No, You Shouldn't Ignore Your Dad’s Racism Just Because He Cuts Turkey Good

'Tis the season for a scolding. If you're not coddling the delicate feelings of family members who feel entitled to spout their bigotry over the holiday spread, there's a good chance you're personally responsible for the divisive state of American politics today. Of course, if you opt out out and skip dinner at your brother-in-law's because sharing air with anti-vaxxers is literally dangerous to your health, you've also failed to do the hard work you ought to be doing to find common ground with people who think the germ theory of disease is a liberal con. And if you just think food tastes better when you're eating it with people you love and trust, instead of those who've hurt, bullied, or abused you, your priorities are all out of whack—maybe this will be the year that white-knuckling it over turkey will inspire someone to develop an entire new personality. You won't know unless you try, and you absolutely must!

That's the takeaway from a recent New York Times’ Thanksgiving-pegged op-ed. It's a real achievement in the perennial holiday scold genre—a favorite of grifters selling simplistic solutions wrapped up in self-help-speak—wherein those who prioritize their own peace over but-we're-faaaaamily forced togetherness are held responsible for everything from the supposed nationwide loneliness epidemic to the rise of fascism for failing to tolerate the intolerant (who are, inevitably, responsible for nothing at all).

Of course, in an ideal world, we’d all feel safe being honest and vulnerable with family members who annoy, chafe, and hurt us—intentionally or not—and be able to raise our concerns, needs, and boundaries in productive and generative ways to find the kinds of mutually respectful connections that allow us to nevertheless enjoy the company of those who we are sometimes, or even frequently, in conflict with. But we aren’t going to live in that ideal world until purveyors of the “family estrangement crisis” narrative stop shaming people for taking care of themselves.

In this world, we remain subject to the goofy nonsense of the aforementioned purveyors of the “family estrangement crisis” narrative, privileging guilt-laced calls for superficial tolerance over developing authentic relationships and community-building with people who make us feel seen and respected. In short: be nice to your racist dad, because he cuts turkey good.

I’m being a little hyperbolic for ~ comic effect ~ but … not by much. This is direct from the Times:

Would you want to spend your last Thanksgiving resenting your father’s politics? Or avoiding your sister for something she said last Christmas? Or would you rather find the grace to focus on the positives? Perhaps your father, for all his social-media-fueled hot takes, has mastered the art of carving a turkey. Your sister might be judgmental, but you love her holiday-themed nails.

The op-ed, coauthored by Karl Pillemer, a Cornell professor of human development who studies elders, and Mel Robbins, a “personal growth” coach and influencer—gestures ever so glancingly at “important reasons to cut ties with certain people intentionally” before launching into guilt-laden whataboutism that advises readers to “accept people as they are, sometimes in spite of who they are.” The piece relies heavily on the presumption that the modern family estrangement “crisis,” as they situate it, is the result not of those “important reasons,” but of younger people not clocking how bad they’ll feel, someday, when their elders shuffle off.

The simplistic authority of the self-help/personal growth field appeals to millions for a reason: who would bother grappling with nuance and doing difficult personal work when a rando with fun glasses is telling you all you really need is to live life as a breathing, shitting, and eating "live, laugh, love" poster?

There’s a lot wrong with this piece, not least of all the coauthors’ fundamental presumption of a “family estrangement crisis.” We literally have no way of knowing whether such a crisis exists. Whatever the data about modern estranged families says, there’s no meaningful data to compare it to. Relationships are not the weather; we’re entirely unable to determine that today’s is the coldest family estrangement season since social scientists began tracking family estrangement temperatures. No such dataset exists to allow anyone to make such a wild, essentially comparative claim. To the extent that Pillemer and Robbins claim older people are reliably able to describe an increase in estrangement today—the root of their “crisis” claims—versus the mid-20th century, they must necessarily rely on highly subjective sources, however well intentioned.

The coauthors' simplistic read on complicated relational dynamics is pretty standard as far as milquetoast calls to put up with other people's bullshit goes, but it is interesting that this particular call is coming from an incredibly popular—I'm not quite sure I'd call Mel Robbins famous just yet—self-help proponent. (She's the "Let Them" lady, except she isn't, really.) The simplistic authority of the self-help/personal growth field appeals to millions for a reason: who would bother grappling with nuance and doing difficult personal work when a rando with fun glasses is telling you all you really need is to live life as a breathing, shitting, and eating "live, laugh, love" poster?

The inevitable consequence of offending people with offensive beliefs and behaviors is actually what’s at issue here. Let’s be clear about that, and about who’s responsible for it. If people who hold awful beliefs and who do terrible things must necessarily have their feelings respected lest their relationships with people who disagree with them fracture, the responsibility for that fracture is not on those who disagree. It should be expected, even considered natural, that people who say and do harmful things are, as a result, put in limited contact with, or even ostracized from, people who dispute, rebuke, or abhor those beliefs and behaviors. It’s not that complicated, even though it is very fucking serious and can indeed be devastating for families and communities.

