My family might be headed for disaster...

[tootiredtoocare]

It came home to me today when my DF went off into one of his regular low-key rants about 'woke culture' and 'box ticking'. Talking about Jim Davidson's Youtube channel and how they talk about 'anything that isn't woke', how 'wokeness' is killing our culture. I almost cried. I can't believe my DF is such a bloody gammon. He is an intelligent man, and we were brought up to be aware of current affairs, to read, we knew how to use encyclopaedias before most of our friends knew what they were, he put the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists into my hands when I was 13. Although I have disagreed with him about a lot of things, I've never worried about his opinions the way I do now. The disaster I think is coming, is that my DB, SIL and their DC are coming over from where they live abroad to spend most of August with us. They'll be staying at my house but obviously we'll spend a lot of time with DPs. Where I can just cut off from my DF, which I often do for the sake of DM, my sanity and my relationship with him, my SIL definitely won't, and DB will back her up, as he should. SIL is very opinionated, a strong feminist, and not being British has an insight into British culture we don't have. Both she and DB are even more left wing than I am and I'm firmly left. Do I sit my DF down and tell him he needs to shut up and avoid political discussion with her? I'd feel like I'm talking to a teenager, and I shouldn't have to parent him. Other option is to have a chat with SIL and DB and prepare them for him being the way he is. Either way, I'm really concerned that things will blow up. It will break DM's heart, she's so excited about finally getting the whole family together.

Such a gammon...? Terms like that should be deemed as racist IMO whether you're White or not....it's clearly comparing skin colour to a pigs skin. So wrong and so offensive.

Oh relax. Your father is probably no further from mainstream opinion than you are, and if your SIL has strong and outspoken views then she won't be too dainty to fight it out with him.

Or you could just accept that you all have differing points of view, all of which will become outdated soon enough.

We have an old relative like this but even worse- we have always been quite tolerant and just said 'we will have to agree to disagree- ' but we drew the line during Brexit when we explained at a lunch how it would massively affect our business and how it would cause huge issues and instead of asking 'how ' to get some understanding simply said 'so be it- you will have to do something else' - (something we've done for20 odd years and were in our 50's. This is a guy with an enormous public pension and not worked for 23 years. We have avoided him since and don't regret it.

I personally would forewarn your relatives and have an agreement to actively avoid politics and use the 'agree to disagree' expression-

My father is the same, casual racism etc. He knows we hate it but I'm sure he does it to irritate us and get a 'rise'. I'd def warn the others just in case a situation needs diffusing. I get you OP x