This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/motherbeeee on 2023-09-29 22:53:06.

I (41f) have 2 children, 14m and 11m from my previous marriage. My 14 year old is the subject of this post. I’ll call him Andrew.

Andrew has recently begun his first year of high school. He doesn’t have a lot of friends because we live closer to a different high school than most of his former classmates ended up at. Luckily one of his very close friends from a few years back goes to his school. A girl I will call Dana. They have become close again over the last 6ish weeks. They spend time together at school and she has been coming over on weekends, or him at her house. Andrew talks about her a lot. To be honest, I thought they had crushes on each other. By the way, Dana is mixed black with Vietnamese and we are white. Unfortunately that is relevant.

Last weekend Dana was over for dinner. Things were going normally until my 11 year old made a joke about Dana being Andrew’s girlfriend. My husband and he have been lightly teasing Andrew for a couple of weeks about Dana being his girlfriend and he always denies it hotly. That night after my 11 year old’s joke, Andrew not only denied it but spouted a, “I DON’T LIKE BLACK GIRLS!” loudly for the entire table to hear, including Dana. I was stunned. Dana looked highly embarrassed. I knew in the moment I would talk to him later, but just for the time being said something like, “hey, that isn’t cool.” The remainder of dinner was very awkward and then Dana left.

Once she was gone I told Andrew how he probably hurt Dana’s feelings. I explained how black women and girls already struggle with feeling accepted in society, and that he was ignoring the other half of her race entirely. Not to mention the bad example he was setting for his brother. He went on defensive mode and said he just thinks dark girls are “ugly” and is tired of people at home and at school thinking he would date, “someone like her.” After that conversation I told him that he was grounded until he offered Dana a sincere apology and made an effort to learn about miogynoir through reading. I then told him that if I were Dana, I would not want to be his friend anymore after his racist remarks.

To my astonishment, this has been unpopular with my ex as well as my current husband. My current husband is puerto rican, so I was doubly surprised he didn’t side with me. They both say that Andrew is entitled to his own preferences when it comes to girls and I am wrong to punish him. I took it more seriously from my current husband who has been on the receiving end of racism. I now do not know what to do. Andrew has apologized to D, but has yet to find a good book on misogynoir and read it. Am I wrong for punishing him? Should I let him off the hook? AITA?

Edit:

Thank you everyone for your input. I want to say that I see now I was wrong to view the teasing as lighthearted when it upset my son and led to him lashing out. I feel the need to reaffirm that it was not me who personally was involved in the teasing which seems to be a common misconception. That said, I haven’t argued the point because I can see I was in the wrong for not putting an end to the teasing, and it makes me no better than if I were directly involved.

I believe after this thread that I am justified in my punishment of my son for his racism, but the rest of owe him an apology just as he owed Dana one. I am going to follow through with the grounding, but I will have a talk with Andrew about what was going on, and try to explain again why he was apologizing. I appreciate all of the recommendations on books and documentaries.