Dear Prudence,
My parents’ social media habits are giving me severe secondhand embarrassment. I’m a queer Black woman in my mid-20s. I have a Facebook account pretty much only because I work in media and need to keep up with what my clients and potential clients are doing. I treat it like LinkedIn—I post very little aside from sharing business events and industry-relevant news. My parents (who are white and adopted me at a young age) requested to be my friends, and I accepted, because I originally didn’t think it was a big deal. But my parents post incredibly racist, homophobic, and xenophobic content, visible for the whole world to see. They’re huge Trump supporters, as well as COVID-hoaxers and anti-maskers. They provided me with a good education and otherwise decent upbringing, but after moving away, it still took a lot of emotional work to undo the kind of trauma of being the Black child of parents like that, and no matter what I say to them, they have never changed their toxic views. Aside from the immense frustration and trauma it brings me personally, I’m also afraid their posts will reflect badly on me if clients or potential clients click through my friends list. I know I can’t reason with my parents. Can I just remove them from my Facebook and hope they don’t notice?
—Sins of the Father