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I have a friend who dislikes foreign exchange students because he feels that they're taking jobs away from white people and doesn't like the idea that they use Canada's educational services, he thinks Indian people are greedy, dislikes German people, stereotypes women as being

indecisive, lazy, overly sensitive and manipulative. I've tried to explain that some of these foreign exchange students come from countries that have substandard education and should be allowed to use our services so they can get the quality they want, it also hasn't been my experience with

Indian people that they are greedy (I find it odd that a whole ethnicity would all have one common personality characteristic) and that most Indian people have been kind to me, but I pretty sure my attempts have been futile. This friend is also bipolar and has an extremely pessimistic world

view and thinks everyone and everything is out to get him I've never seen him ever blame himself for something bad happening in his life it's always somebody or something else's fault, I'm wondering if its that mindset that is allowing him to oversimplify his ideas about race and gender.

Hearing theses statements makes me really uncomfortable and I was wondering how you guys deal with friends and/or family members who display racist/sexist behaviour.

If they are friends, I call them the feth out and tell them how stupid they are.
Family. Grit my teeth and make it through thanksgiving

Do his good qualities outweigh the bad in your mind? I ask because you're fairly intelligent and I can't envision you hanging with a total moron.
If they don't, then I would distance myself if I were you, but if they do, then just have an occasional conversation about it with him to understand his feelings better.

I once had a friend who had a similar outlook on life and didn't care for anyone but himself. He was constantly the victim, and everyone else was to blame for his p*ss poor choices.

Needless to say not having to deal with him is much more pleasant

Cheesecat...just cut him off from you...bringing it here on this forum is like trying to find justification on being his friend still or something. All your doing is given a "listening" ear to his "rants".

I'm no internet psychologist but this sounds like a mental illness.

How long have you been friends?
Is he worth keeping around?
Punch him in the throat and tell him to grow up and call you when he realizes how stupid he sounds.

 Cheesecat wrote:
makes me really uncomfortable and I was wondering how you guys deal with friends and/or family members who display racist/sexist behaviour.

Drop him. He's friend, not family, and thus you can choose to have him in your circle or not. Racism and sexism are too big personnality flaws, and in my opinion reveal instability in the person. I had a roomate tell me once that divorce was a worse crime than rape. He was an old primary school friend who had long had mental health problems, but I couldn't deal with it anymore. After that conversation I just moved out.

If it's too much to deal with, then dump him.

But at the same time, if you refuse to be friends with anyone who has an irrational intolerance, then you will literally have no friends. Everyone has some form of belief you aren't going to agree with, that you're going to find intolerant and illogical. Obviously you have to draw the line somewhere, but that's going to have to be a personal decision.

Are you the same age?

What age is that?

It's quite common for people to hold the opinions of their parents before they go out into the world. I'd imagine his attitudes will change over time.

He needs to get those lady issues in order though.

Have you tried calling him on it? If he says something that's dumb and not true, try telling him it's not and maybe you'll spark a conversation on the topic where he'll learn something.

Same age as me 21 (well going to be 21).


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 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
Have you tried calling him on it? If he says something that's dumb and not true, try telling him it's not and maybe you'll spark a conversation on the topic where he'll learn something.

I do call him on it but he just sidetracks to even more nonsense instead of proving his point, like when he was talking about how foreign exchange students are taking our education I pointed out that a smart university student should be planning their courses in advance and should be

singing up as soon as possible to avoid getting wait listed, then he sidetracked about some dribble about how these foreign exchange student's families could be bribing their way into schools which I highly doubt happens as it would damage the school's reputation.

Does he go to Uni or College?

 Medium of Death wrote:
Does he go to Uni or College?

He was going to some high ranking video game design school in Vancouver and did some minimum wage work for EA in Vancouver, but he failed his course and got laid off so now lives back at Kamloops with his mom.

I wouldn't tolerate racism from my friends, depending on the level of sexism I might let it slide. (heh, that reveals a double standard there, I suppose).

As for the bi-polar issue, well, you're not obliged to help him. It's difficult to be straight with someone like that, but it's worth trying.

Heh. As an immigrant to Germany I always find it amusing, that sort of argument. Emigration is much worse for a country than immigration, and no country can resist some net movement of population. If my country was awesome enough to attract immigrants I'd be happy about it.

Also dropping him would be hard for me as he's my longest lasting friend, but maybe it's for the better. I guess I should have some kind of discussion about his world view and see if it changes before deciding.

Maybe he's just bitter that he failed? Did he not get the chance to go back or resit?

He's probably looking at the world with resentful eyes because of what's happened to him. If you say to him to stop blaming the world for his problems it might give him a wake up call.

I should add that's he's not very popular (I'm not really either but that's besides the point) and I'm pretty much his best friend so I'm concerned the loss would be much greater for him.

You could stick with him while not tolerating his crap. I've had friends that went through rough periods, sometimes years long, before coming through again a little wiser for it.

Popular stops mattering pretty soon btw, so that's something to look forward to

As usual, TMBG have a salient point to make on the topic:

 Cheesecat wrote:
Same age as me 21 (well going to be 21).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
Have you tried calling him on it? If he says something that's dumb and not true, try telling him it's not and maybe you'll spark a conversation on the topic where he'll learn something.

I do call him on it but he just sidetracks to even more nonsense instead of proving his point, like when he was talking about how foreign exchange students are taking our education I pointed out that a smart university student should be planning their courses in advance and should be

singing up as soon as possible to avoid getting wait listed, then he sidetracked about some dribble about how these foreign exchange student's families could be bribing their way into schools which I highly doubt happens as it would damage the school's reputation.

If you've tried calling him on it and he just changes topic, the next thing you need to do is tell him it makes you uncomfortable spending time with a racist bigot. Be blunt, since being subtle seems useless. If he doesn't respond to that, he's a crappy friend. If he changes, you've helped him become a better human being. Either way, you'll come out better for it and he might grow a bit as a human.

I'm curious why you talk politics with your friends frequently enough for it to be an issue.

I have close friends who think things like Canadian socialism are good ideas. I manage to tolerate their presence because we rarely talk shop like that.

Don't have anything pertinent to contribute but I am going to jump on the music bandwagon here.

You shouldn't stay friends with him because he has few. That is like not dumping a girlfriend which makes your life miserable because you know she'll be alone.

If he was your kid, or a family member, you might owe them something, but not in this case. He is dragging you down while not providing anything positive to your life. It can feel heartless to do so, but you'll feel better afterwards.

Every time he says something bad give him a squirt from a water gun and shout "NO NO BAD DOG!" He'll get the hint.

Ask when he is going back to the country of his ancestors? The Canadian Indian Tribes want their land back.

Aboriginal People aren't from India.

eh? Australian tribes in Canada?

 Da Boss wrote:
As for the bi-polar issue, well, you're not obliged to help him. It's difficult to be straight with someone like that, but it's worth trying.

More specifically, you almost certainly cannot help him even if you want to.

Any native culture is considered aboriginal. It's just that our native culture got lumped with the term Aboriginal because there was so many different tribes and mobs that it was too difficult (-read the Brits probably couldn't be arsed trying to remember) to tell them apart.