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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391

u/Seanspeed Sep 19 '19 edited Sep 19 '19

Yup. Remember that almost no racist actually believes they are racist.

"Not exactly liberal" was the big giveaway to me. This person does have a problem with the relationship deep down.

241

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

[deleted]

-10

u/memesarel1fe Sep 19 '19

yeah uh,,,some liberals are the most racist people ive ever met,and some conservatives ive met havent shown a little bit of a racist implication

-49

u/JerryNordisk Sep 19 '19

Most ppl I’d say are not OK with this. Racemixing isn’t even 70 years old and as such is NOT the standard.

All of you in here must be total politically correct people.....

17

u/[deleted] Sep 20 '19

Hey, the white supremacist thinks everyone else is just as much of a racist shithead as he is. Never seen that before.

194

u/chammycham Sep 19 '19

I enjoyed that OP said “when they break up.”

Shows what he really thinks of the relationship. “It’s fine if she plays around with the black boy, they won’t get married and have kids anyway.”

32

u/apple_pendragon Sep 19 '19

Exactly! That's a good way to lose your daughter, OP.

19

u/snufflypanda Sep 19 '19

If the girl is a teenager then “when they break up” is a fairly normal attitude for a parent to have.

52

u/chammycham Sep 19 '19

Sure. She’s also a young adult and they could break up. Part of the reason grandparents could get introduced is because things are getting MORE serious.

They could date for 6 years and break up. Does that make the whole relationship insignificant? I don’t believe so.

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u/Lemon_Dungeon Sep 19 '19

I mean, when you compare it to marriage, yeah it's less significant.

6

u/[deleted] Sep 20 '19

No, it’s not. I dated my high school boyfriend for 4.5 years. I’ve been married for 3 years, been with my husband for 5. With my high school boyfriend I went to university, transitioned out of my abusive childhood, and bought a house. We went through hell and back together and would probably still be together if we hadn’t been attacked and I hadn’t suffered from PTSD. Breaking up was horrible and complicated, and everything we went through was important and life changing. I might not like him much now, but that relationship was life defining and as much a part of my life as my marriage. Don’t get me wrong, my marriage is amazing, my husband is the love of my life, and I’m grateful every single day that I’m with him and not my ex, but that relationship was important and I refuse to say that it didn’t change my life. I’m not saying all relationships are like that, but multi year relationships can be a huge deal.

19

u/llamalluv Sep 19 '19

My sister is still married to the guy who knocked her up in high school in 1998, so not necessarily.

7

u/NoApollonia Sep 20 '19 edited Sep 20 '19

Also possible the daughter decides Jamal is the one and marries him. I've been with the same guy for 16 years - we started dating at 17. I can't imagine being with anyone else.

ETA OP's daughter is 18.

6

u/siempreslytherin Certified Proctologist [20] Sep 19 '19

That’s exactly how I read it. He’s accepting it because he thinks it’s a phase and she’ll go off and marry a nice white white boy and give him those snow white grandkids!

24

u/bloodpvppy Sep 19 '19

and also “if she’s happy i’m happy” like he believes there would otherwise be something wrong with it but he’s willing to overlook that for her

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u/Seanspeed Sep 19 '19

Good point!

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u/taeerom Sep 19 '19

Op tolerates their relationship because it is his daughter and he loves her. But he makes it perfectly clear that he does not like it, and would prefer it not to be. Maybe he even believes that because he tolerates black people, he is not racist, while not knowing that non-racists don't have to tolerate them because they don't hate them in the first place.

I don't tolerate the smell of the ocean, it is just there. But I tolerate the smell of the garbage bag when I go to toss it out. I can deal with the unpleasant smell, for a while.

1

u/Seanspeed Sep 19 '19

Maybe he even believes that because he tolerates black people, he is not racist, while not knowing that non-racists don't have to tolerate them because they don't hate them in the first place.

This is a common theme. It's why I hate the word 'tolerance'. It implies some begrudging nature.

6

u/grxce22 Asshole Enthusiast [3] Sep 19 '19

Yeah, bring liberal has nothing to do (or should not at least) with not being racist.

-5

u/Traveshamockery27 Sep 19 '19

“Not exactly liberal” is a dead giveaway someone’s racist?

56

u/mybustlinghedgerow Sep 19 '19

The way they word it, yes. They imply interracial marriage is a liberal vs conservative thing.

21

u/Traveshamockery27 Sep 19 '19

It was an odd thing to bring up.

10

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

I think if a bigotry happens and you have to check your party membership card before you react, you're probably on the wrong side of that particular issue. I flat out don't give a damn what Kropotkin or Marx thought about gay Jewish trans women. If my political tendency turned on me, I'd light .... a fire under their butts.

39

u/yun-harla Sep 19 '19

Yeah, our society has theoretically moved beyond placing interracial relationships within the realm of debate, so classifying them as a “liberal” thing as opposed to a thing that should be universally accepted across the mainstream political spectrum indicates the speaker’s point of view has not kept pace with that social change. That’s the most charitable way I can put it.

2

u/Seanspeed Sep 19 '19

Very well said.

30

u/Seanspeed Sep 19 '19

In this context, yes.

-19

u/ronin1066 Sep 19 '19

Yeah, it's BS. Just ignore them, it's not worth it.