Quote:
Originally Posted by Arbie
Please be warned. Some of this can be upsetting.
My husband's job involves dealing with the public, often people who are homeless, addicted, and/or dealing with mental illness. He often comes home and tells me about something silly or stupid that a co-worker or a customer did that day. That's fine. Telling your wife about your day at work is normal. However, it also reveals some very disturbing things about his way of thinking. While some of his attitudes have improved in the time I've been married to him, some problems remain. I would like to know how to deal with it, or else I'd like it confirmed that it can't be dealt with.
Ordinarily he's a good person. But he has blind spots, as we all do, and he can't see where these things are problematic.
1.) Greatly improved: His attitude toward homelessness and mental illness. It helps that I also deal with mental illness, and that I've been homeless myself. I sometimes have to remind him that the labels he throws on those people might just as easily apply to his wife. He shouldn't say about them what he wouldn't want said about me.
2.) Still a big problem: When he tells me his work stories, I don't need to know what color or what sexual orientation the person involved is. Only sometimes is it relevant to the situation. Can't he just describe the behavior, without mentioning those things? He doesn't tell me about something "a straight man" or "a white woman" did. He'll merely say "a man" or "a woman." When he doesn't specify race or orientation, it's a pretty safe bet that the person involved is white and straight. But if one or both of those doesn't apply, you can be sure he will mention it. And he doesn't see the problem with that, because he's not actually using derogatory terms. If I speak up, he will insist he's only describing, not judging. Then he'll accuse ME of "bringing race into it."
Is there a way to explain what's wrong with this? Or is he never going to get it? He's in his mid-50's, by the way.
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I'll be completely honest here, I think there is a balance here to take into account. As a man who's wife (ex, really but we can't get divorced yet) blatantly makes comments related to race and gender, creed, lifestyles all the time, I have to say merely mentioning the color of someone's skin or other descriptor isn't necessarily being racist or wrong.
On the one hand I agree that there are times when it's appropriate and helpful but many people do this without really being racist in their comments or intending to be.
I don't know the context for his comments so I cant' discern whether or not they seem to be derogatory or not but if I described you to a friend and said this "red haired girl" (or insert your hair color here) while in the midst of conversation about you, would you be offended? Would you be offended if I described you by any other terms? Most times in conversation we do use things like descriptors to paint a picture and it's not really wrong to mention the color of someone's skin if it's pertinent to painting a picture of someone. I think perhaps like many you are over vigilant about reading into things related to things such as this.
As I said it's a balance. Sure there may be times that he doesn't "need" to mention such things but I think there may be times when you're being overly critical of his descriptions of people too at times.
Let him know how you feel about these things and have a conversation. Not about how he's wrong for doing so, but how you feel about it, and be open to his input about this also.
The part that made me think you might be over vigilant about this at times was the line you mentioned about the drunk. if you call someone a drunk and they are behaving as such, and they smell of alcohol it's not derogatory, even if calling someone a drunk isn't putting them in a positive light. It's a descriptor that serves to explain some things that left out would be kind of leaving out important information.
Be discerning and not overly critical picking apart every sentence that happens to include a skin color descriptor. I'm sure sometimes it comes out sounding derogatory but I say be discerning because that's not always the case.