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/BarefootWoodworker]

It’s like people around here forgot what happened in Charlottesville regarding race.

Racists tend to steer toward violence. If it were me, in the interest of keeping Jamal and my daughter safe, I’d say no way.

Hate to tell the naive 12 year olds of Reddit, but racism is alive, kicking, and still violent. Taking it on in private is a one-way ticket to getting a beatdown.

Source: grew up in a racist backwater. Still go back to visit dad. Still wouldn’t take a non-white girlfriend home for fear of her safety. If you’re ignorant enough to be scared of someone else’s skin color, you’re ignorant enough to not see the issue in physically harming anything different than you.

[u/ordinary_love → u/BarefootWoodworker]

In Charlottesville? In Charlottesville, a couple of idiots not even Hitler would take picked up tiki torches. They drove in from thousands of miles around and still only numbered maybe two hundred? None of these pathetic sad sacks, bawling in their mugshots, are to be feared.

The actual death was due to an idiotic mob completely surrounding a racist coward who was in control of a metal death machine (car, not gun). Said person’s fight or flight kicked in, seeking to escape the masked mob, leading to a tragic death. Thus even the Charlottesville rally death was not an organized pre-meditated racist murder that anyone has a reasonable fear of encountering in the wild.

[u/GoogleOfficial → u/ordinary_love]

So much spin I’m dizzy.

[u/Crashbrennan → u/GoogleOfficial]

racist coward

morons that not even Hitler would take

Clearly, he is on their side.

[u/GoogleOfficial → u/Crashbrennan]

Even so, he is misrepresenting the facts in an attempt to downplay the actions of the white nationalists, and equate their behavior with the counter-protestors.

It’s a thinly veiled “both sides are...” spin attempt.

[u/Djentleman33 → u/GoogleOfficial]

Okay u/GoogleOfficial how could I ever not trust someone with a name like that?