Diffusion

Greg and I own a house near the University that we spent about a year completely gutting and renovating. It's a two family place, and we rent the upstairs to some friends/tennants of ours, T (guy) and K (girl). We're sitting around our little fire in the backyard tonight and talking about dogs / taking dogs overseas, etc. Somehow we got onto the topic of the fact that I knew someone whose dog got eaten by his next door neighbors while they were in China. To this, K replies, "Those Chinese are so dirty". I just stared at her, and asked, "what did you say?", and she said, "the Chinese. They're just dirty."

That really offended me. Really. Now if there's one thing you would quickly come to learn about me, it is that I am very politically correct and just don't have tolerance for racial or cultural jokes. So I said, "You know, that actually... that really offends me". Thus follows...

awkard.

silence.

awkard justification ("well I didn't mean it like that" - then how did she mean it?)

followed by my explaining that I dated a Chinese guy, which I regret even saying because regardless of that fact, what she said was terrible and completely inappropriate. Followed by Greg backing K up by saying, "Well, just look at Main Garden" (a Chinese restaurant near us that has a reputation for being unclean)

And I was too pissed for words. And I mouthed a few things to him, like "stick up for me!"

So then I indicated to Greg that I would apologize, because clearly she wasn't going to, and I did. And I blamed it on the fact that someone had said something similar earlier in the week and that it upset me as well. And then, do you know what he said? "Well don't take it out on us just because you were mad at someone else"

Was that fair? Am I crazy? Shouldn't he stick up for me? Wasn't I reasonable? What she said was horribly offensive and completely inappropriate.

He later said he was just trying to diffuse the tension, and I think that is a horrible way to diffuse tension.