I (20 F) made a joke to my boyfriend (23 M) this morning about dying my hair blonde. He responded by saying that I wouldn’t look good blonde, and adding onto that by saying that only white people look good with blonde hair. This struck a chord with me, and I got noticeably ticked off. He then tried to back up his claim and was telling me to name a blonde Mexican or black woman that looked good with their hair. I am Mexican and have very tan skin, and while I by no means have any plans to dye my hair blonde anytime soon, it irked me that he would make a claim like that. I got upset over this and got out of the car and walked into my job (he was dropping me off) with only a goodbye.

Now, regardless of whether he is wrong or not, I know this was an immature reaction on my part, and I will apologize for that. But as for what he said, I do not think that is an okay thing to say, but I don’t know if I am overreacting. After all, it is just hair. But historically with things concerning race, hair is not always just hair. It seemed like a racist thing to say, especially the sentence “only white people can _” or “POC don’t look good in _”. What would you make out of this situation?

UPDATE: Thank you all for your advice, I really appreciate it, I just needed reassurance that I wasn’t being dramatic in thinking the comment was offensive. Also those with opposite views, I appreciate the insight equally as much in helping me consider every possible point of view. I did talk to him and told him that I thought that the comments he made were racist, and he said he did not mean to say it in the way that it came out. He used his mom as an example (she is also white) and said that she has tan skin as well and when she dyed her hair platinum blonde he did not think it looked good. So, what he meant to say was that it doesn’t look good on tan skin, which made me feel better, but that didn’t change the fact that the damage was already done. Language matters and the way you communicate about race is just as important. He is foreign and english isn’t his first language, so I do give him the benefit of the doubt there, but all in all, he needs to know better.