My teenage son is too right-wing

[outdamnedspots]

We talk a lot about crime and politics at home.

Ds 17 has picked up that a lot of crime is committed by immigrants and people who are not-white, and us getting far too right-wing for my taste. He sounds awful, really racist.

What can I say to him to combat his thoughts?

OP I can empathise. I am going through something similar. I try and keep the relationship strong and keep the conversation going. I try and invite myself into his world to understand where he is learning this stuff. Wherever possible I try and hear him out and then ask gentle questions. Sometimes I will bring up a family friend or family member that is non-white, eg "would you share that opinion if Uncle X was in the room? Why not?"

I often tell him I love him no matter what, even if we disagree. And I always make it clear that I disagree with some of his more outrageous opinions. I wonder if he is deliberately reacting against our views as part of normative teenage-hood!

Best of luck.

Committing a crime and being convicted of one do not always go hand in hand.

Of course crime statistics often show higher proportion of black people if they are the ones being targeted (e.g. stop and search) and white counterparts are met with more leniency. Institutional racism is rife.

Totally disagree with this. If my child is racist, or sexist, or homophobic then it is up to me to teach them.
DS went down an Andrew Tate rabbit hole for a little bit, mainly the bit about men being second class citizens rather than how to treat women awfully (luckily only a week or so in). We (especially his Dad) talked about all the crimes he has commited and how awful he was to women.
We also looked at why men feel like the world is against them (man up, that's so Gay, boys don't cry etc). Thankfully he saw the light. We also got him off bloody Reddit and explained what a bad source of information it is.
We haven't had issues with racism (half of their friends aren't white), but would look at doing it in 2 ways. Firstly I would be very firm and say what he is saying is racist. That racist views aren't acceptable and the information he has is biased. Breaking down the stats.
I would then look at positive stories about people of colour. Try and find some links to things he likes and talk about positive things as well.as.what people have had tonight through. The stats in the US about black men is shocking. To me the reason it's shocking is because it demonstrates how broken black men have become. And it's no surprise. If people who had family of slaves the intergenerational trauma for generations of being a slave, with the breakdown of family let alone all of the violence, rape, etc followed by decades of prejudice, poor schooling, discrimination by police, society etc, terrible portrayal in film/tv blah blah. Anyone could go on for hours.
Bottom line he is racist. Racism is wrong. Get him to explain why. Get him off tick tock.

@bozzabollix yes, there are societal issues. And cultural issues (which maybe stem from the societal issues). The first step to solving these issues is acknowledging that they exist and impact on crime statistics.

@BippityBopper do you think the disproportionate representation of black men amongst knife murder suspects is purely down to institutional racism? I think for things like drug crimes, yes, the bias inherent in stop and search will result in a greater proportion of minorities being convicted for drug offences. But for something like "suspects in knife murder crimes" that's not affected by bias (other than general racism/societal issues as mentioned above).

Why the bias with stop and search? Is it because the officers are racist? Or because they have seen the statistics on crime? It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation...

When was it civilised and safe?

I agree we need to curb immigration for multiple reasons but your viewpoint is completely and utterly racist. Your "them and us" mentality is a drain on society.

OPs child isn’t talking about black men (even though many on this thread seem to want to). He’s talking about immigrants to Britain.

It’s most likely an impression he has from the social and internet environment he spends time in. Even statistics may not affect his views at this stage. But I do agree that volunteering in a refugee support centre type place could be helpful as he has certainly dehumanised this group of people.

You could also try to fact check his yourself if you can get the crime statistics. Also fact check immigrants as % of population and immigrants as % of health care workers, people in minimum wage service roles like cleaning and fruit picking.

My guess is almost certainly immigrants are not over represented in crime, but he’s picked that stereotype up from somewhere.

I can’t think of anything worse than making a racist and person who is anti immigrants work with people who he actively dislikes. It’s not fair on them and puts them at risk. These are real people and not there to teach a racist a meaningful life lesson.

@BonifaceBonanza actually the OP has given very little information about what her son is saying.

It's because you're living in the past where being called racist is the worst thing ever that anyone could ever experience for some reason.

The kids see through this and it makes them think wtf happened to this country.

