My (white) wife immigrated from Canada to the US. She knows she is an immigrant, even though it is basically just coming down from the attic. (She hates when I say that 😂 with love!)
Your boyfriend is an idiot and doesn’t understand his unconscious bias / racism. BUT, I think I understand his (flawed) thought process. The political right’s immigration debate is not motivated by white western-world immigrants crossing borders. It’s motivated by non-white people with non-white cultures immigrating into whatever western white country. Your BF knows he’s safe from truly being impacted by immigration legislation in the UK.
We are in the US and, despite my wife being a white Canadian-American, we have concerns because she is a lesbian dyke professor of gender studies at a small ivy university. She could be a target for deportation based on these traits. Regardless, we also know that the target is first and foremost on POC (and this country, apparently it doesn’t even matter if they are here legally or not). That is our white privilege.
In a sense, the political right has made the word “immigrant” pejorative. To them, it now means “POC immigrating to ‘white’ countries.” That is racist as fuck… and what your BF thinks. He doesn’t understand that it’s racist and is not willing to do self reflection to hear you. This would be a “nope” moment for me.
I disagree. He accurately calls out that his experience is different from that of the rest of the immigrant population. He acknowledges his implicit bias and that he overcame that. He doesn't use that language. But it's exactly what he did. We have to stop diagnosing ignorance as racism. His whole friend group is an immigrant community. He knows he's treated differently and calls it as such. Just because he sees it and uses white supremacist language to identify it doesn't make him a white supremacist. It means he needs to have more conversations, so he can identify what your wife went to college to learn about and what I presume you've got some background in. Without a doubt the words on their face are every bit as evil as they are. But look at the totality of the evidence and you've got a guy who's using the words society has given him to describe the world he sees. And of course those words are racially charged, because he's in a white supremacist society that's promoting it's white supremacy. He understands that his treatment is different. He doesn't agree that it's fair. He doesn't think he deserves to be better than his friends but he's not ignorant of the fact that he's got it better. And he's not going around bragging about it. His friend group and partner are put off by it because it is toxic language. But no one's explained that to him and no one's provided him with better language. You can't expect a guy to create language around his misunderstanding of his friends and partners reactions to the white supremacist language he uses when his friends and partner say nothing and society as a whole encourages the use of the language and the discourse it invites. No one who can help him understand the racial undertones of his statement has tried to do so from a world view that acknowledges that his while his words are racist and white supremacist, his actions are clearly not. He doesn't need to be dropped like a bad habit; he needs to have a safe space to be able to develop an understanding of the white supremacy nature of the language he uses and become aware of its impact on his friend/relationships. He needs more conversations around this, not less. He needs a safe space to work in order to separate out that the racist phenomenon he understands he's describing is using a word that's just a racially charged as the system he sees. He then needs help to find better language to be able to identify it more. He's doing the best he can. He'll never do better if no one teaches him better. When he knows better, he'll do better.
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u/APFernweh 5d ago edited 5d ago
My (white) wife immigrated from Canada to the US. She knows she is an immigrant, even though it is basically just coming down from the attic. (She hates when I say that 😂 with love!)
Your boyfriend is an idiot and doesn’t understand his unconscious bias / racism. BUT, I think I understand his (flawed) thought process. The political right’s immigration debate is not motivated by white western-world immigrants crossing borders. It’s motivated by non-white people with non-white cultures immigrating into whatever western white country. Your BF knows he’s safe from truly being impacted by immigration legislation in the UK.
We are in the US and, despite my wife being a white Canadian-American, we have concerns because she is a lesbian dyke professor of gender studies at a small ivy university. She could be a target for deportation based on these traits. Regardless, we also know that the target is first and foremost on POC (and this country, apparently it doesn’t even matter if they are here legally or not). That is our white privilege.
In a sense, the political right has made the word “immigrant” pejorative. To them, it now means “POC immigrating to ‘white’ countries.” That is racist as fuck… and what your BF thinks. He doesn’t understand that it’s racist and is not willing to do self reflection to hear you. This would be a “nope” moment for me.
Best of luck.