Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I have changed A LOT in the last two years. My own father told me he doesn't recognise me anymore. We're barely on speaking terms. When he found out my boyfriend was black, he threatened to disown me if I didn't end it. My mother constantly stares at me with the disappointed look in her eyes and my brother calls me a traitor. Now that I'm home, I do anything to get out of the house because there's always an argument brewing around the corner. I often go for long walks or just find myself a park and spend the entire day reading. I still have old school friends I know in the area but after a few meetings with them, I feel like we just can't connect anymore. In fact the distance I'm feeling is not just family-oriented; it feels like I just don't know South Africa anymore. I really can't wait to go back to England in September. It feels like that's where my home really is.
You've got to live your own life on your own terms. It would be one thing if you were off murdering people, but you're not.
Just because you grew up with or are related to people doesn't mean you have to act like them or change your life to suit their preferences. What if you grew up in a religious cult or an abusive family? No one would expect you to continue to be beaten because that was what your parents and brother expected of you.
Although not quite as a cut and dried as yours, I've had to make my own decisions about family expectations versus living my life as I wanted to. It's not always easy and yes, you may not maintain the same relationship you had before. And you know what? That's their choice. They did that, not you. Don't feel responsible for it.
OP my heart breaks for you as I read your story, but I also know that there is hope and a future for you that can be filled with happiness and peace of mind. It's just that you are faced with some difficult situations and there's simply no way around it.
First of all - YOU ARE RIGHT AND YOUR PARENTS ARE WRONG ABOUT RACE ISSUES. Keep that confidence in the foremost of your mind. YOU ARE RIGHT - there is NOTHING MORALLY WRONG with you dating, even marrying, even having children with, a person of another race.
So - that being said, who has thrown down the unreasonable gauntlet - you or your parents? You didn't give them an unreasonable, morally wrong ultimatum - they did that to you. Hm. Apparently they place a higher value on a misguided "value system" than they do their relationship with their own daughter. I think that's sad - and jacked up - and unhealthy.
You know all this, I'm sure, and it still doesn't lessen the pain. But it should give you fortitude as you face the inevitable showdown.
Stick to your guns on this one. Maybe they'll come around - and maybe they won't - but you have to figure out your own moral code in life and stick to it. Racism is abhorrent. Now that you've really seen -and lived - the ugliest side of it, you know that with every fiber of your being. You can never tolerate it again without selling part of your very soul.
You sound like a very kind, intelligent, introspective and astute person. You will make new friends, and make a new family, and your life will be full of love and affection. This won't mean that you don't grieve for your family, but here's the deal - part of your grief is DISILLUSIONMENT. Even if you broke up with your boyfriend, you'd still have that disillusionment to deal with - along with another sort of grief. PLUS you'd be ashamed of yourself. So - you really have no choice but to move forward - and thankfully the direction you're headed is more wholesome and has more integrity.
You will have to stick to your guns with your family. They won't like it, and they may threaten and posture, and cut you off or whatever - but they will respect you more in the long run. They will not respect you at all if you dump your boyfriend and come crawling back to "white land." As you said, in their eyes you'll always be "tainted." (And that is SO JACKED UP.) You don't need this stigma and shame and drama in your life. Build a new life.
Besides that - they may eventually surprise you. My ex husband is African American, and my family is from the Deep South. My ancestors owned plantations and slaves, and fought for the South in the Civil War. My dad was a member of a Confederate Civil War reinactment group when I met and married my ex husband! So I can relate to the dismay and the arguing and all that. In my parents' defense, they are not racist and didn't raise me to be racist, so that helped. They just didn't want me to "complicate my life," as they put it. They also just honestly never did imagine this scenario in their lives. But when the grandkids came along, they brightened right up. They adore my kids! They've been great grandparents to them as well. But a few years in the beginning were pretty tense. My dad even kicked me out of their house when I wouldn't break up with my boyfriend - I mean, in the middle of the night. I had to call a friend to come get me off the side of the road. But we worked through all that believe it or not and now I'm close with my parents.
But it was tough and that's why I feel for you. Stand firm.
I'm South African but I'm studying for an undergraduate degree in England. I've just finished my second year and now I'm back home for the summer break. Prior coming back, I was dreading it. That's because in the last six months or so, my relationship with my family has deteriorated immensely.
