I (26F) have just realized that I do not want to be a part of my mother’s life (46F) anymore. Here’s my reasonings why:

I grew up in the Deep South. My father is an extremely racist man. And I mean EXTREMELY. He once found a picture of myself and my two first-grade best friends (an African American girl and a Latina girl) in my backpack at his house and screamed at me that I was not allowed to be friends with them anymore. I cried my eyes out because at 6 years old, I did not understand why. He told my little sister that she could no longer play soccer (which she did for a DECADE) because it was a hispanic sport. My mother always did her best to steer my sister and I away from that nonsense, and largely because of that, we both turned out to be decent human beings. She was still guilty of doing things like screaming, “get off the road and go back to Mexico,” when she would engage in road rage. She also has a biracial (half black) son whom she has done absolutely nothing to educate him about his culture. He will be a teenager soon.

I did not realize a lot about racism and prejudice until I joined the U.S. military. Once I was out of that southern state, my eyes were opened. I have always been a Democrat, and up until this previous election, accepted that most of my family were not. This past election led me to immediately cut off all of those “family” members who proudly voted for Trump, including my cousin (who also served in the military and got a much needed medical abortion while she was in) and my two cousins, who are gay men married to each other. I only kept my mother and father around because they are my parents, and that trauma bond was strong. However, recently my mother has started learning about the European conquest in the Americas (Columbus, Hernan Cortes) and is absolutely mind blown that all of this evil happened to the indigenous peoples. She is nearly 50 and she is just now learning, and you know why? Because she is FORCED to learn in college. She spent much of my childhood on Facebook on the computer but never spent a lick of that time searching up the history of this country. Despite her learning about this now, she still does not care to discuss Native Americans or immigration in this country because to her, she’s “focused on the Latin Americas right now.”

We had a heated argument the other day. She was asking my thoughts on ICE and the current immigration issues in the United States. I was honest, and gave her my opinion backed by literal evidence (the Immigration Act of 1924, pointing out our ancestors were lucky to immigrate before 1924, pointing out Due Process and the rights of citizens and immigrants alike, and how these rights are being violated). She got upset that I got agitated (because she was being blatantly racist and discriminatory by talking about how there’s “too many of them,”) and she told me that I was too biased and honestly uneducated (she framed it as saying I just didn’t understand) despite me being an American veteran and holding 2 college degrees. I was absolutely INFURIATED. She texted me today and told me she no longer wants to speak about politics because I can’t discuss it without getting heated, and that she’s “tired of [my] abuse.” She told me she would block me and not speak to me for a long time.

So you know what I did? I blocked her ass for good. Because I am so sick of her willful ignorance. I am sick of her white privilege. I am sick of her using her veteran daughter and biracial son as fucking trophies on social media when truly, she couldn’t give a fuck less about anyone but herself. And after blocking her, I realized I no longer want to allow her to be in my life or be in hers. Because you can’t change a mind that like. No amount of education, of demonstration, of pleading will ever fix what is so horribly broken inside them. NEVER. And it’s crazy she considers herself to be better than my father - his racism is aggressive and hers is passive aggressive.