Yeah, it sounds like your dad is trying hard to overcome decades of cultural conditioning and that he deserves some appreciation for trying. Also, by cutting him off you are giving him another reason not to be happy about the situation.
OP, are you sure you’re not confusing your life with an episode of “Mad Men”? Does your father use a cane? If so, be careful.
Does it play out at all like this?
It seems to me like you’re laughably judgmental and that the OP shouldn’t bother to address this line of freshly-squeezed bullshit. You do realize, don’t you, that some people just fall in love with people who aren’t their same skin tone? Not everyone is a white girl from Santa Barbara trying to score ethnicity-cred by hanging around dark people.
Were you paying attention? This post was about his father’s unease with race and interracial relationships. He doesn’t have to give her a fucking moniker to appease you. I never refer to people by their names or sven-approved nicknames here, and that says precisely fuckall about my feelings about the people I’m discussing. So how about you try not to instruct people on how to relay their own stories?
Food for thought? Who are you, Anne Sullivan? You’re going to teach somebody something? Inappropriate MPSIMS language aside, it was perfectly called for. Your points don’t count, actually, because they were nothing but projecting that you pulled directly from your ass. You clearly don’t know shit if that was the first thing that came to mind when someone says he has a black live-in girlfriend and is troubled by what he perceives to be (and very well might be) his father’s latent racism.
Seriously, that was some of the most asinine bunch of claptrap I’ve read on the internet – the internet!
Back to the OP: I think most people here are right. You may be a little too quick to write off your father. He may have some discomfort with black people, but he seems to be making an effort, and as far as I can tell has never been disrespectful toward you or your girlfriend about it. And hey, maybe he is okay with it and this isn’t an act? A lot of people change their opinions over time or with greater exposure to whatever it was they previously had little-to-no exposure to. You seem to be concerned about his true feelings toward black people – try talking to him about it? It doesn’t have to be some frilly Lifetime Network let’s-talk-about-our-feelings conversation; an honest to goodness clearing of the air should be plenty.
Even sven, what you said to the OP was totally uncalled for and reeks of hipster racism. Lindsay should’ve taken it to the Pit, but I still think what she said was valid. How dare you pass judgment on someone’s relationship like that.
Ok. I was over the line. My apologies to the OP- I got so caught up in giving a dissenting opinion that I made some unwarranted assumptions.
Thank you, MOL, I think I can say that we all have much to learn from you.
God… I had forgotten about that KITH! It’s like it was ordered up just for this thread.
I agree with the others - your dad seems to be trying. That counts for a lot, even a few actual foot in mouth moments way beyond the shifty looks.
My son is Korean. A lot of my older family friends (my mother’s friends, my relatives in her generation) have had “foot in mouth” moments. If they were purposefully offensive, we’d drop the acquaintance entirely. But for the most part they are simply innocently held beliefs - that thirteen years worth of knowledge of my son has challenged.
Give the man a chance. It’s very possible that those sideways looks you think are checking to see if she’s going to steal something are more likely him being embarrassed about things he’s said to you, or him not quite knowing what to say to her.
He doesn’t have to be perfect (who is?), but it sounds like he’s trying. Give him the opportunity to learn. Isn’t that part of what you do? You’re here, after all.
It really depends on what your dad is doing, OP. I mean, I don’t have a huge amount of patience for racism, so if I feel like I’m in the presence of it, I get annoyed and it’s no fun to be annoyed and blah blah blah. But do you know he’s feeling all these racist things or are you guessing that he is? Are you new to your relationship and sensitive about it or are you really comfortable with it? I have the sense based on your OP that it’s new and you’re feeling a bit conspicuously INTERRACIAL!!!
It’s okay to notice people noticing the two of you. That’s something you might always find yourself recognizing, and if the person is a stranger? Well, it doesn’t really matter if you guess that the person is being really disapproving or shocked even if the reality is that they just think you look like their brother or they wonder if you know you have broccoli in your teeth.
But when it’s your father and you have any sort of relationship with him, it does matter if you get it right. People can change. People say lots of things in hypotheticals that don’t turn out to be true. And sometimes people just make an effort when it matters to them.
I’ve cut people from my life because of racism AND I’m marrying someone from a different race than I am in a few months, so I kinda get where you’re coming from (and I saw some things that gave me some of the same impression even sven had, too). Essentially, the bigger the action you take, the better you should want your evidence to be.
