not right
(I’ll have to be a bystander on day to day life, because as I said it’s common. What I mean is I don’t want to be a bystander when it’s close friends)
For context, if this is of any relevance, this friend is 1/4 white