more or less. my grandparents are already dead, but as far as i remember the last one living of them which i had contact with (my mother’s mother) was ok with lgbtq+ people (as far as defending their right to marriage) and quite concerned with the rights of disabled, but was somehow racist towards black and indigenous people, and could not stand demonstrations of social movements (i.e. sit-ins from landless workers and squatters, strikes and the like). my parents go about the same, but my mom is much less racist.

My mom is. That’s about it. My grandparents are all passed now, but they were mostly either racist, or highly opinionated with little regard for evidence.

I’m sorry, OP. I come from a family like this and the best decision I made was to go away for University and make friends whose views and values aligned better with mine.

Same thing when I found a job. I “made” my own (non-biological) family, if that makes sense. I see my blood relatives at holidays and other events, say the required hellos and goodbyes, and leave when I’m ready.

I don’t have time for that shit. And I know it’s hard to see people you love behave this way, but you obviously turned out differently and that means that you can do better…and maybe even inspire some of the younger folks in your family in the process.

None of them are obviously bigoted but all of them are complacent at the very least and some of them are certainly internally bigoted and it seeps out

My mom is nice and tolerant, she’s pretty much the archetypal mom, she’s friends with everyone, caring, etc. she doesn’t always “get” some of the more modern “woke” ideas like trans gender identities, institutional racism, etc. but she makes an effort to understand them and generally keeps an open mind, and probably most importantly understands that she doesn’t necessarily need to “get” something to be accepting of it. As an example, one of my sister’s best friends since childhood is some sort of nonbinary, and my mom had a really hard time wrapping her head around they/them pronouns, and just kind of generally didn’t understand it. That said, she still makes an honest attempt to use the correct pronouns, and understands that regardless of how they refer to themselves, what they look like, etc. it’s still the same person my sister has been hanging out with since preschool, who is always welcome in our home and is essentially regarded as her 3rd child, and that’s really the important thing.

My dad, in general, I’d say is somewhat begrudgingly tolerant. I suspect that if he wasn’t stuck with my mom, my sister, and me he probably would have gotten sucked down some alt right Fox news rabbit hole, but since we’ve all been around he’s kind of accepted that he’s wrong, but hasn’t necessarily gone so far as to try to be right. He’s kind of the picture of “old-person racist” he doesn’t outright dislike people of different races, but he doesn’t try very hard to see past stereotypes either. As far as being nice, in general he’s awkward, not unpleasant but not really someone who’s oodles of fun to talk to, but when he gets a bug up his ass about something he’s an asshole.

My grandfather on my mother’s side died before I was born, everything I’ve ever heard about him makes him sound like a fun, nice guy, though people often don’t like to talk ill of the dead, so hard to say. As far as how tolerant he was or wasn’t, I can’t really say, the two data points I have are that

1. He’d loudly complain about the “dagos” when the local Italian church had their feast because people would come in from out of town and just kind of have picnics on any open patch of grass including their front lawn and leave a bunch of trash behind, and really while the slur was unnecessary, I can totally get why that would upset him. He didn’t have animosity towards Italians in general, it just happened that the out of towners littering on his lawn were Italian.

2. My mom played with black kids growing up, and was kind of surprised when she got older that the civil rights movement was a big deal because she lived through it and she never remembered there being any fuss about the black people in town, so at the very least my grandparents weren’t outwardly racist in her youth.

Beyond that it’s kind of hard to say.

My grandmother on that side I wouldn’t exactly say was nice, she was a loud, cranky busybody, and by most accounts was pretty much all her life. I may be a little unfair to her because her personality and mine just didn’t jive very well, but still I think most people could agree that she was a little extra. She also got a bit racist in her old age, and it’s hard to say if it was just the dementia talking or not. She did live a pretty interesting life, traveled a bit, and had a pretty active social life, so at least some people found her pleasant to be around.

On my dad’s side, my grandmother died when I was a kid. She was always very nice, I can’t say how tolerant she was, that just never really came up. That said, she had been a drinker for much of her life, and from what I understand her kids from different marriages got treated pretty differently, and she was pretty nasty to one of my dad’s half sisters, doted on another, and my dad was kind of somewhere in the middle, and some of that favoritism kind of spilled over to my generation, she never treated my sister or I badly, but I can see now that she favored my cousins over us a bit.