I come from a very traditional, very religious far-right Boer family. South Africa is a country beset by many racial/cultural problems. In the society I grew up, I was basically taught white is right and I never interacted with any non-whites unless it was an absolute necessity. My neighbourhood was mostly white and the boarding school I attended during secondary was 90% white. I'll freely admit that growing up as a teen, I was a staunch racist; I believed in racial superiority/racial purity and segregation.
All that crumbled when I went to university in Europe. England is a far cry from South Africa. The racial barriers that are ever present (even with apartheid dead) in South Africa are hardly present there. I've read that London is the most multicultural city in the world and looking at it, I believe that statement. It was an absolute culture shock to me in the beginning. In fact I found myself lost and melancholy for a while. In the campus halls I stayed in during first year, one of my roomies was black British. At first I did my utmost to avoid conversations with him. However, after a while I realised we shared a few interests and I started talking to him. We've now been a couple for a year and five months.
Getting to know him as acquaintances was the beginning of my conversion from a racist person to an open-minded person. I have discarded a lot of ideologies I clung to when I was younger. It's not only the ideologies that have changed, but also my choice of career (although I'm still going to finish my degree as it can lead to different doors). I like what I'm studying, but I don't plan on turning it into a career. I have something else in mind, something that doesn't sit well with my parents as it is "unconventional and not respectable." They pushed hard for me to study my current course.
I have changed A LOT in the last two years. My own father told me he doesn't recognise me anymore. We're barely on speaking terms. When he found out my boyfriend was black, he threatened to disown me if I didn't end it. My mother constantly stares at me with the disappointed look in her eyes and my brother calls me a traitor. Now that I'm home, I do anything to get out of the house because there's always an argument brewing around the corner. I often go for long walks or just find myself a park and spend the entire day reading. I still have old school friends I know in the area but after a few meetings with them, I feel like we just can't connect anymore. In fact the distance I'm feeling is not just family-oriented; it feels like I just don't know South Africa anymore. I really can't wait to go back to England in September. It feels like that's where my home really is.
Despite the tension between me and my family, I don't want to lose them. But I feel like I'm going to.
wow. this is a great story. sorry to be so flippant, this is your LIFE- but it really is interesting.
i think its very impressive, the way you have opened your eyes. you know you can't close them again, and that's the truth. you can't take up your family's beliefs again and if they can't accept you, its simply gonna suck. your brother may eventually come around if he is able to leave the country and see something other than the world he grew up in.
education and travel are wonderful things. opening our eyes to other cultures is one of the most exciting things a human being can do. while you may lose your family, that is going to be their choice. if you continue to love and accept them that is going to be ALL that you can do, and that's the hard facts and you have to swallow them. you have done all you can do. if they want to persist in their ignorance, there is only one way. once you have opened your eyes and heart there is nothing that is going to close them again. they deserve your love and really, pity- its IMO a terrible poverty to be a racist. i delight every day in the panorama of humanity- i live in los angeles and i adore it. i grew up in the south, and while my family told racist jokes occasionally they didn't belong to the Klan, like some people we knew. if they had of been, i would have had to accept them just as they would have had to accept they super liberal love-all-colors daughter. perhaps they will soften in time.
OP my heart breaks for you as I read your story, but I also know that there is hope and a future for you that can be filled with happiness and peace of mind. It's just that you are faced with some difficult situations and there's simply no way around it.
First of all - YOU ARE RIGHT AND YOUR PARENTS ARE WRONG ABOUT RACE ISSUES. Keep that confidence in the foremost of your mind. YOU ARE RIGHT - there is NOTHING MORALLY WRONG with you dating, even marrying, even having children with, a person of another race.
So - that being said, who has thrown down the unreasonable gauntlet - you or your parents? You didn't give them an unreasonable, morally wrong ultimatum - they did that to you. Hm. Apparently they place a higher value on a misguided "value system" than they do their relationship with their own daughter. I think that's sad - and jacked up - and unhealthy.
You know all this, I'm sure, and it still doesn't lessen the pain. But it should give you fortitude as you face the inevitable showdown.
