Thanksgiving is an annual tradition, and since Trump’s election in 2016, this type of article has been too:

• “Tips for Surviving Your Racist Family Thanksgiving” — Portland Mercury (2016)

• “This Thanksgiving, Call Your Racist Uncle a “Racist” – The Texas Observer (2021)

• “What To Do About Your Racist AF Uncle at Thanksgiving” – Huffpost (2018)

• “How to Talk to Your Family About Racism on Thanksgiving” – Harper’s Bazaar (2019)

• “It’s Your Responsibility to Challenge Bigoted Relatives Over the Holidays” – Teen Vogue (2019)

• “Dear White Women: It’s Time to Say Something to Those Racist Family Members” — Katie Couric Media (2022)

These articles constitute an infuriating new genre of holiday literature, which I call “the anti-racist Thanksgiving.” Within this genre, the message is always the same: Your white ass can and should be a quarrelsome, sanctimonious little prick at Thanksgiving, you know, for black people. This idea is premised on two absurd and interconnected notions. The first is that your family is racist — or at least that your uncle is (this is a harmful stereotype, according to the Washington Post, because it erases the equally horrific racism of your aunt). The second is the idea that you can change your family’s racism by starting random conversations about how Christopher Columbus was a “destructive colonizer,” shaming, lectures, and storming out to spend the holiday in a hotel. Let’s start with the first idea since it's an assumption upon which the second rests. 

So, are your relatives racist? Perhaps the best measure of actual racism we have in society is how a person would feel about welcoming a person of a different race into their family, something that would have been unthinkable — and illegal — within living memory (for boomers, anyway). When the Supreme Court struck down the anti-miscegenation laws of 16 states in 1967, less than 25% of Americans approved of interracial marriage, and a majority still disapproved until after 1995. As recently as 2008, nearly one in four Americans still disapproved of interracial marriage. Today, 94% of Americans approve. 

So your family probably isn’t racist. However, they might speak indelicately about certain subjects, something which is often equated with racism in the “anti-racist Thanksgiving” articles. Consider this excerpt from this hypothetical exchange in Regina Jackson and Sairo Rao’s article “Dear White Women: It’s Time to Say Something to Those Racist Family Members”:

Uncle Bob: Inflation’s through the roof, and now, word is that the Chinese are sending over another virus. Eating all those disgusting animals in their markets.

Now, Jackson and Rao’s suggested response:

You: Aunt Bob, that sounds racist. Blaming Chinese people for viruses and disparaging the kinds of food folks in China eat — it’s hateful.

Is this racism? Remember that throughout COVID-19, the “good,” liberal, FDA-approved theory for the pandemic’s origin was ‘Chinese peasants working their way through the endangered species list like a Cheesecake Factory menu.’ The precise creature Chinese peasants allegedly cooked kept changing — first, it was bats, then pangolins, then raccoon dogs — but the message was always clear: rural, backward Chinese turned some weird exotic animal into soup, and now we have COVID. Essentially, “racist Uncle Bob” is repeating what mainstream media told him, albeit rather indelicately. What’s “racist” here isn’t what he said, but rather how he said it. That’s not racism, that’s hypersensitivity. 

This same hypersensitivity makes jokes like that one equally nonpermissible. In virtually all of the “anti-racist Thanksgiving” literature I found, “racist jokes” are listed as a hypothetical grievance, but rarely (if ever) spelled out. However, I did find a Reddit post called “What crazy-ass thing did your racist uncle just say at Thanksgiving dinner?” and many of the responses are fantastic. Here are a few:

My grandpa said he has no idea why anyone would drink Modelo cause you have no idea what those Mexicans are putting in it.

(It’s true, we don’t, but I trust them)

My grandma said “They call it black Friday because you’re poor after it.”

(Say what you will, but it's a great one-liner.)

I’m in Disney with my 82-year-old Italian grandma. In a Mexican restaurant in Epcot having dinner. I notice she’s got this sweet little smile on her face and she looks right at me and innocently says, “It’s so funny seeing a Mexican guy in a nice suit”, as the host of the restaurant is walking around in the distance.

(Italians are just Mexicans with better carbs, she’s allowed to say it.)

In two out of three of these jokes, the “racism” is just naive, humorous bewilderment. One is biting, but it’s less “racist” than something you would have heard on a Comedy Central Roast a decade ago. The idea that “Your racist uncle was never funny,” as the Boston Globe put it, is a shallow platitude. He probably was funny and wasn’t racist. Highly-elastic, neurotic, post-Trump definitions of racism are overly subjective, and laughter is involuntary. Humor cuts through pretense, awkwardness, and the agony of discussing controversial subjects. Jokes are meant to diffuse conflict, not create it. 

But let’s say, hypothetically, that someone at your family Thanksgiving does say something mean-spirited and undeniably racist. The anti-racist Thanksgiving literature says You are morally obligated to confront your racist relatives at Thanksgiving. But are you? If the comments are directed at someone present, of course, you should stick up for them. But otherwise, there is no point. People double down when confronted, and you will be viewed as hysterical for attempting to police a private conversation. If you are actually offended, silence — perhaps the only thing that makes people more uncomfortable than being yelled at — is the most effective solution. 

This Thanksgiving, it's imperative that you let your “racist uncle” cook. Laugh at his Puerto Rican joke, he probably doesn’t mean anything by it. If he starts going off, let him. Life is short and the holidays are shorter. Don’t be an “anti-racist” this holiday season. Be normal. 

– River Page