To ignore my elderly neighbour?

[RallyB]

Due to his racist remarks.

He is very elderly and alone. We moved next to him literally just before Covid took hold and so for the best part of a year it was an ‘over the fence’ getting to know him situation. Polite conversations and I found out through conversation he lost his wife a year before we moved there. No children of their own. Apart from his sister he literally has no family and no living friends.

I felt so sorry for him. Due to covid me and DH would pick up essentials for him and leave it on his doorstep and when restrictions relaxed id take over home cooked meals as he said he just eats microwave meals.

He would tell me about the war, his wife, what it was like in our area back in the day, his really interesting job before retirement. A really lovely little old man who was endearing and sweet. He always asked about the children, work, my family life. We felt really lucky to have such a lovely neighbour.

Fast forward to about 8 months ago and he made a racist remark in conversation. I can’t remember what it was exactly but it shocked me, he rambles and mumbles a lot when he talks so I thought I must’ve misheard him but he then said something else (again can’t remember what). I naturally withdrew. I would check in now and again and if I saw him in the garden then I’d always say hello and ask how he’s getting on but that’s about it. It’s obvious too because he used to call every couple of weeks and I would too but I just haven’t been. I’m also back to work after mat leave so not in the house as much as I once was.

He has a carer now, I’ve noticed a man who appears to be of west Asian descent going in the house once per week.

Out in the garden today and I see my neighbour and I ask him how he’s getting on etc and how his new carer is. His response:

‘Oh yes I have a new carer. A young lad. He’s very good and managed to get me a mobility scooter which has helped. He’s a Muslim though, not that I hold that against him’

So I responded ‘of course not. Why would you?’

He ignored my question and started to talk about something else as he always does. He then said ‘I was in the hospital last week, we need to get more English nurses in there, everybody is foreign and can’t speak a word of English. They won’t let English people become nurses anymore and it’s a real shame.’

I then made my excuses and went inside the house.

AIBU to just ignore him? DH understands my point but because he’s elderly and alone he says we should still check in on him regularly and make sure he’s ok.

If I see him out in the garden I avoid going outside but harder now that the weather is nicer and DC are out playing in the garden.

Racists should be accepted for who they are now?

I don't think so.

Meh, I wouldn't be able to invite him over for a cuppa tea. I'd just do as you do, OP, not try to change him, and ignore him, unless he were in serious trouble. But then it's different when you are the foreigner and have faced enough microaggressions already, and don't want to invite more into your life. I

Could be dementia, could be not, either way I wouldn't be able to see him in the same way.

No, the OP did not say he had dementia, so you're making that up to fit your outlook. And what I said was the logical conclusion of your "he can't be expected to have kept up with how things have changed over the last 30-40 years" handwaving. Casual racism was already becoming unacceptable when this man would have been, at a reasonable guess based on the OP, in his late 50s or early 60s. Working age, not in his dotage. The Race Relations Act was 1968, FFS! The likes of Love Thy Neighbour and Till Death Us Do Part were no longer being made by the mid-70s, almost 50 years ago. I was born in the 70s and by the time I was at secondary school the P word and the C*y word were already becoming unacceptable - and I grew up in a 99% white, working class area.

You're infantilising someone who will almost certainly have had opportunities to think about things differently if he wanted to take them - plenty of other people his (approximated) age have managed it.

Probably. When he was a young man, it was normal for marriages to be role-differentiated, for garages to have pin-ups on the walks, for women to have to get husband’s permission to enter into a financial agreement. Those of us who are aware of all that tend to just roll our eyes.

Although I despise the racism on threads like this, they do serve their purpose. When people say there’s no racism here, it’s another thread to signpost them too....along with the many, many others.

I am disgusted that mumsnet seem to be ok with racism and racist apologists though. Very disappointing, but then, if there’s so many posters that are racist and spend their time minimising and making excuses, no doubt there will be many like that at MNHQ too.

Don't condemn him completely. This old man grew up in a totally different world and I can understand why trying to make yourself understood, or trying to understand what is being said to him by people whose first language isn't English might distress a confused old person.

As other pps have said, he could be in early stages of dementia or decline. My mother was a lovely, warm, friendly woman but when she got vascular dementia she became rude and aggressive towards the people who were caring for her. It was a total character change and I used to tell them how appalled she would have been to hear herself behaving in that way, when she was truly herself.

A friend's lovely, gentlemanly dad got Pick's Disease (a really extreme form of dementia) and when on the bus with his wife, would hit her and use the 'c' and 'f' words - language he would never have used when in his right mind.