Stick to your guns on this one. Maybe they'll come around - and maybe they won't - but you have to figure out your own moral code in life and stick to it. Racism is abhorrent. Now that you've really seen -and lived - the ugliest side of it, you know that with every fiber of your being. You can never tolerate it again without selling part of your very soul.
You sound like a very kind, intelligent, introspective and astute person. You will make new friends, and make a new family, and your life will be full of love and affection. This won't mean that you don't grieve for your family, but here's the deal - part of your grief is DISILLUSIONMENT. Even if you broke up with your boyfriend, you'd still have that disillusionment to deal with - along with another sort of grief. PLUS you'd be ashamed of yourself. So - you really have no choice but to move forward - and thankfully the direction you're headed is more wholesome and has more integrity.
You will have to stick to your guns with your family. They won't like it, and they may threaten and posture, and cut you off or whatever - but they will respect you more in the long run. They will not respect you at all if you dump your boyfriend and come crawling back to "white land." As you said, in their eyes you'll always be "tainted." (And that is SO JACKED UP.) You don't need this stigma and shame and drama in your life. Build a new life.
Besides that - they may eventually surprise you. My ex husband is African American, and my family is from the Deep South. My ancestors owned plantations and slaves, and fought for the South in the Civil War. My dad was a member of a Confederate Civil War reinactment group when I met and married my ex husband! So I can relate to the dismay and the arguing and all that. In my parents' defense, they are not racist and didn't raise me to be racist, so that helped. They just didn't want me to "complicate my life," as they put it. They also just honestly never did imagine this scenario in their lives. But when the grandkids came along, they brightened right up. They adore my kids! They've been great grandparents to them as well. But a few years in the beginning were pretty tense. My dad even kicked me out of their house when I wouldn't break up with my boyfriend - I mean, in the middle of the night. I had to call a friend to come get me off the side of the road. But we worked through all that believe it or not and now I'm close with my parents.
But it was tough and that's why I feel for you. Stand firm.
Thank you so much for this post. I didn't have the best of nights but reading this brightened my afternoon a bit. Thank you for also sharing your own story regarding your own experience. Sometimes I tend to feel alone when it comes to scenarios like this, so it's nice to know that others out there managed to pull through this. Did your parents come around when your children were born or before that?
You're right. I can't go back to the person I used to be. It almost makes me physically sick when I think about the abhorrent perception I used to have.
wow. this is a great story. sorry to be so flippant, this is your LIFE- but it really is interesting.
i think its very impressive, the way you have opened your eyes. you know you can't close them again, and that's the truth. you can't take up your family's beliefs again and if they can't accept you, its simply gonna suck. your brother may eventually come around if he is able to leave the country and see something other than the world he grew up in.
education and travel are wonderful things. opening our eyes to other cultures is one of the most exciting things a human being can do. while you may lose your family, that is going to be their choice. if you continue to love and accept them that is going to be ALL that you can do, and that's the hard facts and you have to swallow them. you have done all you can do. if they want to persist in their ignorance, there is only one way. once you have opened your eyes and heart there is nothing that is going to close them again. they deserve your love and really, pity- its IMO a terrible poverty to be a racist. i delight every day in the panorama of humanity- i live in los angeles and i adore it. i grew up in the south, and while my family told racist jokes occasionally they didn't belong to the Klan, like some people we knew. if they had of been, i would have had to accept them just as they would have had to accept they super liberal love-all-colors daughter. perhaps they will soften in time.
GOOD LUCK.
Yes. You're right. I can't close my eyes again, like I mentioned to another poster. I can't go back to the darkness I used to be consumed by. It actually terrifies me when I think about it . . . had I remained the person I used to be, I would have missed out on SO MANY GREAT THINGS! In the last couple of years, although there have been difficult with family issues, I have also enjoyed some of the best memories in my entire life. Being open-minded really has given me so many opportunities to enjoy. Had I remained the same person, I would have severely restricted myself.
Thank you so much for this post. I didn't have the best of nights but reading this brightened my afternoon a bit. Thank you for also sharing your own story regarding your own experience. Sometimes I tend to feel alone when it comes to scenarios like this, so it's nice to know that others out there managed to pull through this. Did your parents come around when your children were born or before that?
You're right. I can't go back to the person I used to be. It almost makes me physically sick when I think about the abhorrent perception I used to have.
