Last night, we were watching the news about someone in politics saying if his gropu/people wanted slavery, he’d vote for it. My mom and I saw easily the error in this, but my step-dad thought it was stupid that everyone got uptight about it. My mom and I tried to explain he should’ve thought of another example. But my step-dad wouldn’t hear it, and he just started on a rant on illegal immigration and racist comments and the freedome of speech.
I’ve told him countless times how I hate racism and anysort of discrimination.
And, it was over dinner that this started, so then I was quietly crying over the food. Then the crying got a little bit louder and my mom left the room and my step-dad was trying to justify everyone with the ‘freedom of speech’ and how it’s his right to say whatever he wants about whoever he wants.
Instead of starting to yell about how stupid that was, I told him quietly (through hiccups) and tried calmly about how wrong I thought it was. “Just because you CAN do something, doesn’t mean you SHOULD do it.” and I kept going on with things like that and saying “Do YOU know what it’s like? No. You don’t, but I do. I know.” etc, etc.
This, I’m still saying little to him, but I’m happy for what I did. That I made myself say it when I’d usually just throw in comments like “Hick”, “Backwoods”, “Redneck hillbilly.”. I explained it out. And though I know his mind won’t change, I couldn’t just let the subject go. It felt like I was standing up for others or.. I was just satisfied. Everything I was holding back, I explained out.
Not “Classy” in the usual sense of the word, but it seems classy in SOME way. Being decent? Standing up for what you believe is right? Something along those lines. Whiel that whole ordeal was going on, though, this kept running through my mind:
“There’s two types of evil people in the world. The people that do evil things and the people that see/hear/know that it’s happening but do nothing to stop it”.
And I felt that I should atleast TRY to stop it.
Classy in SOME way, right?
