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Condemning them for overtly expressing racial biases that more progressive generations internalize and disregard instead, racist college student Lizzie Sutton says her grandparents are totally racist.
“The other day, my grandma referred to a Chinese cashier as an ‘Oriental,’” said Sutton to her appalled and only moderately less racist all-white friend group. “Can you believe it? It’s like they’re still living in the sixties.”
Sutton, who takes pride in her liberal arts college’s feigned sense of racial integration, says that her grandparents have lived in a small town their whole lives and that they have had virtually no exposure to “black people.”
“They’re so set in their ways,” said Sutton, who feels totally comfortable having challenging discourse about race as long it’s with other young upper-class white people. “It’s just a generational thing.”
Noting that everything they know about race comes from Fox News, Sutton added that her grandparents have almost no understanding of the oppression of racial minorities she herself perpetuates in subtler ways systematically.
“Grandma’s always talking about how terrible hip hop is,” said Sutton, who opts to appropriate other cultures instead.
Saying it’s not even worth it to confront them about their bigotry, Sutton claims she can’t believe that racism was so commonplace just two generations ago. “It’s eerie,” said Sutton, complicit in the belief that we live in a post-racial society. “We’ve come so far.”
At press time, Sutton was glad to read an email that the incoming freshman class will be the most racially diverse class that she’ll never interact with ever admitted.