My parents came around after the birth of my first child. Actually, when I got pregnant. Prior to that, they pretty much fought it tooth and nail.
One difference though, is that my parents never claimed to be racist. In fact, quite the opposite - they took a firm stand AGAINST racism. My brother is adopted from Korea. When they adopted him (when I was young), some of THEIR family members gave them a hard time about it - the Korean War had ended just a few years earlier and some of them were veterans of that war in fact. But we're a military family and we lived in multiracial situations constantly. So my parents didn't think they were racist...till I started dating a black man. Then they had to face the fact that they did subconsciously harbor racist feelings. That was uncomfortable to them.
To their credit, they rose to the occasion eventually, and they never claimed that they were opposed to my marriage because they didn't feel comfortable with a black man as immediate family. They claimed it was because I was "making my life difficult" and "what about the children?" That sort of thing. (My four children have done very well, thank you - no significant issues being biracial - in fact, they all claim to LOVE that fact about themselves.)
As for the opinions you used to have - no need to beat yourself up over it. Just take it as a learning experience. Think of how racist you were raised to be, and how quickly your perspective has changed. This is a GOOD THING. And this shows you how quickly you can change the perspectives of many other people over your lifetime. You've learned that not all negative thought patterns are necessarily "hard wired" into us - many of our preconceived notions are just defaults because we've never HAD to think any other way, and that's how we were raised.
So you can live your life with integrity and dignity, and you can be an example to those who may default to racist concepts (like my parents, for instance) - and change the hearts of people. It CAN be done, as your life proves.
One thing that I learned is this - don't be quick to judge. Prior to dating and marrying my (now ex) husband, I just hadn't had to THINK much about racism. In fact, I'd made racist remarks before, joking around with my friends. I'd been insensitive to the issues of skin color, in my sweet little white skin. So now, when people make those mildly racist remarks that so many people can make from time to time, I give them a little grace. I may gently correct them, but I don't get on my moral high horse. As someone much smarter than me once said, "Preach the gospel always - when necessary, use words."
Your life can be a beautiful example to many people and can change minds and hearts. Maybe some of those minds and hearts will be those of your family members. Only time will tell.
Find some volunteer work or courses to take you out of your home until you can get back to England. Hospital, library, day care, school, anything will do. And plan on working next summer or at least an internship or summer school or something so you don't have to go through this again. Good luck.
This is great advice. Volunteering will keep you busy, and you will learn some new things at the same time. I'm sorry for what you are going through with your family. You are very open minded and worldly now. That's great! Just be sweet to your family and try not to get involved in discussions about race. Different generations think differently. My grandparents were very racist. My parents were rather racist also when I was a child, but two of my siblings married people from other races...so my parents had to accept it if they wanted to see their children and grandchildren. They are now more open-minded.
I'm South African but I'm studying for an undergraduate degree in England. I've just finished my second year and now I'm back home for the summer break. Prior coming back, I was dreading it. That's because in the last six months or so, my relationship with my family has deteriorated immensely.
I come from a very traditional, very religious far-right Boer family. South Africa is a country beset by many racial/cultural problems. In the society I grew up, I was basically taught white is right and I never interacted with any non-whites unless it was an absolute necessity. My neighbourhood was mostly white and the boarding school I attended during secondary was 90% white. I'll freely admit that growing up as a teen, I was a staunch racist; I believed in racial superiority/racial purity and segregation.
All that crumbled when I went to university in Europe. England is a far cry from South Africa. The racial barriers that are ever present (even with apartheid dead) in South Africa are hardly present there. I've read that London is the most multicultural city in the world and looking at it, I believe that statement. It was an absolute culture shock to me in the beginning. In fact I found myself lost and melancholy for a while. In the campus halls I stayed in during first year, one of my roomies was black British. At first I did my utmost to avoid conversations with him. However, after a while I realised we shared a few interests and I started talking to him. We've now been a couple for a year and five months.
Getting to know him as acquaintances was the beginning of my conversion from a racist person to an open-minded person. I have discarded a lot of ideologies I clung to when I was younger. It's not only the ideologies that have changed, but also my choice of career (although I'm still going to finish my degree as it can lead to different doors). I like what I'm studying, but I don't plan on turning it into a career. I have something else in mind, something that doesn't sit well with my parents as it is "unconventional and not respectable." They pushed hard for me to study my current course.
