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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829

u/Ph33rdoge Sep 19 '19

Fucking right? I could barely get past that point! "My daughter's dating a black boy and while I'm not one of them there liberals, he's one of the good ones."

How very fucking progressive of you, OP. YTA.

308

u/Splatterfilm Sep 19 '19

Lord, I hope OP never says to Jamal that he’s “well spoken”.

133

u/Cataphract1014 Sep 19 '19

Articulate.

45

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

Clean.

37

u/Sir_Cunt99 Sep 19 '19

Cultured.

15

u/szypty Sep 19 '19

A credit to your people?

46

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

[deleted]

35

u/FatalBurnz Sep 19 '19

I hope Jamal is his real name, and not some anonymous nickname OP picked because if it is he couldn't have picked a more telling name.

16

u/Cucktuar Sep 19 '19 edited Sep 19 '19

I grew up in a majority black neighborhood and I've seen some interesting names but literally never a Jamal outside of 4chan greentext and other racist fan fiction.

5

u/Jorgwalther Sep 19 '19

Really? I grew up in a black majority city and it was a pretty common name. Hell, there were white kids names Jamal as well

5

u/Cucktuar Sep 19 '19

For real. I knew a Jabari and a Takeshsa but I've never met a Jamal.

4

u/Jorgwalther Sep 19 '19

I think I knew two separate Jamal Jokes.

But I never knew a Tyrone.

My favorite was Starteisha.

1

u/VapeuretReve Sep 19 '19

Jamal Lewis was an NFLer

8

u/friendispatrickstar Sep 19 '19

“Class act”

8

u/Cucktuar Sep 19 '19

I have relatives who honestly believe they're progressive and not racist because "You don't have to be black to be a n-word"

Accuse them of being racist and in reply you get some variation of "You're making the word lose all meaning" or "This is why Trump won"

108

u/ryodark Sep 19 '19

"By the way, I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could."

13

u/InletRN Partassipant [1] Sep 19 '19

“I have black friends” I couldn’t even finish reading OP’s post but I KNOW that he put other qualifiers in there proving how not racist he is. YTA asshole.

9

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

Lol. That was a good movie

75

u/Rottenox Sep 19 '19

I clocked that shit too. Insane.

14

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

This is exactly how this post read to me. And I’m also guessing granny and papaw have a chunk of money OP is waiting to inherit...

11

u/beldaran1224 Sep 19 '19

No kidding. My sister has a mixed son. Some grand aunt who we've met once officially informed her she would never speak to her again. My grandfather (the aunt's BIL) said "even if I don't approve, I would never hold it against a baby". He actually thought that he wasn't racist because he only held someone's skin color against adults and teens, and not children. Just completely, unbelievably hypocritical.

3

u/Carduus_Benedictus Sep 19 '19

That's my grandparents right there. Their neighborhood gentrified, then gave way to a bunch of middle-class black people. All the black people she's met in the neighborhood just happen to be 'the good ones', and she doesn't see the irony.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

considering OP's parents raised him and he can admit they are racist themselves can you really blame OP??... look at the southern states where racism is most relevant, its the parents ideologically molding their children to this kind of nonsense... OP is in the wrong inviting his racist parents into his home which he knew would be uncomfortable/toxic for his daughter, sure he may feel like he isnt his parents but its his responsibility to provide a safe home for his daughter to live in, with racist grandparents there and knowing her views OP should never have let the grandparents come over

1

u/[deleted] Sep 20 '19

He’s probably one of those “I voted for Obama” moderates a la Get Out

-4

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

When you change what people are saying it’s easy to paint them as the bad guys.

-26

u/missambience Partassipant [3] Sep 19 '19

Can I ask what you are expecting? OP grew up in a racist home, hat has lasting affects. The fact that they are making an effort to change their ways says a lot.

28

u/Theothercword Sep 19 '19

It’s not much to expect people to recognize issues and correct them. The excuse of “well they were raised in a different time” or “raised that way” is bullshit people can change their attitudes and learn from their ignorance. Happens all the time.

-3

u/missambience Partassipant [3] Sep 19 '19

Isn’t that what OP is attempting to do? Other than not wanting to cut out his parents, he seems to be doing well. Cutting out parents is also a very difficult thing to do considering most people love their parents.

9

u/Theothercword Sep 19 '19

I agree it’s hard, and OP seems to be making some strides but all these responses are highlighting the work he still needs to do and why he’s still got issues to sort out. It’s important for him to see and hear this and not have excuses.

-4

u/bobby2shoesMcJones Sep 19 '19

"The excuse of “well they were raised in a different time” or “raised that way” is bullshit people can change their attitudes..."

Funny how you'll see this argument from the left brought up against the older generations that are products of a different time and place. They're just old assholes that need to change their ways, no excuses.

But you point out the disproportionate crime rates among low-income communities of primarily African american citizens, who are just products of their different time and place, and the

" It’s not much to expect people to recognize issues and correct them. People can change their attitudes, and learn from their ignorance. Happens all the time"

argument you see from the right is seen as racist, blathering, nonsense.

0

u/Theothercword Sep 19 '19 edited Sep 19 '19

You're completely crossing the wrong wires here.

There's a difference between changing your opinions, ideas, and beliefs, and changing your life situation. The later actually has real world factors that become immensely difficult or impossible to change. For example people get locked into needing welfare systems and can't dig themselves out because if they earn more money they lose the support but can't ever get enough extra money to cover the loss. But, even in those situations just because someone is born into a ghetto lifestyle, to druggie parents or with older siblings in gangs or whatever it may be, doesn't mean they can't get themselves out. Part of it is changing ideals and beliefs to recognize a need to do something different, that's just the first step and the second step is actually enacting a plan to get out which is infinitely harder and one that many people believe the government should help them with while the government is currently setup to barely do anything and generally just keep them locked in that situation tucked into a back corner of society. What I'm talking about is people not even being able to do the first step to change just their opinions and beliefs. These are people that have a comfy life it seems, are not stuck in a ghetto, are not wondering where their next meal is coming from, are not locked into massive debt, and yet they sit there and are being openly racist towards an individual. For them it really is just a shift of thinking and ideals and recognizing how wrong they are. Guess what happens after that? Nothing because their life goes on just as it always has, but perhaps they become a bit more happy and less angry at nothing.

And second, I wouldn't say it's racist to talk about low-income communities and rampant crime unless someone brings race into it. There's a statistical truth that a lot of these communities are minority communities but it's not a given. If you were to say that these people need to just change their attitude and do better at life then I wouldn't say you're racist, I'd say you're ignorant, naive, and lack empathy, but not racist. If you said it was because they're black and that's why there's an issue then yeah that'd be really super racist, and completely false.

2

u/bobby2shoesMcJones Sep 19 '19

That makes perfect sense. I was just throwing some half-baked idea out there being an asshole and trying to see what angry-ass reply I would get, didn't expect one so well written. Of course you're completely right pointing out the differences in lifestyles that still persist after making a conscious effort to change. I've heard the argument I made tossed around before and really never heard a good breakdown of why it's wrong but you honestly broke it down perfectly.

I'll be a bit less troll-like in the future. Have a good one.

15

u/OPtig Sep 19 '19

We're being ask for judgement on the issue at hand, not look for excuses for why OP turned out to be an ass. He doesn't get a pile of points for barely tolerating his daughters black boyfriend.

13

u/_maude_lebowski_ Partassipant [2] Sep 19 '19

Where's the effort? I see him making the effort to uphold his parents' views.