Here's a simple solution: don't be friends with them.
You'll forget 90% of their names, anyway, once you move on from high school/college. Guaranteed.
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Reactionary friends
Ok, so, all of my friends and most people I know are like pretty reactionary. Eh, racist, anti-feminism/homosexuality/minorities and so on.
How do you deal with this? It can become bothersome to me...
Here's a simple solution: don't be friends with them.
You'll forget 90% of their names, anyway, once you move on from high school/college. Guaranteed.
Here's echoing Comrade khad's sentiment: people who cling to those attitudes are not worth friendship.
If you can change their minds, try. If you can't then drop em.
Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand. ~ Karl Marx
formerly Triceramarx
Thing is, some of them are my old mates since childhood
My first tip would be to stand your ground, don't meet them half-way, don't pretend you think their positions are acceptable. It's not impossible to win people over. Another tip is try to have these discussions one on one, peer pressure often plays a role as well. If none of this helps, well, you have to draw the line somewhere. Thankfully for me, most of my old buddies seem to have moved to the left over the years, but I guess that makes me fairly lucky.
"I want to say sweet, silly things." - V.I Lenin
I don't mean to be rude or anything but do you have an insular social circle that's made up solely of heterosexual white males? If not there will inevitably be a huge conflict around their reactionary views.
Many high school students do have insular social circles. Generally that's party of the high school experience, at least in the US You grow up with a group of people and that's your world. After leaving school you most likely will lose touch with these people, no matter how close you feel you are now.
You may get to a stage where people with reactionary views will just be unpleasant to be around and you won't want to be friends with these people.I understand school can often be like a fishbowl. For now, stand your ground and don't give people you hang with the idea that reactionary hateful views are acceptable.
You may feel connected with people you've grown up with and this is understandable but its likely these kind of ties won't last the long haul.
To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget
Arundhati Roy
Lenina Rosenweg is a glorious beacon of light
I have no friends. It's lonely on your own but it has its merits.
Let them know their shit is dumb. That has worked for me in the past. If they're still racist, sexist, homophobic, drop 'em.
That's what I do, anyway
I'm on some sickle-hammer shit
Collective Bruce Banner shit
FKA: #FF0000, AKA Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath
The majority of people I get along with tend to be liberals (in the American sense of the word).
"It is not history which uses men as a means of achieving - as if it were an individual person - its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends."
- Karl Marx
I don't speak to any of my childhood friends.
For better or for worse, outgrowing social circles is a part of life.
Yes. There are almost no "non-whites" in my country and homosexuals get beaten up on the street, so coming out of the closet isn't an option for many of them.
Dunno. I wouldn't have any "friend", just mates and colleagues if I distanced myself from them.
All of my high school friends were obnoxiously liberal, in the Usonian sense. That is to say they adopted token "liberal" causes like environmental preservation, but their politics weren't so sophisticated that they were developing an analysis of capitalism's role in the plundering of the world's resources and the destruction of ecosystems. There was no acknowledgement of class whatsoever and a complete disregard for the predicament of the Usonian worker; they were infatuated with petty-bourgeois "activism." In retrospect, they didn't inspire much confidence; I would be quite surprised if even one of them ended up a social democrat. I reacted to this culture so mindlessly that I ended up cultivating and harboring the crudest fascistic sympathies until college. You're not likely to encounter the same problem, fortunately, as going in the exact opposite direction of reactionaries tends to be a good idea.
I'm still in contact with and occassionally hang out with my friends from childhood. I grew up in a very small community, though, and, although I travel a fair bit, still live there, so...
I'm glad I still have friends from childhood, though. Those people would hide me from the law if necessary.
"Win, lose or draw...long as you squabble and you get down, that's gangsta."
Most of my reactionary friends came out of the closet a few days after school was over.
In my experience, some people voice views in fear of their parents.
Now that I think about it, I've never kept contact with the same people for more than two or three years at one time. Never really realized that..
I don't understand why you think that. In school I had a really mixed social circle demographically but bigoted ideas still dominated within it. I dislike the assumption that because someone is not a white or a male, than that makes them immune to the dominant prejudices in society. Actually I bet that for someone to even make that assumption, they almost certainly have to be a white male themselves, and one who has little contact with people who aren't white males, atleast outside of activist circles.
In response to the thread topic, I guess I will be the contrarian and disagree with the advice most people have given. We live in a world that runs on exploitation and oppresion and domination, and from birth we are steeped in ideas that normalise it. It seems like a horrible mistake for leftist to seal themselves off from their peers and live in some pc bubble where they only associate with people who are ideologically pure and miraculously untainted by the ruling ideas that gush from every pore of our society (and in many places, this may well mean not associating with anyone at all).
It isn't to say you should go along with it when your friends say bigotted or homophobic things ect., but there are ways you can let them know that your not cool with that without getting self-righteous and sermonising on the one hand, or disowning all your friends on the other.
I will add though that it is a different situation if you have a friend who is going out and actively victimising people for bigotted reasons. In this case I think you have a responsibility to confront them in a very direct way and, absent some subsequent act of exceptional self reflection on their part, to break off your friendship with them. But that is different then simply having prejudiced views.
I have tons of reactionary friends and have grown accostumed to the liberal use of the word faggot and disdain for feminism prevalent in young American males.
You don't convince people your political positions are correct by refusing to hang out with them. I have no Marxist friends and like 3 feminist ones 2 of which don't understand it very well.
I'd suggest living your life as an unbigoted person and leading by example.
