I know your column is mostly about romantic and sexual relationships, and my question is about family relationships, but I would take any great advice you could offer.
I’m in my late thirties. I was adopted as an infant by a white American couple who already had one biological kid, my brother, but were unable to have more. They always treated us equally and I had a nice childhood. Now that I’m older, things have changed. I was adopted from a South American country and despite sometimes being mistaken for Caucasian, I’m Latino and identify as such. The problem is that my mother and brother are huge, unapologetic racists. (My father is dead.) They don’t have a problem calling Latinos lazy criminals (and worse) in front of me. I think, in some warped way, they see me as one of them, so therefore not Latino, but… come on.
I don’t live near them and only have to endure their nonsense once a year when I visit. (They never visit me.) At some point my husband and I plan to relocate back to their side of the country. I’ve asked them to not spout their ignorance in front of me, but it doesn’t stop them. They live in a small town that has next to zero ethnic diversity and people whose attitudes further their prejudices. My extended family share their views, but at least have the decency to not insult me to my face. What should I do? Part of me wants to disown them, but do they really deserve that? I love them, but frankly, I don’t like them as people at all and they make me do all the work in our relationship; neither of them bothered to call me on my birthday, for example. Am I crazy to keep them in my life?
The Brown Sheep
My advice after the jump…
Your racist mother and racist brother don’t visit you, they don’t call you on your birthday, and they insult you to your face?
For your own sanity, TBS, I think you should pretend that they’ve both already run down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisible, just like dear dead old dad.
There’s no need to formally disown them, TBS. You don’t have to make a scene or send a letter. Just stop doing the work of staying in touch—stop visiting and stop calling—and the disowning will be gradual and de facto. Hold on to those memories of your nice childhood, stay in contact with a few members of your extended-but-still-racist family if you like, and get busy building a family of your own with your husband. (I’m not encouraging you to have kids if you don’t want to have kids. Family, so far as I’m concerned, includes close friends, neighbors, pets, threesome partners, etc.) Drop by mom’s funeral if you feel like it, skip your brother’s.
I’m sorry you were adopted by such shitty white people.
