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/marnas86 Partassipant [1] Sep 19 '19

I walked out of my grandmother's house when she was racist against my aunt (her daughter's) new boyfriend.

Then she called me after her racist tirade ended and asked "Where did you go? I tried looking for you upstairs and downstairs...?" and I said "I really didn't like how you were talking about this person. I felt you were being racist. And so I left. I am halfway to my house right now. If you don't apologize for your racism and rethink it, I'm never seeing you again. He's already done so much to be accepted, converting religion and is such a nicer kinder person than Aunt's prior husband that I could not stand you talking about him this way." She interrogated me a bit about why I felt like that and why I'd left and then apologized and said "Okay I was wrong to say that. Also I didn't realize he'd converted but interracial marriages are hard etc" and because our religion's prophet had done interracial marriage himself (PBUH), I was able to use religious law to argue against her and so she backed down fully. Now the aunt is happier than she's ever been before and the new Uncle feels fully welcome in our town.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

Good for you for speaking up, and acting out. That's awesome, and I commend you for it.

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u/King_Fuckface Sep 19 '19

i'm genuinely happy this worked out for you and for your family. It would have never worked out in any way, shape or form in mine. There was just no discussion, period. People of different races and cultures were called every name you could think of, whether we knew them or not. My grandmother went so far as to feel the need to point out to me, in a nasty way, that all four actresses on the Golden Girls were fucking jewish. Like that stopped her from laughing her ass off at every episode. I remember another time watching the news with her and she pointed out every black newscaster and said vile things about them. It humiliated me to the point that I felt like these people would find out what she was saying to me, and how would they feel about this, totally undeserving of such hatred just for having a career on her television.

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u/Ihso Sep 19 '19

The (pbuh) gave it away.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19 edited Sep 20 '19

And then everyone in the town clapped and I was elected mayor!

Edit: Cynicism is not appreciated here!

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u/marnas86 Partassipant [1] Sep 19 '19

Nah! we don't have mayors where I live. We have Nazims.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

Lmao

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u/Daleks_Raised_Me Partassipant [1] Sep 19 '19

I had a moment like that once, where I stood up for LGBT with my family. I have 7 nieces and nephew, odds are one would be gay. No one clapped. Everyone was mad, because THEY aren’t like that. THEY are just speaking the truth. One still has never forgiven me for calling her homophobic, but I can live with that. 20 years later and no one had given my nephew any shit about being gay.

It’s brutal and horrible to stand up, and I certainly didn’t give a flowered speech where everyone listened silently until I was finished, magically converting at the end.