It's an insult to older Americans when people excuse racist, sexist, and homophobic remarks

[The Straight Story]

11. Kind of on the fence with that idea

Used another way I see things like 'well, that is why some people are leery of all white folks, cause back in my day they were all racists, etc'.

My way of looking at this is if I encounter older people who use terms many here would find means the person is a raging racist/sexist/psycho and should be judged on those words is that they grew up around the terms and they just stuck. Old phrases I heard many times as a very young boy were things like 'sweating like a ....... on election day' in which the grandparents and such inserted a certain racist word. I still hear that on hot days once in a great while. It's just an old saying, out of place, and doesn't mean someone is sitting around in their rocker sewing eye holes in their klan hood.

Old habits and things ingrained in people die hard. Whether you are white/black/indian/etc. One of those things is ways in which you have communicated/words used. Especially when in private conversations (I hear things in private I know I would never hear in public because people have some social graces and such).

"well, they're from a generation where it was okay to be " can be an insult to some (meaning they are archaic/etc) but a simple understanding of others who grew up in a different place and culture than our own under much different circumstances.