Old age, especially lonely old age, can be tragic, so perhaps just wave and smile, and say a brisk hello, but don't lecture this man or completely shun him on the basis of this - he's just expressing confusion and distress at the way his world has gone and everything is much more difficult from his point of view. I think to view him as a simple racist is a bit of an over-simplification. His remark about the young carer was meant to be positive - just tactlessly expressed. Try and see it that way.

Out of interest OP, why did you name change for this? 🤔

I was born in 1971, and I was raised none of those things were acceptable.

Well done @Maribu for being raised with views that were on The Right Side of History. Many people weren't, and were raised with views that were totally mainstream at the time (as in primetime BBC evening shows, all the newspapers) that now we rightly find objectionable. I just hope that you don't find yourself in the position of having your opinions condemned in 30 years time when you're old and vulnerable and struggle to keep up, because society has moved on.

CuteSleepyDog, you must be disgusted with everything and see everything as racist. You tarnish everyone with the same brush. You dismiss everyone and that is your problem. You have two ears, use them and listen to people.
I was born outside this coutry and of colour but I see more ignorance amongst people like you, who dismiss everyone as racist because they do not agree with you. I do not agree with you and I am not racist!

I wouldn't go out of my way to help out a racist old fart but that's just me

"That old man (and me as well to be honest) grew up in an era of 'black and white minstrel show, golliwogs as one of the most loved and popular toys and famous comedians on tv would routinely makes jokes about non white people. The word 'nr' or 'paki' would be used to refer to a non white person and it was fine to do so. I remember my own dad making jokes about non white people. It was utterly 'normal'.

I was born in 1971, and I was raised none of those things were acceptable."

The man being discussed was born in the 1930s, so you're an entirely different generation.

Did you not care to read the OP? Where she blatantly states the man said 'racist remarks?'

Not about the Muslim carer. Not about the nurses. He made separate racist remarks. **

The OP also said he was "a really lovely little old man who was endearing and sweet"....

Agree with this reply wholeheartedly.

His comments weren't great, but I don't feel they warrant you cutting him off.

My Gran is in her 90s and says similar things. They're from a different generation.

My friend's lovely husband developed dementia and started making loud racist remarks about people. It was so bad that he had to go into respite care the weekend his only child got married because the church minister was West Indian and they couldn't risk him shouting out. My friend was sad about it, and felt she couldn't display a photo of their son and his bride. She didn't want to tell her husband he'd missed the wedding. In the end I suggested she put out a photo and let her husband think he didn't remember the occasion.
Racism is never right, and unfortunately things were different in the past. It doesn't mean we older people can't learn what is no longer acceptable (Not that it ever was acceptable).

...or maybe even the follow-through from said fart!! 🙄

My aunt and uncle used to scoff at things my late granny used to say. She wasn't being hateful but used terms that she didn't know were derogatory etc.
Now my aunt and uncle are almost 80, and I cringe myself inside out when I hear them commenting about things like gender issues.
As people are older and don't/can't keep up with the world and its views, their comments then seem horrible to others. They're almost always ignorant rather than anything else; and it's also true that people get curmudgeonly after a certain age and don't want to acknowledge things evolving

This.

He's from a different era and you can't take someone out of their time. I'm sure that he actually likes his carer - Muslim or not - and just expresses himself clumsily.

You're a lovely person to see beyond his thoughtless words.

I had a neighbour like this 94 . We'd just say Jack that's not a nice thing to say. It didn't stop us visiting him though. Interestingly he had been an engineer who had worked worldwide. Africa, Australia, middle east etc. Had lived among many nationalities. He could be racist but strangely he saw characteristics in them that he admired as well. Seeing them superior to the British mindset. He had no mental issues just a tired and worn out body.

I wouldn't abandon this elderly man @RallyB

It must be distressing to think of dear old Nan or mum as a racist. Instead you convince yourself that dementia has made her say those things. And that’s partially true, in that the disinhibition associated with dementia means that she says out loud things she’d previously ‘only’ have thought.

Dementia affects short-term memory and learning new things so anything being said under the ‘influence’ of dementia is already buried deep in a person’s mind.

The most charitable explanation that I can come up with to explain racist comments in such situations is that those were views that WERE once held but perhaps as times changed they were discarded, only to re-emerge with dementia. Most likely though, it was just manners and the fear of social consequences that kept unpleasant views hidden.