Reply to "Racists are recruiting. Watch your white sons."

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Reply to ""Racists are recruiting. Watch your white sons.""

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is my worst fear about my son.  And of course that makes my white privilege more obvious because my worst fear doesn’t have to be that he will be killed by a cop in an ordinary traffic stop or a wellness check.

I am doing my dammdest to be actively anti-racist right now, with the books we read and the stories we center and the discussions we have.

But my husband is a racist. Maybe he always was and I chose not to notice the signs.  But in the past 6 years, it has gotten overt.  He started listening to all these poisoning podcasts...Joe Rohan led to Jordan Peterson and virulent anti-feminism, then down a rabbit hole that has led to full on MAGA shit.  In front of our child, he will not use the n-word, as he doesn’t want me to leave him, but he comes close and his white-guy victimhood is matched only by his growing rage against women and brown people.

We live in entirely different universes of information.  Entirely different.  I would never, ever be friends with him if we were not raising children together.  I can’t leave him to 50/50 custody and the virulent racism without me at least having some kind of cap on it.  Right now, my children adore me and see me as a hero and a role model.  But what if adolescence hits and all of a sudden my son chases after his emotionally remote father’s approval by alighting with his “white pride”?  Or since his dad is such a jerk, he seeks approval and identity by aligning with these alt-right monsters?

It’s stunning to me how quickly and virulently all of this racism has bubbled up in just a few years...I guess I was oblivious to it being there all along, but it is terrifying to me how open and contagious it is now.  
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You can not allow your child to be exposed to this. You may think that you are helping with countering your husband by staying in the marriage. However, the message to your son will be "My dad can't be all that bad because my mom is married to him"
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I hear you.  I don’t want to implicitly endorse these values.  But you say, “You can not allow your child to be exposed to this.”   I have no good option.  The choice is only how I can mitigate the damage.  Right now, living in the home, my DH is not overt about any of it.  If I left him, he would see it as an open declaration of war and be free to openly and loudly promote everything that is the opposite of where I stand.  And he would have 50% custody.  I feel like there is no good option.  I hate staying.  Hate it.  But how can I leave him alone half the time, unfettered and antagonized and hostile?  I think if I were you, I could confidently assert that I should leave.  But being on the inside of this trap, every step feels so dangerous and fraught.[/quote]

I have so much sympathy for you because I am in the exact same marriage. I ask myself constantly how I could be so dumb to miss the signs. And now I have children who I so desperately do not want to end up like their father. It’s hard to know what to do. [/quote]

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