I was born in South Africa, as were the rest of my family. However, because my siblings were quite a bit older, they spent most of their childhood there, while I did not. When I was about four years old, my family moved to Germany. I have lived there since. Not many people know that I am from there unless I have said, or they have met my family, because I have no accent and my name origin is from a different country. We speak English and German at home, we have never returned to South Africa, so I have very little connection to the country or the culture.
I started dating my boyfriend last year, we met through school and some mutual interests. I think that I probably never really mentioned where I was from originally, it’s never been something that I find important for people to know about me. I think he found out this year, and it didn’t seem like a big deal. I’m like everyone else that I know, I don’t think it makes me any different in ways. And he didn’t seem to care.
But things just started to feel kind of weird I guess. Like one time he asked how my parents would react if someone in my family was dating someone who was black. I said they wouldn’t care, and he seemed surprised by that. It’s little things like that, where he seems to assume my parents are just racist. But my parents aren’t racist at all. My mother is a paediatrician, and worked in a lot of humanitarian causes in other African countries when we were living there. And they’ve never raised me or my siblings to see anyone differently based on what race they are. And they don’t believe in apartheid or anything like that, they’re just not like that. They’re normal.
And it would bother me if it was just about my parents and my family, but he seems to think I’m racist too. One reason is that it’s because all my friends are the same race of me. But it’s not like I filter people through that, it’s just my sports and where I have been to school, those are the people I have met and liked, so they are my friends. It just bothers me I guess. Because I’ve never done anything wrong, and it feels like he’s just assuming who I am, just from where I was born and some historical policies. I don’t really know how to talk about it to him though, because I don’t want to sound bad, I just don’t like it.
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Emphasise that you are racist because you are German, and that your South African ancestry is merely a happy coincidence.
Break up. He’s weird .
Or if you wanna make things interesting, have a difficult meeting with him and your family to straighten out why tf he thinks that way.
He doesn’t sound very intelligent. Have you tried saying to him “Do you automatically think I’m racist because I was born in SA?” I don’t know if he was born in Germany but it’s not like that country has a stellar record of tolerance either.
Why are you dating someone who thinks so little of you?
He’s assuming something about your character based on where you were born. That’s called prejudice.
Dump the jerk.
It’s pretty racist of him to assume everyone from SA is racist
Does he believe we have lions and zebras walking freely too? 🙄 It’s such a closed minded thought with no knowledge of the actual country.
Yes, our history is horrible and we can’t ignore it, because then we’re due to repeat it. But newer generations have done so much work to fix what our ancestors did, the majority of us in South Africa don’t give a single fuck about race, we love each other. I wish people would educate themselves before talking shit. (Your boyfriend in this case)