Something my parents did, what to do from here?
Maybe some people saw my previous post on the topic, i don’t know. But what happened was I (16yo, and my family is all white) brought up my old friend who once said the n word at 11, and had never brought it up before but wanted to discuss it, (at the time I had distanced myself after educating her on the topic, but this really isn’t the point of this post) however, to clarify if that is the slur I meant, my mother said “you mean the *nword*?” But she actually said it, i was pretty in shock, and didn’t know what to say, and my dad also said it to quote his professor on a speech his professor had done along with my mother saying the word again while talking about the history of it because by then it had become a full conversation about the history of the topic , probably because my dad has a masters in the history of colonialism (partly the reason I was so shocked, since the reason he studied the history of this was because he is very anti racism- also because they have always been intolerant of it, they had both cut off racists in the past that we’d known immediately) i was annoyed, shouted at them “why would you say that word?” After I had the room to talk, and didn’t speak to them much for the rest of the day.
The next day, the conversation from yesterday came up, of course I can’t remember the exact details, but my parents ended up talking about that they were saying it in an educational context, and how they thought this was not a harmful or wrong thing to do, and how they always thought it would be more harmful not to say it because they thought this would dumb down the history of such a horrible thing, but the conversation went on and I spoke to them about why it shouldn’t be used in any context and the reasons I’d seen people saying this…
don’t want to drag this post on too long, so what happened by the end is that they actually agreed with this after the conversation, told me that they shouldn’t of said it due to it not being necessary at all, and that they would replace it by just saying “the n word” in the future.
At the time, i was very relieved, because my parents had realised their wrongdoing and took accountability for them, and my mother had even started looking at sources around the topic to educate herself more, but, a few days later, I began getting worried again, because after I had researched the topic, most people I saw seemed to hold the opinion that something like this is irredeemable whether the person had apologised, taken accountability or made an effort to change what they did.. so,
Is it wrong of me if I move past this just because I know they took it onboard and stopped? I wasn’t going to forgive them really, it isn’t my place as a white person… but is it also wrong if I don’t hold it against them ? I don’t want to be an enabler, and I really do not want to be a bad person, should I be, i don’t know, cutting them off when I get old enough?? I don’t want to because I love them and they took accountability for it… but am I a bad person if I don’t? Are they bad people?
in a way I regret bringing the topic up in the first place because they mentioned that this was the first time they had ever said it in their lives, and now I feel like i dug myself into a hole
Maybe I’m just dumping too much in this, but I’ve been worried sick for days and can’t sleep because of it, so I wanted to make one last post to see what to do.
Thanks to anyone replying.