How do I process my mother using racist term?

[LaGiaconda]

I have been a stepmother for 30 years. My stepson and stepdaughter are a big part of.my life.

My mother has never been terribly interested in my stepchildren and has not met them for many years now.

She has, however, expressed a bit of interest when my stepdaughter, who married a man of South Asian heritage, started her own family. She frequently said how 'interesting' their background must be.

Yesterday on the phone she said a word that I just could not process in relation to my step-grandchildren, so I asked her to repeat it.

That word was 'mongrels'.

I shall not be able to forget she used that word.

It is particularly strange that she should have spoken in this way as she is Jewish but chose to marry a man who is not Jewish and who grew up in a different country from the one where she was born. So I and my two brothers are of mixed heritage....

Tell her to STFU.

Call her out on it every time she uses a racist slur. I don't know why you didn't this time

As others have said, call her out.

I know you said your mum is Jewish but if she is white and married a white man, no racist is going to call you that word anytime soon so it doesn’t apply to you in her eyes.

How do you process it? You understand that people are flawed and despite her being your mother she seems to have has outdated views. Hopefully if you address it, she'll learn and all will be well.

Oh I did talk to her. I said that it didn't seem the right term to use and that people would regard mixed race as a more appropriate description. Also that I felt that I too was of mixed race.

But I do not think I could have explained anything more to her about why the term was so upsetting for me to hear.

I think that as someone not born in the UK she has always seemed open and friendly towards those of different backgrounds - though looking back it's mainly been other white Europeans who she has befriended.

She is very old indeed. 96 to be precise. I would be surprised if she were alive in a years time. It is just not the sort of thing that can that easily be forgotten.

96 year olds grew up in a very different times, some of them haven't realised that things that used to be perfectly acceptable are now deeply racist. That's not hard to process is it?

How you deal with it is up to you but ime this kind of attitude from the nearly centurinans isn't that unusual

And for all the posters who will come on and post that know non racist 90 plus year olds that doesn't mean that other elderly people aren't racists

They grew up in different times with different attitudes. Multi-culturalism didn't exist. My father, in his nineties, sometimes uses words or phrases that were once perfectly acceptable. I just tell him that that kind of language isn't used nowadays and is deemed racist / sexist etc.

My mum was in her 70s and she used racist words so we went no contact. I had spent my adult life arguing with her about misogynistic and racist opinions and she never learnt. I couldn’t have those words said in front of dc.

I think that some people don’t change. I couldn’t explain to my mum why her attitudes were wrong - at least not in a way that she really understood - and it was too frustrating and upsetting for primary ages dc to hear us argue. You just have to decide to tolerate it or not and I chose not to. Perhaps if my mum was in her 90s and my dcs were adults I’d have tolerated it to support her, while knowing she was wrong.

It may partly be distress on my part that she has never accepted how much being a stepmother has changed my sense of what family.means.

So her use of a word that dog breeders would use negatively towards animals about two young human beings, makes me feel more protective towards the children and more distant from her.

Would you take this understanding approach if i referred to your children as something so disgusting? I doubt it. So why should we be understanding to blatant racism?

Did she use it in a derogatory tone? I'm asking because I come from exactly the same type of mixed background as you do (and there were two languages in my family) and when I was small, I used occasionally to refer to myself proudly as a 'little mongrel girl'! No one had called me that- I had just drawn an analogy with friends' mongrel dogs and cats, whom I thought were great. Obviously you should tell your mother that the term is unacceptable, but it's just possible that she wasn't being consciously racist.

I understand that she's 96 and grew up in a different time but these are children who are connected to you and loved by you so for me unless she has dementia or alzheimers which have affected her opinions and personality then I think it's reasonable to be cross and direct with her. I'd tell her that was a very hurtful term to use against the two children and very offensive and she's not to use that term again. I don't think that just because people are old that they can't learn and do better same as the rest of us. I probably wouldn't go nc with her because she is very elderly and in need of support but I'd be really clear the use of language like that is not acceptable and hold your boundary on that.

Would you prefer to go straight to no contact? This is no way to build bridges. The woman is 96, hasn't given nazi vibes before according to the OP so maybe, lets give her the benefit of the doubt in the first instance.

So does a relative of mine and he is mixed race.

He describes himself as half-caste, dago and coloured (widely used in the USA but he was born in Africa and has lived in the Uk for 80 years)

It completely depends how she responded to you telling her it's not the kind of term that should be used. If she was dismissive that's a dealbreaker but if she was reflective, perhaps not.

LaGiaconda, you sound like a lovely stepmother. Your mother not so much.

I think you process it by putting focus on the joy that you have found in your role as a stepmother, and step-gran, and perhaps think that, despite the undoubted racism that underlies her words, your mother did manage to bring you up to have that loving attitude to your family.

I'm not sure what there is "to process". It'd just be an "Er, mum, that's a bit of racist/offensive language there".

I think it's abhorrent but I'd also realise she is a product of a different time . Tbh at 96 her time is limited but even so I would not want a repeat of that word in front of anyone so I'd keep her well away from family .

I don't mean this unkindly but is she of sound mind?

I think I would tell her exactly that.

We had a relative who lived to almost 100 who used a racist term. We did tell her it wasn't acceptable and it turned out she thought she was being polite. Difficult to explain without more context I know. She didn't use the term again.

If English isn't your mother's first language sometimes terminology we would deem unacceptable in English can be an incorrect translation or a translation of a term no longer found acceptable.

I don't think the word means to your mum what it does to you (& to others on this thread), OP. That's how I would process it. Sounds like you said your piece & she listened, and you'll have to live with whatever amount she could agree with you or not. Only you know your mother well enough to be able to judge if she used the word with contempt (or indeed, now much disapproval she meant).

People tend to lose their inhibitions and the natural guards on their speech as they get very old, particularly if there is any sort of dementia involved. It may well be that this is not your "real" mother but the dementia talking.

I do wish the dementia trope wasn't trotted out every time someone posts about an older person doing or saying something socially unacceptable. For younger people it's always autism and/or ADHD.

There's no suggestion of any sign of dementia. Don't make excuses for racists.

Sometimes its not someone deliberately being racist, its a word they use and have used.

The only thing I can try and compare it to is queer, this was very offensive, when I was growing up to refer to someone who is gay, now its part of the rainbow.

Language changes, if you fuck up, apologise and dont do it again, I would not smear someone has racist, its how they deal with it that counts