Is AUTHOR wrong in the post ? POST : Throwaway because friends know my reddit account. If she finds this, I'm killing myself. ESL.


So I (24F) have a friend (23F) that I've know for years now. I'd like to think we know each other pretty well, but you know, people change, especially in this age. I, same as many of my peers, spend too much time on the internet and a lot of US pop culture. But we're both from central Europe. I could say I know that I'm pretty fluent in pop culture and history and so on, more than her. We also do have some nerd and some dark humor in common. 


Recently, when she was abroad, she found a boyfriend. He's a bit older and french. Once we were in chat together and I talked to him for second time ever. It was pretty late and my friend mentioned he had some wine and was a bit aggregated. Towards the end, he literally called black people monkeys and then niggas (no R for the record). Nobody else reacted so I didn't either. We have reeally low number of POC in our country, seriously. 


So after giving some thought, I wrote to my friend privately after like an hour saying that I don't think that what he said in the last part was cool. She was confused what I meant, so I specified the racial slurs. Apparently, she jokes with him like that all the time. That actually stunned me even more - she was never openly racist as far as I knew her. So I told her a bit a what I knew about this and why I thought it wasn't alright to say those things. Sent a few links explaining how monkey is used as dehumanizing and compared it to few slurs from our language. I also said that it's not that I'm somehow angry on someone elses behalf, but I was just unconfortable with how easily it came out. 


She said that she doesn't see it as a big deal and that I'm probably "too educated about this stuff" and "she's not as sensitive as I am" and that he has black friends and when she hears someone being "really racist", she also voices her concerns. I know these are basic arguments, but this is the first time ever I've heard them coming from someone I know, so I took them more seriously. Now I fear it will have consequences for our friendship.


So. I'm now thinking if I should even have said something or not. If I am that detached or they're ignorant. I think she (dunno about him) is on some "intelectual level", where she should have some knowledge of other countries issues, not just "our lands". Especially when you colloqially use words that have obviously racial connotations that have no basis in our history (as far as I know our country has never historically participated in slavery nor colonization).


I guess if you say that I'm looking for a validation, I'd have to say you're not wrong. Also if you say that this is difficult situation to judge as you only one perspective, you're also right. If you would specify if you're answering as US or non-US, I think that would be very helpful to the conversation.