It is also hard work, which is why conservatives love this kind of schlocky self-help stuff. It affirms their belief in their own unearned authority and their expectation that they will be coddled and complied with under any and all circumstances. Baked in, of course, is the other big part of this twaddle: imagined victimhood. Conservative politics are all about bullying; if you slap someone and then claim that they started it, you'll pretty well have embodied the right-wing worldview. This is the stuff of lower-case-c conservatism, too; there are plenty of parents, for example, with lefty politics who nevertheless think their children owe them compliance.

I say this as someone who has largely chosen the path for which the authors of the NYT Thanksgiving article advocate—I am the one doing the hard work. I have worked hard to find the good in relatives who believe and do problematic, offensive, even odious things. I have shared and cooked meals for them, and driven hours to see them, all while knowing that I am doing difficult and perhaps damaging emotional, physical, and time-management work in the service of maintaining relationships with people whose beliefs and behaviors run counter to my own values, and who do not share my vision for the future. I have complicated reasons for doing so, reasons that I question constantly and which I am ever on the verge of abandoning in favor of my own peace, and my own hopes for society. But I have found ways to maintain contact—low contact, to be sure—because I recognize that there are benefits of staying in touch that, at least for now, outweigh the burdens of the alternative.

My own family history is instructive, and I think not unique. After all, the “Daddy went out for a pack of smokes and never came back” narrative is much older than I am, as an elder Millennial. I never met my maternal grandfather, for reasons my mother—with whom I have my own arms-length relationship—never directly conveyed to me but which I gathered over years of eavesdropping. Most prominent in my mind is a story I overheard time and again, involving my grandfather forcing his daughters to burn their Beatles records, perhaps out of abusive spite or religiosity. The details are sketchy to me, as are the implications I intimated about physical and perhaps sexual abuse. I do know that, when I was a child, my parents looked the other way when I was sexually abused by a family member and later pressured me to invite the man who abused me to my wedding. When I offered to have a conversation about why he wouldn’t be invited, the offer was ignored.

Sometimes I think I'd be thrilled to get a self-help book in front of my parents, if only to see if it's possible to light even a spark of introspection, however unlikely. Anyone raised in a right-wing community or conservative religion knows how deeply intertwined unearned authority (often patriarchal, of course) is with submission and concession. Honor thy father and mother—and don't ask any questions.

I’m tired of being told to privilege superficial togetherness over genuine connection. I don't need to let loud, wrong, hurtful people be loud, wrong, and hurtful just because they’re related to me and might die someday.

My parents are, in their own way, fierce protectors of their family. They worked hard to pull themselves and their loved ones out of deep poverty and gave me a childhood free of economic want but severely lacking in emotional and sometimes physical safety. They are smart and practical and resilient; they are also insensitive, politically incurious, and afraid of difference. As I’ve moved through adulthood, it’s been challenging to recognize that these qualities can coexist in parents who I believe did the best they could, but who today are unable or unwilling to acknowledge, let alone unpack, their shortcomings. In an era of rising fascism, I am one of the few people my parents interact with who see the world differently than they do, and I am personally safe enough for now, while recognizing that their beliefs make my extended community and my chosen family unsafe.

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This is not a tack available to everyone. It's a strategy available to me because I mostly share my parents' identities, experiences, and privileges, even if we have wildly different interpretations of what that means. And it’s exactly why, unlike Pillemer and Robbins, I wouldn’t prescribe this tack to anyone else.

We should absolutely build a healthier, less lonely society and better-connected families. But I’m fucking tired, y’all. I’m tired of being told to privilege superficial togetherness over genuine connection. I don't need to let loud, wrong, hurtful people be loud, wrong, and hurtful just because they’re related to me and might die someday. We really shouldn't demand that children and others keep in touch or maintain remembrance out of guilt, fear, or shame—or a desire to maintain superficial connectedness in the brief flashes of our own lives. If we do so, the guilt-laden, superficial connections built on Dad’s ability to carve a turkey will inevitably die with him first, and later, with the people who felt the most obligation to keep the peace. There is no meaningful, long-term social value in keeping the peace for the peace’s sake.

If my parents have chosen an echo chamber that tells them they are victims of progressives, liberals, socialists, commies, pinkos, or whoever, I can at least remind them that the big baddie is their own daughter—the woman they themselves raised to be exactly who she is. If my family recoils at having the reality of their beliefs reflected back at them, it is the result of their choices, not mine. And I make sure they know it.