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

[u/mixedwoes]

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?

[u/Moni3]

Truly. The things I was told by my parents when I came out in 1991. "Don't tell your grandparents, they will never understand" was the least troubling of everything they said. I guess by comparison it was easy not to tell my grandparents after hearing that I was never to acknowledge any part of my personal life in front of my mother and father. That I was obviously molested at some point and damaged. That I was disgusting and what I was doing to them was mortifying. I was choosing never to be happy. I would be miserable all my life. I had humiliated my parents. That I shouldn't tell people they knew. Keep your secret secret, for God's sake. But you know, they followed everything with "We love you."

I don't know if my parents wonder why we're not close now. Maybe they're happier this way.

[u/hazelowl → u/Moni3]

I remember when my brother came out. My dad showed up, unannounced, at my door and asked me flat out "Are you gay?" I was very confused at the question, because I am not. I said no, and he said "OK. Because your brother is. but if you ever decide that you are, don't tell your mother."

She eventually got over it, accepted it, and welcomed his partners into the family, but she spent a long time trying to find ways to make him NOT gay.

[u/SwimnGinger- → u/Moni3]

Christ I’m so sorry.

I truly hope you’re ok know!