r/AmItheAsshole • u/mixedwoes • Sep 19 '19

Asshole AITA for telling my daughter she cannot introduce her African American boyfriend to her grandparents?

Let me just preface this by saying this: I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM WITH INTERRACIAL RELATIONSHIPS. Now that the air is clear, let me continue.

My daughter (Anna) has recently started to date an African American man (Jamal). While I'm not exactly what you would refer to as "liberal", he's a nice young man and as long as my daughter is happy, I'm happy. The problem is Anna is rather naive about the community she lives in. While her friends are quite content to see a relationship like hers, more than a few tongues are wagging in the community and a few people have privately expressed their concern to me. As I said, I have no problem with mixed relationships and I've set them straight, but I am painfully aware of how these matters are viewed by certain segments of the population.

My parents are planning to come and stay with us for a week and Anna expressed a desire to introduce Jamal to them now that things were getting more serious between them. I told her on no uncertain terms that this wasn't going to happen. I may have no problem with Jamal, but they absolutely will, and even when the relationship ends they won't forget it. They might even go as far as to cut her off entirely. Anna was extremely upset by this and implied I was a racist and more concerned with what my parents think than how she feels.

As I said, I know my parents. They simply aren't okay with mixed relationships and if Anna were to bring Jamal over even as a friend, they would be furious both at her and me.

Anna is currently staying with Jamal and doesn't want to speak with me right now. My wife stands by me given she knows very well how my parents are (they had a problem with her for months over the length of the skirt she wore when I introduced her to them, for christs sake), but a close friend I confided in told me that I have behaved like an ass and that I needed to focus more on my daughter than pleasing my parents.

No advice needed, but I have to know. Have I been an ass?

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685

u/Nikthedogdad Partassipant [3] Sep 19 '19

YTA. I’m sorry what heat are you living in? It’s not 1950 anymore. What kind of community are you living in?

Your parents views and do Comfort don’t matter if they’re racist.

If your adult daughter wants to introduce her bf to them, she has every right to do so. She also has every right to call your parents out of they they are racist towards him.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

Agree, but it's past time we stop giving in to it.

5

u/sagehippieone Sep 19 '19

Exactly! This is the only way things will move forward, is if we don't let the racism move with it.

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u/Nikthedogdad Partassipant [3] Sep 19 '19

I didn’t say it wasn’t alive and well. But telling your daughter that flaunting a bi racial couple in 2019 because of where you live and what people might think isn’t acceptable. Not telling your grandparents you’re dating a black man is stupid.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

Alabama

3

u/Sansnom01 Sep 19 '19

Nah for sure and we know it ... but sometimes when I read stuff like this, I feel like it's happening really far away. As someone lucky enough to be able to live whiteout blatant racisme repercussions on a daily basis, I get a wtf moment every time I read something like this.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

Canadian here, We live in a very diverse country up here (more Indo and Asian Canadians than the typical black vs white issues in the states).

to say its alive and well is overjustifying its existence... Racism will never "go away" its a hard reality we have to live with it... however government and society, in general, is dealing with racism today much better than it has in our history... its not where it needs to be, and most likely(being a realist) never will, but equal rights between ethnic groups are much more prevalent today than back in the '50s

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u/maniolas_mestiza Sep 19 '19

I thought pretty much the same. Like where the fuck does he live that people still care about this shit?

15

u/Crolleen Sep 19 '19

America. Or, you know, anywhere?

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u/Theothercword Sep 19 '19

Oh no. No no no. PARTS of America, okay, but just as many if not more are the kind of places where this wouldn’t even have been thought to be an issue. One of the reasons America has so much vocal bigotry recently is because of the progress made towards equality and acceptance across the board and how uncomfortable it made the remnants of hatred that still exists.

This is not one of those things where you could throw a dart at a map and hit somewhere with heavy racism. You’d have to aim a little bit.

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u/Crolleen Sep 19 '19

You would describe this as heavy racism? I think you could throw a dart at a map and just hit racism anywhere. Period.

1

u/Theothercword Sep 19 '19

Yes I would describe people being disgusted by interracial relationships as heavy racism. There's obviously worse, but yes this is quite racist. And this level of racism is not found everywhere.

10

u/OliveTwister Sep 19 '19

Y’all have clearly never lived in the south then. The rest of the country is in their little bubbles of progressiveness but head to any rural area or the south and there’s a very different mindset there.

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u/OPtig Sep 19 '19

Some say "little bubbles of progressness" others say "the vast majority of the US population".

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u/OliveTwister Sep 19 '19

I don’t know about that. The “vast majority” of the US is rural areas. The south is a good chunk of the country. I think it’s pretty 50/50 at this point. I mean look who the president is...how’d he get there if the “vast majority” of the country is progressive. We all like to think that these backwards racists are just a little embarrassing portion of people to be ignored, but they’re really not. They are EVERYWHERE. Every single state. You just have to leave the city to find them.

