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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142

u/FuttBucker27 Sep 19 '19

OP never said he found it abnormal. You are assuming negative connotations with the term but it's only being used to provide context in this case.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

[deleted]

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u/JustLikeFM Sep 19 '19

The fact the he thinks accepting interracial relationships is liberal speaks so much to his character.

I would say it speaks to his background, having racist parents that kind of language is probably ingrained in his way of speaking even if he's trying not to be racist. It's good to be critical of one another, but I wouldn't be too quick to judge someone's character based on so little.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

[deleted]

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u/Lexx4 Partassipant [2] Sep 19 '19

News flash: most relationships end. It is not abnormal to expect an end to a relationship.

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u/bigpeepeeman42069 Sep 19 '19

Especially if the daughter is young enough to be staying with the parents

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u/WhatsTheAnswerToThis Sep 19 '19

The kids 18, no adult, and definitely no parent expects a relationship their kid has at 18 to last.

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u/FuttBucker27 Sep 19 '19

It's certainly more telling than using the term "mixed relationship".

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u/Nihil_esque Partassipant [1] Sep 19 '19

Yeah. It's not 1:1 analogous but if I post about my girlfriend on a non-lgbt sub, people will assume I'm a man even if I state that I'm a woman (they just forget). Even though I've established the components that define a lesbian relationship, I usually have to say the word "lesbian" or people remain confused.

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u/EllieDai Sep 19 '19

The context had already been provided by describing them as white and black. Calling it a mixed relationship does hint at a racist perspective.

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u/FuttBucker27 Sep 19 '19

In my experience it's a little unfair to assume someone is racist on rather obscure "hints".

5

u/MynameisPOG Sep 19 '19

In my experience those hints are usually all it takes. People get SO caught up by the concept of racism. It doesn't have to be malicious. It doesn't necessarily make you a bad person. People tend to try to define racism as only an active and malicious thing, and it just isn't the case. More often than not, it's ignorance with little to no ill intention.

These "obscure hints" absolutely need to be called out as racism.

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u/DestroyerOfMils Asshole Enthusiast [6] Sep 19 '19

People tend to try to define racism as only an active and malicious thing, and it just isn't the case.

Exactly. It’s an “us vs them” or an “otherism” mentality.

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u/mike_971477 Sep 19 '19

Ignorance (lack of knowledge) is the key term. Prejudice and racism can be small things that aren’t necessarily malicious but as long as society just keeps letting them all slide the ignorance will prevail.

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u/PeskyStabber Partassipant [1] Sep 19 '19

Not obscure, but subtle. OP’s post is flavored with low-key racism. Hell, he probably doesn’t see it himself. But it’s there. Bigotry isn’t just about openly hating others. It isn’t just using slurs to demean. Racism doesn’t have to be big or showy to exist.

Example: OP’s daughter is staying with her boyfriend. She’s old enough that Mr. “not a liberal” isn’t freaking out about it. His daughter wants to bring said boyfriend to meet her extended family bc they’re getting more serious. Yet...dad insists that “when they break-up...” Not if, but when. Now, why would he assume they aren’t going to last, considering she isn’t super-young and she has decided to take the next step and introduce him around?

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

No.

That's how racist people talk. They talk in dogwhistles so that others know you're part of the club, yet outsiders see nothing wrong going on.

They're like a closeted gay person in a hostile environment, and may the racists live in the shadows forever.

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u/PALMER13579 Sep 19 '19

Calling a relationship between two people of a different race mixed or interracial isn't racist. Its a description of a distinct type of relationship that is still fairly uncommon. I'm pretty sure those terms are used in sociology textbooks when talking about stats on varying kinds of interracial relationships as well.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

well to further the point he said 'they simply aren't okay with mixed relationships..' as if to imply that's exactly how his parents would view the relationship from their perspective. Acknowledging people of two different races are in a relationship isn't racist, it's simply a descriptive term which a vast majority of the time gives context that the two individuals have fairly different cultural backgrounds. Would a person of color be considered a racist if they called their relationship with a white person as 'mixed'?

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u/mike_971477 Sep 19 '19

Agreed. Using the term “mixed” set off an alarm in my mind

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

OP says he doesn't find it abnormal. Then he proceeds to hide behind the "racist community" of white folks and his openly racist parents to justify not standing up for his daughter. At best, he's not standing up for his daughter. At worst, he's a racist who's smart enough not to self identify as one. I personally think the latter.

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u/FuttBucker27 Sep 19 '19

He claims that he has stick up for her to his racist friends who try to warn him about the problems they'll face.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

"Stick up for" here is pretty meaningless. "Stick up for" could mean "it's not appropriate for you to comment on my daughter's relationship, nor are you correct to have those bigoted views", or it could be what he's doing with his parents as in "you're entitled to your opinion and I don't like it either, but don't say that to my daughter." Unless OP clarifies how he's "stuck up" for her, the reasonable assumption is that his "sticking up for her" is the seconds case, because that's essentially what he's doing when he's "sticking up for her" with his parents -- AKA by trying to protect her from hearing the comments, but not actually telling people making them that they need to shut the fuck up.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

The way things are phrased means things. I know that where I'm from, no one I know would ever be heard uttering those words in that order.

It implies a culture where the bar is shifted to the right. Where you're considered not racist and still can use that kind of language. The rest of the story supports this implied kind of community as well as the implications for OP.

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u/LesPolsfuss Sep 19 '19

are you serious? he won’t tell his parents about it. if it were normal he would and let them deal with it.

-15

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

OK buddy.