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Not Sure What to Do...
Feb. 8th, 2006 03:25 pmSo I have an issue that has been plaguing me since last night. I'm really not sure what to do so i'm hoping maybe someone out there in LJ land can give me some advice.
I have this online friend, Myles, who i've gotten pretty close to in the past few months. We've talked almost everyday since mid October, so I consider us pretty good friends. We argue about politics and stuff a lot, but its usually just for fun since he's Republican and i'm so not. He's made a few racial jokes that I wasn't comfortable with and I tried to ignore them and move on... and everything was going along swimmingly. He's coming to the Philly area the end of March to do a talk on tropical fish at some club in Jersey (he breeds fish for a living) and we are going to do touristy things since he's only ever been here once.
Well... the end of December we had a big fight about our different beliefs and his attitude. He had been attacking the things I do and how i react to things and it just blew up into this big thing. Since then I've had this feeling of tension whenever i talk to him. Most of the time its a lot of fun talking to him but other times he can be a royal asshole. Like last night... we were talking about college, and he made a comment that black studies was a useless major to anyone except NBA players. That is exactly what he said. Then he tried to tell me it wasn't a racist comment. Then he said he felt the same way about Asian studies and Jewish studies... I'm an Asian studies major! So i started getting angry at him. And he was going on and on how black studies just came about in the 60s because of rioting and was saying how superior he was to people different than him. I was getting really angry, because we know how I feel about racist attitudes. Then he got into how he thinks every Middle Eastern person is a terrorist and tried to convince me of this. This argument wasn't one of our normal arguments, he seriously has a racist frame of mind, and I cannot deal with that. So I told him that if he was going to act this way, I don't want to meet him in March. Then he said I wasn't respecting his opinions, but racism is not an opinion to me. He knows it bothers me and he just kept going on and on. We've also had previous conversations about how he doesn't like gay men (but lesbians are okay), and about his views on war and guns. He owns a gun and that scares me since i am so anti-gun/violence.
So I'm in a tough spot. I'm afraid if i meet him he's going to say something and upset me in some way. But he already said if i decide not to it is going to hurt our friendship. When he's not saying awful racist things he's really nice and I enjoy talking to him a lot. But... when he's an asshole, he's a big royal asshole. I'm just not sure what to do. I don't want to lose a friend, but I don't know if i can deal with his white straight male supremisist attitude. I don't know what to do.
I have this online friend, Myles, who i've gotten pretty close to in the past few months. We've talked almost everyday since mid October, so I consider us pretty good friends. We argue about politics and stuff a lot, but its usually just for fun since he's Republican and i'm so not. He's made a few racial jokes that I wasn't comfortable with and I tried to ignore them and move on... and everything was going along swimmingly. He's coming to the Philly area the end of March to do a talk on tropical fish at some club in Jersey (he breeds fish for a living) and we are going to do touristy things since he's only ever been here once.
Well... the end of December we had a big fight about our different beliefs and his attitude. He had been attacking the things I do and how i react to things and it just blew up into this big thing. Since then I've had this feeling of tension whenever i talk to him. Most of the time its a lot of fun talking to him but other times he can be a royal asshole. Like last night... we were talking about college, and he made a comment that black studies was a useless major to anyone except NBA players. That is exactly what he said. Then he tried to tell me it wasn't a racist comment. Then he said he felt the same way about Asian studies and Jewish studies... I'm an Asian studies major! So i started getting angry at him. And he was going on and on how black studies just came about in the 60s because of rioting and was saying how superior he was to people different than him. I was getting really angry, because we know how I feel about racist attitudes. Then he got into how he thinks every Middle Eastern person is a terrorist and tried to convince me of this. This argument wasn't one of our normal arguments, he seriously has a racist frame of mind, and I cannot deal with that. So I told him that if he was going to act this way, I don't want to meet him in March. Then he said I wasn't respecting his opinions, but racism is not an opinion to me. He knows it bothers me and he just kept going on and on. We've also had previous conversations about how he doesn't like gay men (but lesbians are okay), and about his views on war and guns. He owns a gun and that scares me since i am so anti-gun/violence.
So I'm in a tough spot. I'm afraid if i meet him he's going to say something and upset me in some way. But he already said if i decide not to it is going to hurt our friendship. When he's not saying awful racist things he's really nice and I enjoy talking to him a lot. But... when he's an asshole, he's a big royal asshole. I'm just not sure what to do. I don't want to lose a friend, but I don't know if i can deal with his white straight male supremisist attitude. I don't know what to do.