My grandfather is probably the most interesting case here. He was very much one of God’s own prototypes. He had a lot of personality, and was never one to shy away from a fight or argument, so if he was nice kind of depended on if he liked you or not. He was a bit of a womanizer, so on one hand he could be at least superficially nice when he wanted to be, but also didn’t necessarily respect women the way he should have, though he was never violent or abusive to them.

As far as tolerance goes, there were plenty of people out there of all colors, creeds, and classes that he didn’t like for a great many reasons, some good, some not so good, but I never once heard him make a disparaging remark about someone’s race. Having served in the Pacific in WWII, he did have sort of a weird grudge against Japan that he never let go of, but it was more against the county of Japan itself, not of japanese people, not of japanese countries, and certainly not against japanese Americans. Terms like “colored” or “jap” never quite left his vocabulary, but they were never said with any malice, they were just a holdover from a time when those words were more acceptable.

He worked as a bus driver for most of his life. On one of his routes, there was a stop near a business that employed a lot of black women. There are still some older black women in the area who remember him for driving the bus because he was the only driver who would wait at that stop to make sure they could catch the bus when they got off work because the bus came at the same time they would be leaving, other drivers would just keep driving if they weren’t there when the bus came.

I doubt he ever thought too deeply about this, but given his age, he would have started driving a bus at around the same time the civil rights movement was really picking up steam and when bus boycotts and freedom riders and such were happening in other parts of the country (were from the north and the local buses had never been segregated in our area.) which is kind of wild to think about.

He ended up in a nursing home in his last years, had a black roommate for a while that he got along great with, there was a lot of black staff there that he spoke highly of and they all seemed to get a kick out of him (he was probably one of the more cognitively with-it, and certainly one of the most ambulatory patients there, coupled with his naturally big personality he was kind of a novelty, and he honestly kind of thrived in a nursing home environment, he didn’t have to worry about cooking or cleaning and he thought that was pretty much the best thing ever)

Check out Christian Welzel’s work on how values have changed over time. The world is becoming more secular and more democratic. Secular in this context means that religion plays less and less of a role in every day life. Democratic in this context means that they believe everyone should be able to pursue their interests and we should have a system that increases all of our capabilities to pursue our interests.

An implication of adopting democratic values is that you understand that your identity is not defined by “white”, “able-bodied”, or whatever, but by the fact that we are aware. By doing this, you’re not giving special treatment to your in-group (whichever it may be), but you’re considering all of humanity (and all aware beings) as equals and as a group that you belong to. Cosmopolitanism is an example of this stance.

Something else that is happening is that the world is becoming more reflexive. Check out Anthony Giddens’ texts on this.

But, to answer your question directly, yes, grandparents and parents are generally less welcoming and less tolerant.

Mine are old, but I have in-law and ex-out-law old people around and it’s a mixed bag. Certainly nobody who would complain about the mix of Olympic athletes, but ex MOL will complain about welfare queens even though she herself got welfare to get through nursing school and has to know that statistically that’s how most people use it. And they will gather and whine.

I think my kids see me as progressive, their dad as actively and harmfully regressive, their stepdad (my husband) as old and not able to keep up with change, too conservative but not hateful.

my grandparents have passed away now, but when i knew them they were unfailingly polite in public.

in private, Grandma had reservations about japanese people. i gave her leeway. Pearl Harbor was bombed on her birthday, and Grandpa went to Iwo Jima. i still felt i could bring a japanese boyfriend around, and as long as i was happy, he’d be treated right. Grandpa didn’t even suggest reservations. he took everyone as an individual worthy of respect until their behavior suggested differently.

my parents are in their 60s now, but i don’t have contact with them for other reasons. the last time i looked at my mom’s twitter i thought she had been hacked, the MAGA rhetoric she was spewing was so awful. not hacked, just an asshole.

Mine are dead

My grandma used to be, but years of Facebook right-wing propaganda has poisoned her.

Now she spouts conspiracy talking points about the “trans agenda” immigration, and so forth.

My parents have always been pretty right wing but covid pushed them even farther.

They aren’t hardcore MAGA nuts, but they are pretty pro Trump, especially my dad. They also buy the propaganda from Fox news hook, line, and sinker.