Love that this thread has descended into a ‘well he’s not wrong and actually pretty justified’ and people love to say they aren’t racist.

The thing is the most the word is throw out unnecessarily the more it would loose its meaning. Literally stating facts is considered racist.

Also, quite a lot of people commenting are usually immigrants themselves who can tell the difference between people coming to work and integrate and trouble makers. That doesn’t make them racists and is ridiculous to use this world for everyone who is concerned about obvious issues.

If you Google UK crime committed by migrants it takes you to an Office for National Statistics page which says they don't collect the data.

It's not unreasonable to collect the data to disprove or prove this fact which seems to be somewhat contentious.

It's a shame we don't collect the data which would enable fact based discussion.

Like transphobic...

That rather depends on whether their opinion actually bears a relationship to the available evidence. Manifestly immigrants are not responsible for the vast majority of crime in the UK.

I wouldn't do that. It just further paints immigrants as a helpless drain on society. If you want him to have more contact with non white British people try to get him to volunteer with some industry groups or something like that if you can such a thing.

Yes! Add to this... these figures only show the people caught doing crime. So while 10% of convictions are Black and just 4% of the population is Black, this stacks up because Black people are statistically 9x more likely to be stopped and searched. White people are doing similar stuff and getting away with it. I've seen it with my own eyes at notting hill carnival where our Black friends got searched by police and a white acquaintance (the only one carrying drugs and a weapon) got to just walk on by.

Trying to get your teenage children to accept your views is always an uphill task.

I suspect its as much a reaction to the fact you "talk a lot about crime and politics at home" as anything else.

Perhaps drop those two subjects for a while?

I would be on him like a ton of bricks. Challenging him to fact check the nonsense. Current stats show approx 14,% is committed by immigrants.

Immigrants are highly acknowledged for keeping the NHS running. I have a sixteen year old he has no interest in SM because of the pure lies and nonsense.

Currently watching protests here, Ireland where absolute gobshites are believing nonsense, sharing "news" which is quite obviously AI generated, all in an echo chambers.

What is very concerning is the lack of critical thinking skills or literacy skills most of them have 🤦‍♀️

You could explain how the algorithm (and even mainstream media) works to get attention - when an immigrant murders someone the focus is all about their immigration status, whereas when a white English person does the same their identity is not a focus. So it's confirmation bias more than anything. Immigrants are humans and some humans commit crimes - but most are just working in our NHS/paying taxes/studying here. Could look at some stats to balance his view? Yes some will commit crimes, but research shows that immigrants make a net positive financial contribution to the UK (whereas natives take more than they put in!) and are more likely to be highly educated than the native pop. (This article is 10 years old - sure you can find more) www.ucl.ac.uk/economics/about-department/fiscal-effects-immigration-uk

The thing is I really don’t think any amount of fact checking will influence a young person who is effectively being brainwashed by the swell of social media surrounding them. People who hold strong views don’t tend to listen to facts they dismiss them

"...a white acquaintance (the only one carrying drugs and a weapon)"

Do you regularly go round with people who carry drugs and weapons?

I agree with this.
DS18 appears to have views on the right of Gengis Khan. Thankfully he was off getting drunk in Greece at election time, so reform didn't get his vote.

In his case I think it's partly due to the fact that a trans agenda is pushed down their throats at school, so they watch these right wing tick tockers and get their views from that.

I expect uni and real life will bump off some of the edges.

He's allowed his own views of the world and you're allowed to push back too. That said people don't like to be preached at and society is becoming very preachy at both ends of the political spectrum, the moderate centre voice is being lost in all the noise. As a society rational conversation is quickly going out the window and it is leading to more extremist views being vocalised.

My advise would be don't come at him with hard left politics. Gently challenge his commentary and get into discussion/debate with him about it, get him to justify his stance to you and apply it to the real world. Keep challenging gently by asking a question or two in response to him.

I would discuss the sex differences in criminal behaviour. Most violent and sexual crime is committed by men. He is male does that make him guilty of this sort of thing or could it be that not all immigrants are criminals?

I'll gently challenge this with the news coverage of last night's riots in Leeds. Inaccurate reporting leads to speculation and that's where people get hyped up "the BBC are deliberately not mentioning X and we can clearly see because it's all over social media..."