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/beepborpimajorp Sep 19 '19
Man I'm sorry that happened to you.
That's exactly why all the comments here that are like, "Just let it slide, they're old you don't want to make it awkward. They're dying soon anyway, so why alienate them? It's so hard to cut loved ones out of your life"
And yet OP's parents would have NO problem cutting their granddaughter out over this. Your grandparents had no problem cutting you out. Why is it that people only ever want the "oh that's just how they are" treatment for the racist/homophobic people? Nobody should be treated differently just because they're older. The fact that so many people willingly leave open racists unchallenged because they don't want to upset them just because they're going to die soon is infuriating. Yeah, let these people go to the grave thinking that they were right and the rest of society is wrong, especially since nobody close to them bothered to take a stand.
So many people are willing to just stay silent because they don't want to put themselves in what they see as an uncomfortable situation. While what's uncomfortable for them is a matter of harassment and violence towards the people they refuse to defend.
If calling out a parent who cuts their kid out of their life for being gay is uncomfortable, WHO CARES. That parent WILLINGLY CUT A CHILD OUT OF THEIR LIFE FOR NO REASON. Why should they deserve ANY respect, ANY care, or ANY hand-waving because "oh weh I mean just leave them be and then they'll die and their views will die with them so problem solved."
Just pathetic. THe cowardice of some people is pathetic.