My parents, yes absolutely. They are responsible for me growing up to be a tolerant, left-leaning person in a mostly conservative rural area. Being boomers, they might not be up to date with all the current LGBT terms or things like that, but they definitely have/had an open mind and don’t judge people.

My paternal grandparents (born in the 1910s and 1920s) were very religious. My dad had to suffer a very strict upbringing under them. He was not allowed to read comics, watch TV, read sci-fi novels etc (though he did all of these things in secret). I only knew them as a child when they were already in their 80s and they were nice to me, but from what I’ve heard from my dad not necessarily nice people, and definitely not tolerant.

My maternal grandma (never knew my grandpa) rarely ever talked about politics or society or anything. She was a very down-to-earth person. That said, she definitely held some bigoted views in the form of prejudice against foreigners. She had major reservations when some Turkish people moved in next door. She eventually became friends with them though, so she managed to overcome her prejudice. I’d say she was a nice person.

My dad ain’t nice but he can be tolerant, my mum can be nice but her extremely narrow worldview does not let her be tolerant, and my grandma is neither nice nor tolerant. Never met really met my other grandparents to comment.

They never challenged their conservative upbringing, and never faced progressive values until well into their adulthood, since social issues move at a glacial pace where I’m at. I don’t blame them for having those values at some point, but they should strive to change (well, my parents at least).

Mine are dead, because I’m old as hell myself.

But it was quite different on each side of my family, with some minor interesting quirks.

Now, they were all nice enough. Even my one grandfather that was a fairly venomous racist was nice, even to black people. Hell, if anything he was nicer to black people than other whites. It’s an old south thing.

Obviously, tolerance was not his strong suit when out of the public.

And that was true for my grandmother on that side as well. She was less vehement about it, and more of the habitual racist. You know the type, they don’t hate black people, and don’t even really have real problems with them, but they grew up with racism being the default, and see no reason to stop using slurs just because times have changed. But she’d never say anything mean to anyone.

Kinda weird shit tbh. I took one of my friends over to her house at one point, and whenever the subject of school came up, she’d remember him and ask “how is your n****** friend?”. Wasn’t being hurtful in her mind, she was genuinely asking after him because he was my friend. The south can be fucking nuts that way. Which, when I was younger than that time, my parents had sheltered me from the n word and what it really meant, which led to some funny but problematic confusion eventually.

On the other side, both grandparents were legit super tolerant. Like, my best friend is gay, and at one point they thought we were together, so they were inviting him to family gatherings. My black friends were always welcome, nothing ever even mentioned about race at all.

My grandfather was republican, but was a one issue voter (2a rights). He was otherwise progressive as hell. Like, there was this show in the eighties called “Soap”. Billy Crystal got famous on it and played an gay man. He often said after the show would end that he didn’t understand what the problem was, “there were sailors like that under my command. You didn’t talk about such things, but they never bothered anyone, and they served their country with honor.”

I worked as a bouncer off and on as a side gig, including for gay bars. My best friend was/is gay. So I ended up being active in gay rights support. Never had to worry about it being a problem. My grandfather said he was proud of me a few times, and while neither of them enjoyed seeing me bandaged and beat all to hell when either the job or the activism got ugly, they were pissed that people were like that, and never once suggested I should stop.

Now, that grandfather had served during some of the cold war and hated Russians. With a passion. So he wasn’t free of prejudice entirely. That grandmother though, she never had anything bad to say about groups of people. And she’d tell my grandfather to shush his mouth when he’d watch the news and go on a Russia rant lol. Strangely, he never minded me being fairly friendly with socialist ideas. He’d argue the points of it, but never said I shouldn’t believe any given thing.

I loved all of them. I still do, even my racist grandfather. It wasn’t the totality of who he was, and I can love people that are flawed. Maybe if he’d lived longer, he could have changed. My grandmother that was racist did to some degree (switched to “colored” instead after my dad gave her hell once), and my dad and uncles rejected that bullshit early on, so that might have swayed him eventually. Or maybe he would have stayed just as bad, I dunno.

“When will there be straight pride month?”

No.

Well my dad was chill until he would see a nazi because he is a ww2 vet or know a person beating their wives or anything similar. He always felt since he fought for the world that it was his so called destiny to make society better. Don’t know if that is chill or not but I can say that while he may yell and stuff he would never do anything. It was always mom who spanked us with a belt when we fucked up.