To feel uncomfortable finding out my longtime neighbour was once part of the KKK

[Leannery6]

Just abit of information on my backstory. I’m was born in the UK but moved to the US with my parents i was 16 and i am 38 now so i have lived most of my life here, i come back to the uk once every few years to come and visit my extended family.

I live in a nice suburban town in hernando county florida where i have lived my whole life. i have have lived in my house with my husband and two kids who are 16 and 10 for 13 years and have has no issues.
My neighbours have lived on my road for 30+ years and are both in their late 80s they are a man and wife, they were always lovely to me and my kids. Our steeet is a a really tight knit community where everyone knows eachother, we all have BBQs together quite often. My neighbours used to babysit my two kids occasionally when they were babies and i just never imagined i would find something like this out.
I always see him mowing his lawn and chat to him He recently told me out of the blue in a conversation about how he met his wife met that back in the 50s he was a part of the KKK, ive never been so shocked about anything in my life! I’m not sure if any of the other neighbours on the street know this but i would of never of thought in a million years! He is such a kind hearted person. I told my husband and he couldn’t believe it.
AIBU to feel extremely uncomfortable talking and loving next door to him now? I feel like i might be over exaggerating but i can’t look at him the same now,
From what i can see he has absolutely nothing to do with it anymore but i still feel odd whenever i see him. My husband says that i’m overreacting but i’m not sure how to feel. I can’t even avoid him or his wife either because we had quite a close relationship so it would be weird to just stop speaking to them. AIBU to feel like this?

Why not report to MNHQ instead of derailing?

@stormywhethers321 Good on your friend, but does he now go around just casually mentioning to people that he was in hate groups? Without any context or remorse or explaining that he regrets it? I doubt it.

I don't know why people are so eager to believe this old man regrets what he did.

Although I also suspect this thread is all bollocks.

This.
Surely you'd be ashamed of your past views if you didn't hold them anymore, you'd hardly just drop it into conversation that you used to be a KKK member!
I definitely would be avoiding from then on, couldn't get past that.
YANBU

For those saying he "seems okay now", yes he probably does if his neighbours aren't black.
Exactly.
Assuming the OP is white, he would be ok with them, wouldn't he?

There is a similarity to the Mein Kampf thread and the Little Mermaid thread. The OP brings up a third person who is connected in some way to a clearly racist topic and wants to know how to view/respond to/interact with the other person with the problematic trope. And then invites interpretations of the problem and discussion of how people in general "should" respond to the given scenario. But the OP themselves is never the person with the race related behavior/thoughts/feelings that they want to start a dialogue about or move the conversation forward.

These are like the scenarios in the back of sociology textbooks that are supposed to be used to inspire a class discussion.

I wonder what the point of these exercises is.

"I live in a nice suburban town in hernando county florida where i have lived my whole life. i have have lived in my house with my husband and two kids who are 16 and 10 for 13 years and have has no issues."

By "nice" do you mean most of the town is white?

Reminds me of the episode of Quantum Leap where Sam leaps into a member of the KKK and is repulsed and says he can't do it - but at the same time, is struck by how "normal" they seem - friendly with the neighbours, with each other, having cook outs/BBQs/ community picnics etc .
Are you white, OP?
As I find people who are racist will tend to say racist shit in the presence of fellow white people they wouldn't anywhere else.
Presumably thinking we all want to listen to/ agree with their shit. 🙄😡

They all go to church too.

But the OP themselves is never the person with the race related behavior/thoughts/feelings that they want to start a dialogue about or move the conversation forward
Yes, bit weird that OP started the thread, posted the opening comment and that's it
Nothing else
So did they genuinely want the conversation or not?! 🙄
If so, why have you buggered off after doing a drive by plop?

@Boxowine I noticed that too! The OP is never the protagonist or really that central. It's always about someone else's apparently racist views which then opens up the floor to discuss why racism doesn't exists, why it's not actually that bad or any other sociological thought experiment. The Little Mermaid thread was this to a T! It's like a 'safe space' for people to have an external reckoning about their true feelings on race where you cannot be called racist because 'we all have opinions'.

I particularly hate when these threads have a US context because clearly a lot of people here really do not know anything about that context, and instead of admitting that, they just go about how joining the KKK is no big thing.

I read this thread. Then went and had my lunch, came back, and read it again because I couldn't quite believe it the first time.

People are actually defending KKK members:

it was a different time/ a long time ago; judge him by his actions now; he'll have changed his ways now, forget it; one little mistake shouldn't taint his whole character; we all have different opinions; we all made mistakes in our youth; you can't make pariahs of people because of their differing views etc.

This is actually pretty terrifying.

It sounds like the sort of thing I would say to someone as a piss take.

Here's hoping that's all it was

@xILikeJamx why?

Would you really tell somebody that you willingly joined an organisation that terrorised a significant portion of your population, tortured, murdered and committed countless crimes against humanity and is still doing so - for shits and giggles at their reaction?

I mean, you could say you were a member of the Paedophile Information Exchange and actively campaigned for the removal of any age of consent - and even that would have caused fewer innocents untold harm in terms of numbers than what the Klan has done. Would you be expecting to say 'Oh, I'm just pulling your leg' about that?

I imagine, most people defending this man here, would have a big issue if their neighbour casually dropped into conversation how they used to be a member of ISIS/Islamic State, Al Qa'ida, Hizballah or the Taliban. You know, those terrorist organisations where people join up to do 'daft things'.

Yes, those members don't usually tend to be white, All American 4th of July and apple pie type people though.
Or white British.
So they can see the terrorist type element when it comes to ISIS etc
Not so much when it is someone who looks like them, thinks like them... then they're explained away as "just doing daft things" etc

What a weird thing to find out!

I would be inclined to ask him about it if you get a chance where it seems appropriate. Like, "How did you end up doing that?"

I don't think, based on what he said, that you can assume much about his membership, people do things for a lot of reasons, and they can certainly change their views substantially in 70 years. And there were a lot of things that people thought in the 50s that would seem quite alien today.

Perhaps if he was just racist 70 years ago and changed his view, but he joined a terrorist group, quite literally no different to joining a group like ISIS. So why are you excusing it and would you do the same if someone told you they were once part of Isis?

So you are judging this man without knowing him, without having met him, on the basis of one remark? What if his parents had been KKK members and taken him along 70 years ago? The possibilities are endless! You appear to have an absolute closed mind! According to the OP he is a nice old guy who just happened to mention he met his wife at a KKK meeting 70 years ago.

And you seem to assume that he has repented when there us no evidence he has. If I were a former member of a terrorist organisation I wouldn't casually mention it in conversation.

Yes, all those nice old KKK members, bless them.

You don’t know much about the KKK, do you?

🤦🏻‍♀️

That's not what the OP said, although the prospect of having a married couple who both belonged to the KKK is a much more exciting scenario.

What the OP said is that he mentioned that at the time he met his wife he belonged to the KKK. No further information was given about the duration of his membership or anything about current views, redemptive acts, disaffiliation or condemnation of that organization.

The OP is under no obligation to suss out any of that information. Nor would I encourage anyone else to do so. Anymore than I would probe for that from any of my aquaintances. The OP should feel free to judge away. After all, joining a racist organization is an overt act. Very much different to thoughts and opinions, which are private. We can and do judge people for their actions. This is why we have criminal justice systems and credit reports and security clearances, etc.

Hernando County, Florida had the second highest lynching rate per capita in the United States.