I have changed A LOT in the last two years. My own father told me he doesn't recognise me anymore. We're barely on speaking terms. When he found out my boyfriend was black, he threatened to disown me if I didn't end it. My mother constantly stares at me with the disappointed look in her eyes and my brother calls me a traitor. Now that I'm home, I do anything to get out of the house because there's always an argument brewing around the corner. I often go for long walks or just find myself a park and spend the entire day reading. I still have old school friends I know in the area but after a few meetings with them, I feel like we just can't connect anymore. In fact the distance I'm feeling is not just family-oriented; it feels like I just don't know South Africa anymore. I really can't wait to go back to England in September. It feels like that's where my home really is.
Despite the tension between me and my family, I don't want to lose them. But I feel like I'm going to.
Perhaps.....you are the person in the family who is going to be the impetus for your family's awakening....that NO race is superior to another, just because they have a different skin color. That is plain and simple insecurity on their part! My gawd, I can't even BEGIN to wrap my head around that logic and I KNOW, with every fiber of my being, in spirit AND through experience that it is an absolute, disgusting, blatant LIE!
i have worked alongside people from darn near every country and culture in the world. We are ALL the SAME!!!!! There are good people and lazy people and funny people and loving people and ...aside from that skin color...we are virtually the same! Obviously, we are each unique, but you can find people who think JUST LIKE YOU, from every culture. OMG....i have sisters and brothers....soul mates, precious friends whom I can't imagine not having in my life...and aside from the "basic body parts", we look NOTHING alike....but inside, we ARE alike.
My parents came around after the birth of my first child. Actually, when I got pregnant. Prior to that, they pretty much fought it tooth and nail.
One difference though, is that my parents never claimed to be racist. In fact, quite the opposite - they took a firm stand AGAINST racism. My brother is adopted from Korea. When they adopted him (when I was young), some of THEIR family members gave them a hard time about it - the Korean War had ended just a few years earlier and some of them were veterans of that war in fact. But we're a military family and we lived in multiracial situations constantly. So my parents didn't think they were racist...till I started dating a black man. Then they had to face the fact that they did subconsciously harbor racist feelings. That was uncomfortable to them.
To their credit, they rose to the occasion eventually, and they never claimed that they were opposed to my marriage because they didn't feel comfortable with a black man as immediate family. They claimed it was because I was "making my life difficult" and "what about the children?" That sort of thing. (My four children have done very well, thank you - no significant issues being biracial - in fact, they all claim to LOVE that fact about themselves.)
As for the opinions you used to have - no need to beat yourself up over it. Just take it as a learning experience. Think of how racist you were raised to be, and how quickly your perspective has changed. This is a GOOD THING. And this shows you how quickly you can change the perspectives of many other people over your lifetime. You've learned that not all negative thought patterns are necessarily "hard wired" into us - many of our preconceived notions are just defaults because we've never HAD to think any other way, and that's how we were raised.
So you can live your life with integrity and dignity, and you can be an example to those who may default to racist concepts (like my parents, for instance) - and change the hearts of people. It CAN be done, as your life proves.
One thing that I learned is this - don't be quick to judge. Prior to dating and marrying my (now ex) husband, I just hadn't had to THINK much about racism. In fact, I'd made racist remarks before, joking around with my friends. I'd been insensitive to the issues of skin color, in my sweet little white skin. So now, when people make those mildly racist remarks that so many people can make from time to time, I give them a little grace. I may gently correct them, but I don't get on my moral high horse. As someone much smarter than me once said, "Preach the gospel always - when necessary, use words."
Your life can be a beautiful example to many people and can change minds and hearts. Maybe some of those minds and hearts will be those of your family members. Only time will tell.
My heart goes with you!
I'm glad that it all worked out for you regarding the racial issues. I find it very interesting how your parents, like you say, were against racism but felt uncomfortable when you began a relationship with a black man. Reminds me of a friend in England - her parents were always supportive of gay couples/gay rights but when they found out their daughter was a lesbian, they weren't comfortable with it either. Really does emphasize just how complex topics like this can be.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Losing Family
