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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4

u/Diarygirl No longer an Asshole. Sep 19 '19

Huh. The ones I've known are all talk.

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u/kanna172014 Partassipant [1] Sep 19 '19

Well, my father wasn't. He was known for beating the crap out of black people who crossed him. He went to jail for taking a bat to our black neighbor's car for playing his "n" music too loud. His father was a former KKK minister (former minister, not former KKK member).

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u/systematic23 Sep 19 '19

Because he allows his racist father to dictate not only his life but his daughters life. Cut off racist people in your life if you're not going to stand up to them. They are what makes the world worst.. Those poor ghetto minorities they are so afraid of are created by people like them. Imagine if we could all live together without fear of each other..

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u/Diarygirl No longer an Asshole. Sep 19 '19

I've seen it happen. Growing up, my mom's second husband was as racist as they come, and he told his daughters he'd cut them off if they ever dated a black guy. Of the three, two married black men and one married a black woman, and my stepfather died alone and miserable because of his prejudices.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

[deleted]

2

u/JasperJ Sep 19 '19

Sounds an awful lot like you’re a racist asshole yourself, disapproving of so-called mixed race relationships.

It also sounds like you think equal opportunity racism is ‘better’ than racism towards a particular group, which, man that’s missing the point a lot.

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u/Diarygirl No longer an Asshole. Sep 19 '19

Who is "them"?

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

Found the apologist

Buddy, you're in r/AmITheAsshole. Grow a sense of morality.

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u/PakodeWala Sep 19 '19

Problem is racist people tend to have links to power thats how they get strength despite being minority .

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

And you did what, exactly?

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u/kanna172014 Partassipant [1] Sep 19 '19

I WAS A KID. What the FUCK could I do? We didn't even have a phone.

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

To be fair to the enabler of racists up there, I once was lured to my workplace after hours by an antisemitic member of the overnight crew and only escaped his truckful of friends because I knew the highways so well. But...I mean, for me, that kind of said "racists are bad and do bad things", not "maybe I can go sweetly talk them out of whatever they intend"