Bye bye bigot MIL

[222333Annie]

My MIL has always had questionable views on things but I’ve always for the most part not engaged with her as she is the kind of idiot it’s impossible to reason with.

now I have a DS (10 months) .On Xmas day, she said most disgraced celebs are innocent and women “put themselves into these situations” she used a number of racial slurs Infront of my family (my parents are immigrants and my brother in law / nieces are people of colour )

she then proceeded to tell me I read “ too much science ” when raising my son and her way (the old fashioned way) is the only way.To which my mother replied current guidelines are based on research to reduce SIDS so cannot be a bad thing.

I guess my point here is.Can I really have an anti feminist,racists science denier around my son? She is from the boomer generation but still…?Husband says he supports cutting down contact if she says things like this around him when he is older but obviously cannot completely disown his mum.In an ideal world,I would never mix with someone so ridiculous so at a loss as to how to handle it.She is also very angry she will not be assisting me with childcare when I return to work .Obviously all of the above is the reason why.Should I get DH to explain this to her?

Fucking hell!

MIL:
Upsets OPs young nieces with racist remarks
Upsets her parents with anti-immigrant remarks
Refuses to acknowledge current SIDS advice
Generally makes everyone uncomfortable

OP asks for advice on dealing with this, given DH doesn’t want to cut his mother off completely, and thread gets derailed because she brings MIL’s age into it as a possible mitigating factor! Unbelievable.

OP, my advice is to go as low contact as possible and NEVER invite her to anything that you want your family to be at. Ignore the posters that suggest your DS will be missing out on a relationship with ‘his Granny’. This is not a relationship that will benefit him. In fact he will be better off with a minimal relationship, so it will affect him less when he realises what an unpleasant person she is.

Why is it so bad to give babies some fresh air these days then? I used to put my babies out in the back garden, not in all weathers like some, they were perfectly comfortable in their proper coach built prams.

Where did I say it was bad?

I didn't think you did, I was just adding the pram comment.

Just as an aside, I used to have an Edwardian era book on housekeeping and child rearing.
It gave suggested timetables from women with a full staff ("See the cook at 9am to discuss menus for the day") right down to women with no staff at all 😱

It went along the lines of:

6:45am Make and lay husband's breakfast.
7:00am Call husband for breakfast.
7:15am Clear breakfast. (Hopefully husband eats fast)
7:30am Get baby up. Feed and change baby; put outside in pram with cover appropriate for the weather.
Various other tasks (can't remember exactly - black leading the grate, cleaning the doorstep or whatever)
11:45 Bring baby in for change and feed...!

I'm referring to the posters losing their stack and going "OMG how dare you use the word boomer you ageist bigot!!!" and not mentioning the racism at all.

Clearly there are posters who find the word boomer extremely offensive, but who don't give a shit and aren't bothered by racial slurs.

I have friends who are travellers, who are not white (Romani and dark-skinned). They have to deal with colourism as well as anti-traveller racism.

White travellers of course suffer racism but they suffer racism because white supremacy does not consider them white.

My friend was in a stage play about travellers at the Young Vic that brought together lots of different GRT people from different backgrounds, and the white travellers were treated noticeably different in London than the travellers with darker skin. There's a theatre company in London that is run or used to be run by a white traveller, who I used to work with, and she clearly benefits from white passing privilege at the very least.

Yes I agree @AppleChristsBirthdayMacchiato.
I think if Irish Travellers aren't recognised as such then they have passing privilege or white privilege as you say.

It comes back to the society you live in.
In Ireland at least, Travellers have a much harder time of passing, even briefly, whereas in London they'll often get mixed up with the wider Irish population (although there's still some general bigotry towards Irish there in some quarters unfortunately).

In Ireland, Travellers are easily recognised as such. Dress codes are often a bit different, social patterns are different, and the Traveller accent is different and very distinctive, although it probably just comes across as Irish to anyone outside the country.

When you're in a place where you're immediately recognised as a Traveller there is no privilege, quite the opposite. And this is in a place where (obviously) there is no general anti-Irish feeling.

It's no good to you if there's white privilege in operation across much of the world, but you live in a place where you're still constantly othered and marginalised and discriminated against and basically don't have any privilege at all.

That's been my point all along. There's nuance, it's not simple, things vary in different societies.

@Coyoacan

Of course a person of privilege should challenge derogatory slurs.

But someone who hasn't directly experienced racism telling someone how they should handle it, is like a man telling a woman how to deal with misogyny.