hey, racists!

I just got back from doing work on my study about telemarketing fraud in the older population. Every time I go into my "lab" (a.k.a. the real world) to collect data, I always end up encountering some interesting characters.

For example, one potential participant was recounting a time in which some "Tijuana nigger bastard monkey" stole stuff from his home. He kept repeating that phrase, loudly, while telling me the story. It's not the first time that an older adult has made blatantly racist comments around me when I am collecting data. However, this guy was different because he was blind (ah, the irony). I was lucky he was blind because if he could see, he would have realized that most of the people in the senior center where he was at -- including myself -- were the "Tijuana monkeys" to whom he was referring. Hooray for racists becoming blind.

I understand that this man grew up during an era in which it was acceptable to hold such views, so I took everything he said with a grain of salt. It just made me wonder how it's going to be when my generation gets older. Will we all be foul-mouthed liberal elderly people? Or will we be uptight conservative fogeys like him?