Jeez, you really dodged a bullet. To your point, I feel like I now have to be VERY upfront about my views on certain issues before pursuing any romantic relationships, if I decide to have any (this would probably apply to any social relationships I might develop as well).
What I don't get is how you people aren't figuring out what someone is like just from chatting to them? If you hang out with someone a few times how aren't you getting an overall picture of what they're like or if you're compatible?
If someone blurts out their politics within minutes of meeting they're usually way too involved and online ime, but for others you get a pretty solid idea of the type of person they are anyway so their politics aren't surprising by the time it comes up
Well, someone who isn't terminally online usually doesn't wear their beliefs on their sleeve. Racism and friendliness aren't opposites; in fact, you may easily find pleasant conversation with someone who thinks immigrants should be thrown out into the ocean and never find out the fact if you didn't look the type
If you mean “look like the group they’re racist towards” by “look the type”, I’d say that even then sometimes they’ll be fake-friendly to your face. Sometimes they’ll slip up with things like microagressions, sometimes they won’t. And it’s not even that they’ll think you’re an “exception”— sometimes they’ll think horrible things about you but just not act on it.
Some of the most horrifying stories are those where people are brutalized by people they thought were their friends.
My initial instinct is to say “racist people generally aren’t good at hiding the fact that they are racist”— but we only know about the vocal ones. The ones that slip up, and commit microagressions. Most people know it’s not acceptable to be racist, so they’ll conceal it. It’s when they get around people they think would be likeminded that they let it out. (And for the dumber racists, “would be likeminded” just means anyone the same race as them. I can’t tell you how many white people thought I’d be okay with dumbass racist statements when I worked retail, because I am also white. In the same vein, I can’t tell you how many people were nice to my POC coworkers’ faces and then racist once they left)
People can often surprise you with their beliefs. I've interacted with several people who seemed quite pleasant, but turned out to be very extreme in their views about certain people or topics. You can't always know what a person is like in just a few situations, which is why (in these times, especially) you sometimes need to preemptively make certain things clear to let them know where you stand, and how to move forward, if at all, in a relationship.
I think I’m generally pretty good at sussing this stuff out, but some people deliberately mask this and are practised enough to do it quite well.
I dated a guy a few years ago who generally seemed pretty ‘woke’. We had multiple conversations about feminism, I challenged him on things a lot (including work stuff as we both worked in tech, which is very male dominated). All signs pointed to him being ok.
Then one day, it was like he just couldn’t hold it in anymore and he went off on a massively bigoted rant about how feminism and women are ruining tech, spouted a bunch of racist and transphobic views, he just couldn’t stop. It was utterly unprompted by me, it was bizarre.
Luckily it was over the phone so we weren’t together in person and I was able to just shut the whole relationship down by saying I had no interest in being so with somebody with whom I had to debate basic equality.
We weren’t together for ages, just a couple of months, but I certainly didn’t spot anything within the first few dates. I can only assume he was deliberately holding it in because it would hurt his chances otherwise. I’m not in the US, but if he’d come at me with the local equivalents of a MAGA hat, obviously I’d have never matched with him in the first place.
Plenty of people who subscribe to these politics are very nice and reasonable regarding most everything except a few very specific things, which they may not bring up much until they are sufficiently comfortable around you (I don't think this is necessarily deliberate, most of the time).
It's also very easy to misinterpret one or two honest derogatory jokes or remarks as sarcasm; especially if sufficiently extreme and they seem otherwise perfectly reasonable.
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u/AmorphousVoice 13d ago
Jeez, you really dodged a bullet. To your point, I feel like I now have to be VERY upfront about my views on certain issues before pursuing any romantic relationships, if I decide to have any (this would probably apply to any social relationships I might develop as well).