My father is a WW2 Pacific Theater and Korean war combat veteran. Asians in general were usually gooks, chinks and nips and/or japs. He was not thrilled when I started to study Chinese and wanted to go live in China. We didn’t have much money but he helped with my plane ticket the first time. Before I went to Taiwan, he made a point of telling me it would be okay if I ever wanted to marry a Chinese woman. I am sure he honestly never wanted that to happen. But it did, he’s got three granddaughters that he loves, he thinks my wife is a sweetie, was able to get drunk with my father-in-law (who servered on the opposite side in Korea) and eventually was cool with it.
hell he even had a road to Damascus moment and decided his views on gays was bigoted.
Your father sounds like he’s trying hard, and IMHO you ought to give him credit for how far he’s come instead of criticizing for how short he’s coming up on your ideal. YMMV.
Being aware of your father’s prejudices is probably why you’re uncomfortable around him, moreso than his actual behavior presently. That’s understandable. It’s not like you can just make yourself forget the things he’s said in the past, even if those things are unfairly coloring your perception of him whenever he’s near you and your girlfriend.
That said, if he’s willing to work past this and not make it issue, do some soul searching before you cut him off. If he’s truly making a good faith effort to accept her, then you should factor that into your emotional assessment . If he’s just “pretending” and not even bothering to hide it, then I don’t blame you for not wanting to be around that. Just be sure that this is what he is doing before you roll out.
This is why I have an internet crush on you, and why if I ever end up leading a supergroup (of either the superhero or rock star variety), you’ll be the first candidate member I call.
I think even sven may have been over the top, but the basic point she made seems entirely valid. Saying “I’m outraged that my father is being nice to my girlfriend” suggests that the OP was actually hoping to provoke a confrontation with his father over his having a black girlfriend. With that background, I have no problem urging the OP not to use his girlfriend as a weapon against his father. With her, just be happy that you have a good relationship and that your family isn’t trying to sabotage it. With your dad, focus instead on whatever the real reasons are that you’re angry with him, and use them to make your decision about whether to continue the relationship.
I don’t usually e-snap on people that way (I don’t think), but that post raised my hackles.
Bullshit. This is his live-in girlfriend here, not some novelty fuck. While there’s no shortage of sheltered white people trying to out-edge everyone by immersing themselves in some culture that’s taboo or “exotic” to their lily white friends, I have no reason to believe this is the case here. Moving in with a long-term girlfriend is pretty far to go in order to shock your father. The OP might actually --gasp!-- *love *her for non melatin-related or father-pissing-off reasons. His problem, it seems to me, is he believes his father to be racist, and the silence is unnerving.
Now I’m not sure what kind of relationship he and his old man have, and I’d throw a wild guess out there that it’s not a very good one since they can’t talk, but it seems to me no less that ceasing conversation with his dad is a bad idea. They really should have a man-to-man, then be done with it.
But who knows? I’m taking the OP at face value here. He may very well be in the KITH type situation that **madmonk28 **linked to, but that seems a bizarre and unfounded conclusion to jump to. Hilarious video, btw.
Give your Dad a break. Regardless of whatever views he holds, he is making an effort to be polite. How else are his views going to change if he doesn’t have the opportunity to spend time with your girlfriend and find out that Black People Are People Too.
If you cut him out, all you’re going to do is reinforce his bigotry, and he’s going to spend the rest of his days saying “those darn black people stole my boy!”
Sharpen your “You know, Dad when you say [], I feel like [_].” Encourage your girlfriend to find ways to correct him that save his face and do so in a humorous manner. “No, seriously, Mr. MonkeyLucifer’s Dad, my entire family has a horrible allergy to watermelon. Did you know that statistically, Black people are more likely to be allergic to watermelon than any other ethnic group?”*
- I totally made that shit up in a hyperbolic effort to create a hypothetical, yet ridiculous example.
All the more reason not to use her as a weapon against his father. I have no reason to doubt that the relationship is genuine and deep, which is why I think it’s a bad idea for him to be investing energy in trying to pick a fight with his father over it. The OP is risking having his screwed-up relationship with his father infect a good relationship with his girlfriend.
Is the OP coming back?
My vote: take care of your girlfriend and your father in that order. If he is in any way rude or unpleasant on account of race, side with her and get away from him. But, if he is being polite and seems to be trying to relearn his own early training, I think you should appreciate it and try to work with it. You should consider that as a general thing, family relationships and especially parental ones are strong and often valuable - while also noting that ending a toxic parental or family relationship can be a critically important turning point in a successful and satisfying life.
That said, I wonder what your girlfriend thinks about it.
Others have questioned your own attitudes about your own interracial dating, and made interesting observations about what you expressed and how. I can see some of their points and why they thought of them. But there’s really not enough here for us to know if these things are actually operating in your mind. If you find you can see these things in what you are doing, it’d be quite valuable to pursue further.