They hear but don't listen.
So I'm watching Bill Maher with my mother and sister tonight; he has a doctor on the show that wrote a book about the safe spaces and how they're being used in colleges. I had an argument with my mother about that, which she didn't really listen to. I was trying to explain what I'd learned about them during my year at college, saying that they don't understand where we're coming from and are taking it how very few people twist it.
I understand that some people twist it, and I was trying to explain to my mother why we still need them and deserve to have them, and thankfully my sister took my side on this. College students and really everyone, deserves to be able to call for safe spaces when they need them. My mother brought up a time when I had to listen to a Son of the Confederate for my history class; this man stood not two feet in front of one of my African American classmates and said "If I just came up and slapped you because you were black, that would be racism". This day, I personally had to hold myself back from pushing a grown man away from one of my classmates, because he was too close and the organization he was representing was historically racist.
My mother asked if I had learned from that instant, and even though I did, it is not something I would wish on anyone: That man used a hypothetical threat against a girl of color in order to make her uncomfortable and the rest of us both uncomfortable and angry.
I can't make a point to my mother because she feels that my sister and I rag on her and call her out a lot because of what she says. Things she says sometimes she doesn't think about, and we try to inform her about things that she needs to know.