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you have to determine was is ignorant out of lack of exposure and what is just mean. If you beleive your brother-in-law to have the capacity to understand your decision and learn from you boundaries that are accepted, then I think you should just be honest and at least start with using proper terms and hope that he picks up on it and mirrors that back, if he's unable or unwilling to understand then you have to make a decision on how much exposure you want your child to have with that person.
My dh's parents are quite elderly - same age as my grandparents and when we told them about our impending adoption we had to educate them some. They are loving people who adopted 4 children outside their race, they were kind people and would never knowingly be hurtful - but we did have to tell them that they couldnt' use the terms negro or colored anymore. Now my sister-in-law is another story altogether. We have little to do with each other anyways. She's your basic substance abusing person who couldn't raise her own children so the rest of us did it for her with nothing but grief from her. When she found out about our adoption, she refered to our unborn baby as the n-word. Needless to say she's been cut from our lives.
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