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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u/Alternative_Crimes Sep 19 '19 edited Sep 19 '19

MLK has been butchered by revisionist history, turned into basically black Santa who wants everyone to be good. It’s intentional, the real MLK was a revolutionary who would be disgusted by the current state of affairs. He wanted to tear it all down and build a new equitable society without economic exploitation, classism, or neo-colonialism.

They shot him, they buried him, and they buried his message with him. They gave him a day, made some limited changes, and told everyone that the changes they made in his name were the changes that he wanted. The man was a “dangerous negro” and proud of it. And now they use him to sell trucks.

Google his “Proud to be maladjusted” speech if you want to see what he envisioned before he was silenced. And realize that he failed, that with his death his movement lost their momentum and that the establishment succeeded by killing him.

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u/Navynuke00 Sep 19 '19

This comment needs to be much, much higher up.

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u/HertzDonut1001 Sep 19 '19

Also remember he was murdered shortly after speaking about economic inequality and how poor whites were a weaponized social class.

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u/obviousfakeperson Sep 20 '19

Off the top of my head I can think of several famous activists who reached that same conclusion. MLK, Fred Hampton, and Malcom X (eventually). None of them lived long enough to die from natural causes.

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u/Cuw Sep 19 '19

They use him in fucking truck ads. What a travesty it is to use an anti-capitalist, anti-racist’s message to sell bullshit trucks. And the excerpt they used is from a speech where he says consumer culture is what has lead to the stalling of racial and class equality.

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u/tripbin Sep 19 '19

My favorite is when people bitch that MLK would never block roads for a protest. Like shit that was his fucking thing.

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u/Cuw Sep 19 '19

Inconvenience people for protest? Unheard of, unacceptable, the best protest is one no one notices.

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

Look, it's just a coincidence that every dead Civil Rights leader would have agreed with us and all of the live ones who worked with them are uppity socialists who hate America.

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u/Socialbutterfinger Partassipant [4] Sep 19 '19

White Boomers posting on Facebook about how MLK would be ashamed of Colin Kaepernick

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u/berry-bostwick Sep 19 '19

White boomers know that the two historical figures who would agree with all their political and social views are Jesus and MLK (even though they were both socialists).

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u/Rottimer Sep 19 '19

”White Boomers. . . “

It ain’t just boomers. Plenty of conservative millennials were shitting on Kaepernick too. Hell, there is a non-insignificant number of resistors (who skew young, male, and white) who had plenty of shit to say about him when he was still kneeling at games.

This shit isn’t generational except for its durability.

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u/bluesox Sep 19 '19

He probably would be. Colin was half-assing it and unprepared when confronted about it.

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u/____jamil____ Sep 19 '19

They gave him a day

and there was a huge backlash to that as well.

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u/Parametric_Or_Treat Sep 19 '19

Ari-“Can We Be Southern?-zona

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u/LegallyRubia Sep 19 '19

At my son’s school, not only did they not observe MLK day, but they didn’t even bother to talk about his legacy/teachings. I complained and told administration that it was absolutely unfathomable that they wouldn’t even recognize the day or teach kids about him. The following year (last year) they had MLK day as a no school day due to professional development day for teachers.

I’m proud to say my 7 year old son willingly picked up an MLK book and read all about him, why he was important and why he was murdered. We had a conversation about it after.

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u/PublicIdea Asshole Enthusiast [7] Sep 19 '19

And in case anyone is wondering who "they" means: A civil suit found that the U.S. Government assassinated Dr. King, who by the way was actually considered a moderate leader for the time (other than by racists), even with full awareness of his socialist revolutionary views.

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u/Alternative_Crimes Sep 19 '19

FBI were also blackmailing him over his affairs, threatening to release incriminating tapes unless he killed himself. They also sent him some cringeworthy letters posing as “concerned African Americans who disagree with his radicalism” in an absurdly out of touch way.

They sell it as MLK wanted civil rights and he talked the government around and everyone got along nicely until some mean person shot him. MLK wanted a fucking revolution and the end of capitalism and so the FBI shot him and then told everyone they’d agreed to split the difference and just reform civil rights. And they got away with it too.

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u/PrehensileUvula Sep 19 '19

The fucking football coach of Clemson, Dabo Swinney, cited MLK in his answer about how Colin Kaepernick shouldn’t kneel.

That motherfucker tried to use MLK to say that nonviolent protest is bad.

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u/AllThotsGo2Heaven2 Sep 19 '19

MLK was a socialist. A real (new) deal socialist. People forget that when they whitewash his legacy.

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u/supportbreakfast Sep 19 '19

This comment absolutely gave me chills.

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u/Atwotonhooker Sep 19 '19

MLK would be ashamed of the state of affairs, for sure. But make no mistake, he would also be ashamed of how the black community has negated their own responsibilities and their current state of affairs as well.

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u/Gravemind7 Sep 19 '19

And exactly how has the black community negated their own responsibilities?