An American teenager who claims her parents cut off her off because she has a black boyfriend has raised more than $12,000 (£10,000) to pay her college tuition in just one day.
Allie Dowdle from Memphis said her mother and father refused to pay for her degree after discovering she was in a relationship with an African American man.
Writing on her Go Fund Me page, the high school student said: “All of this because I love another human being, as I was taught to do. How could my love for another person be wrong because of his skin colour?”
Dowdle said she and her boyfriend Michael dated in secret for a year after her parents told her they disapproved of him.
“My dad did not give me an option: he told me that I was not allowed to see Michael ever again. Why? Strictly because of skin colour,” the teen said.
“It wasn’t a quiet ‘no’ either. I’ll never forget the yelling my parents did, when they expressed how disappointed they were in me, that I could do so much better. “
The situation reportedly escalated a month ago when the young couple approached her mother and father again.
“Their response was much more drastic than I could’ve ever expected,” Dowdle wrote on her crowdfunding page.
“Unfortunately, I will no longer be able to attend college if I cannot come up with the money somehow.
“Because my parents have listed me, their own daughter, as someone who is not worthy of their time and money, I have turned to the public for support,” the girl explained.
“It hurts me to have to ask for money, as I’d rather be out working for it myself, but I currently have no other options.”
After she began crowdfunding yesterday, Dowdle has already raised $12,600, exceeding her original $10,000 target in less than 24 hours.
Almost 500 people have contributed to the fund, calling the young woman “brave”.
A woman named Stacey Saed Ferguson commented: “Well done for staying the course. This type of racism will only end when courage and love are combined.”
But Dowdle’s father Bill has denied claims that his actions were motivated by the race of his daughter’s boyfriend.
Bill Dowdle told New York Daily News that he had decided to cut her off because she has been spoiled and “it became obvious that she needed to go out in the world and grow up.”