Wondered if anyone else has this.
My parents live a couple of hundred miles away so we hardly ever get to see them. They're in their early 70s and are brilliant grandparents to our DD and DS, who always look forward to seeing them. Problem is, they are getting more and more racist.
Several times we gritted our teeth and didn't rise to the bait, but there comes a time when it is impossible - when my mum (more so than my dad - he thinks the same but seems to know when to keep quiet) will say something outright and add "don't you think so?" and is astonished - outraged even - when we don't think the same. They don't see that there is a debate to be had.
Their argument, which took us exhaustingly and painfully round in circles over several hours, can be summarised as follows: 'all Moslems are terrorists, or at least you solve the problem by treating them as such - you send "them" all "home" [wherever that may be] and you solve the problem, and if you argue otherwise it is because you have been "brainwashed" and can't understand because you are too young and didn't live through the war. And England has changed and it's no longer English, and "these people" don't respect the British way of life - all "they" want to do is change "our" rules and wear their silly scarves on their heads to hide their identities, and they get out of wearing school uniform and motorcycle helmets, and they go round bombing us all, and if you sit next to a Moslem on a bus carrying a rucksack he'll have a bomb in it, and WHY are they HERE when all they want to do is sponge off our taxes and kill us all, and "they" learn about how to kill people in their mosques and we are being invaded...'
There's more - but I think you get the gist.
Now, DW and I are hardly earringed lentil-weavers who recycle the "Guardian" into worm-bin compost, but we just found ourselves getting more and more worked up - mainly with the continual assertion that we can't have an opinion and we are "trying to provoke" by daring to say something different.
The other frustrating thing is the false dichotomy argument - when someone can't separate out the individual point you are making from a more general, sweeping statement. You point out that the vast majority of the troublemaking thugs in their area are white, and you get: "Oh, so you're saying that makes it ALL RIGHT to bomb people, then?"
Then we got the pity card - "Doesn't it bother you at all that we are frightened to live somewhere that doesn't feel like England any more?" Oh, yes, so we should be sitting there agreeing that we're all going to DIE because there are suicide-bombing Moslems round every corner. Never mind that we, in our feeble-liberal, Guardian-reading way, were trying to put the whole thing into some kind of perspective and stop them obsessing about it.
I can see how, from their point of view, the world appears to have changed astonishingly quickly in the last 50 years and the cultural landscape has shifted at a bewildering speed. But it's a huge jump from there to claim that they are somehow having their way of life forcibly altered by a minority, or that they are in danger of death every time they step out of their front door, or that this country is being overrun with murderous illegal immigrants living off "proper" British people's taxes.
The most frightening thing of all is that they are educated, well-travelled people - both originally from working-class backgrounds, they were each the first person in their family to go to university and are now the epitome of middle-class respectability. They bought their own home at the age of 25, worked all their lives in professional jobs, are well-travelled and well-read. So you can only wonder what kind of thing is being said by people who haven't had the benefit of their education and background.
The other day I was reading that the BNP's latest solution to the problem is to ban all Moslems from flying, and it occurred to me that this is just the kind of thing which my mother would think was a perfectly reasonable, right-thinking suggestion.
Ultimately, of course, they are not going to do anything which might mean they can't see their grandchildren, so this issue will probably be left to simmer and will explode from time to time. I know the ideal thing is probably to accept that, at their age, they are not going to change their views and just to avoid the subject, but it can be remarkably difficult to do so - especially in the current political climate.