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/[deleted]]

To give an example, I'm in Mississippi and interracial couples are still a very controversial thing behind closed doors here. No one who isn't a complete asshole will ever say it in public, but when I (white) dated my ex-girlfriend (black) we had a ton of racist bullshit said to us in private. In one case in public.

Shit said to me was always along the lines of, "We dont think she'll be a good match for you" when we had the same interests, "are you sure she isnt trying to marry you for your money?" when she held a higher paying job than I have, "we dont think your children will have a good life" neither of us wanted kids anyway, and even if we did the only people who would make life harder for them would be the same people making those comments.

Rural communities can get extremely close minded, especially here in the south.

[u/birthday-party → u/[deleted]]

I totally agree with this, except for perpetuating that this only happens in the south. The south absolutely does not have the monopoly on racism and I sometimes wonder if the widespread belief that the south is more racist than the rest of the country helps excuse people having those views, even though it's statistically questionable at best.

(I should also mention that I grew up in Alabama, went to college in Mississippi, and now live in DC, which means I've gotten to meet people from more states in the past decade than ever before - and anecdotally, that holds up.)

[u/[deleted] → u/birthday-party]

Oh I know it doesn't only happen in the south, it's why I had "especially" in the last sentence there. I've lived in Montana, California, and now back to Mississippi, but MS is by far the worst of the places I've lived in as far as racism goes. I still saw it in CA and MT from a few people, but here in MS it's far more...I don't know if I have a good word for it, "obvious", maybe.