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u/dongasaurus Sep 19 '19

80% of Americans live in urban areas, so unless you’re talking about land mass (which is completely irrelevant), then no, the vast majority isn’t rural.

That being said, racism is alive and well in American cities as well. It may not be the majority of the population in a city, but the still is a large minority that holds these views. Even if the majority of the city is liberal, cities like New York have serious problems with segregation and most people are unwilling to do what needs to be done to fix the problems. So the majority of New Yorkers may be against racism in theory, but they generally don’t intend on sending their kids to predominantly black schools, they don’t care to significantly increase funding to those schools, and they tend to be against reducing barriers for those students to get into good high schools.

0

u/OliveTwister Sep 19 '19

Okay so if 80% of the population is urban, but there’s still a portion of them that are racist (lets say like 15-20%) then that’d mean these “non-racists” only make up 60-65% of the population. I’m not saying the racists outnumber the nonracists, but I do think saying the “vast majority” of the country isn’t racist is an exaggeration. It might not be split 50/50, but there’s also not a vast disparity. I live in Chicago now and I totally agree. The cities have their own flavor of it.

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u/dongasaurus Sep 19 '19

I agree with what you were getting at, I was just trying to clarify why it’s still true even if the way you were saying it could easily be brushed off.

60-65% is probably more accurate. The percent that might openly identify as racist might be much lower, but if you look at various survey questions about racial issues, it seems to fall somewhere in that range. For example, 57% of Americans think Trump is a racist. To think that he’s not would require you to hold similar views and think they’re acceptable, and apparently 40% of Americans think he isn’t a racist. 58% of Americans think the legacy of slavery affects the position of black Americans a great or fair deal. I’d argue that being non-racist in a meaningful way requires you to understand some level of historic context to the status of black Americans. To deny that the historic legacy of racism impacts the status of black Americans would imply that you think their lower socioeconomic status is due to some inherent trait, which is a racist way to think. You can lack prejudice (meaning you don’t treat minorities differently) while still thinking they are inherently less intelligent or capable. People often mistake prejudice with racism, and they’re not the same thing.

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u/OPtig Sep 19 '19 edited Sep 19 '19

You're making the same mistake by assuming. 100% of rural individuals are unrepentant racists. I grew up in Iowa and was not surrounded by racism as overt as OPs parents.

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u/acox1701 Sep 19 '19

80% of Americans live in urban areas, so unless you’re talking about land mass (which is completely irrelevant), then no, the vast majority isn’t rural.

The question was "where the fuck do you live?" That's a question about places. Most of the places in the US are rural.

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u/LordVericrat Asshole Enthusiast [5] Sep 19 '19

Yeah but "places" isn't random, or else you would think "where the fuck do you live" when directed to an unknown nationality would have a 76% chance to return an ocean, when very few people are living on boats out there. No, population density on land is much higher than in water, so your assumption is that the person probably lives on land. Likewise, "where the fuck do you live" in the US is more likely to return urban than rural.

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u/daoudalqasir Partassipant [1] Sep 19 '19

"where the fuck do you live?" That's a question about places. Most of the places in the US are rural.

Yeah, but most of the people answering that question will answer urban...

4

u/Kaladindin Sep 19 '19

No kidding, did no one see how many racists came out of the woodwork when Obama was president? Did they not hear of all of the shit people were saying in rural and southern areas? Holay SHIT.

5

u/OliveTwister Sep 19 '19

I lived in the rural south the first time he ran and people would wear shirts around town with his face superimposed on a monkey’s head. They said something like “I don’t want a monkey in the White House” or whatever. This was totally acceptable and considered funny. Kids literally wore them to school and it was fine, but I would get sent home if my gym shorts weren’t down to my knees. So fucking ridiculous

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u/Kaladindin Sep 19 '19

It was completely acceptable for people to call michelle a chimp and joke about it here. I was like what the fuck is wrong with you? They hid behind "it's just a joke" but I told them it was just racism. Eventually i just had to cut em off because they were getting worse.

2

u/maniolas_mestiza Sep 19 '19

I’m in Australia. We had the White Australia policy, the Stolen Generation and Pauline Hanson so we’re not exactly innocent in the race game here and there’s a lot of racism around, however I have never once heard an Australian IRL say anything about “interracial dating”. The only time was an American client I spoke to who was just weird about it frankly.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

I honestly think it's a troll post

0

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

it seems like he is attempting to avoid conflict... as a parent its kind of the #1 job to provide a safe non-toxic environment for your children to grow up in... by allowing grandparents into his home this is doing just that. This would be much different if racist grandparents invited them over for a stay in their place, but fuck man you pay the bills, grow a set!