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Was I being too dramatic?
My friend made a very offhand racist comment the other day that she totally didn't mean, and it was just like, something that slipped out of her mouth, but sort of betrayed her internalized prejudice. It wasn't a huge deal, but I was offended because she had made a racist comment towards my culture. On Saturday, we went out to dinner with our friend group, and I brought it up just to say hey, that was kind of racist and offended me since it was about my culture, so can you be a little more aware about your words. She took it badly, and got really defensive, and I told her I wasn't blaming her, it was just very shocking and offensive towards me even if it wasn't intentional. She eventually said that yeah, she understood, but proceeded to act eztremely passive aggressive towards me, like excluding me from pictures we took that night and making snide comments about anything I said throughout the night. Even one of my other friends picked up on it and found it off-putting. I don't really know how to act around her now, because while we were really close and did practically everything together, she was also the kind of friend that was a little insensitive about things and hard to go to for anything serious. Should I not have brought jt up at dinner? Maybe texted her about it instead of bringing it up face to face? What was the right thing to do?
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It is not dramatic to bring this up. As Dr Stephanie pointed out, the issue lies with bringing this up while others were around to hear. You start with, I need to speak to you in private for a moment and then doing so as you both move out of ear shot of the others. You may not see the need why until you reverse situations and someone is needing to 'gently' point out something you did that is not right. Bosses do this wrong if not trained properly and calling someone out on something that they need to improve on in front of others. You would feel horribly embarrassed with everyone watching on, even though inwardly you realize they had a valid concern and you want to improve, you are at the same time upset or angry for how you were told, in public rather than in private. In private, this girl needed to hear these things and if it had been in private, she would say as she did, that she understood and that would have been that. Yet she proceeded to passively aggressively attack you. If she understood what she did was wrong, then why would she pick on you? It's certainly not because she's upset you said something to her, its the setting of where you told her something that she is upset at and so you owe her an apology as well. In answer to whether face to face is okay, yes it is because sending only a text can be seen as chickening out, not able to talk to her in person. I see a lot of people who write about something involving texts and misunderstanding them. Often we do not realize how much we read faces, body language and tone of voice along with spoken voices and you just can't get those with a text and an emoji is not going to do the job. Now that we've covered that, you say that this friend is sometimes insensitive about things. That is something she could learn to do better if she decides on her own that she struggles with it and needs to improve. No one can 'make' her change, only herself and her own want to. This means you can only point out in private that it bothers you how she did that but you still consider her a friend and your smile and hug will help keep her open towards you rather than shutting down as people tend to do when corrected in public. Being gently and caring in your heart makes all the difference in what you say. People don't realize it is like an animal sense they have, to be able to know if what is being said to them is genuine with love and care, or destructive, trying to make them feel bad.
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You may have been right to share your feelings with her, but you were wrong to bring it up publicly in the presence of others. I would have recommended a face to face conversation rather than texting, as well.
So it may be that each of you owes the other an apology; you, for publicly criticizing and shaming her, her for making offensive and racist comments to you.
If you can still have that conversation, perhaps your friendship can be salvaged. If not, time to move on, but hopefully, with learning on both sides.
Good luck, Dr. Stephanie
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