White Men-African Women

[Robbespiere]

Why does it seem that white men are least attracted to women with African features. Is it because of the legacy of racism? Is it because these women look different from their mothers? What?

[DrFidelius]

Speak for yourself, Robbie.

Perhaps you could try to puzzle out the reasons why you are not attracted to women of colour. Don't generalize overmuch from your own preferences.

[PatrickM]

At the risk of feeding trolls, let's take a poll:

Hey white men, who are you more attracted to, a woman who looks like Halle Berry, or one who looks like your mother?

I am a white man and I love my mother dearly, but based solely on looks, I'll take a woman who looks like Halle Berry over one who looks like my mother any day.

I've also noticed that women of African descent come in many varieties, ie gorgeous, plain and ugly, to name just three, just like women of other descents, and just like men, for that matter.

[tomndebb]

Before we all jump on the "That's an impertinent question" bandwagon, please note that the question was not why black women were not as good looking. The question involved the impression or observation that one paired group of people do not demonstrate the same attraction as different paired groups of people.

Run through the list of people you know who are dating or married in which one partner had obviously European ancestors and the other partner had obviously African ancestors. I know quite a few white women dating or married to black men. I only know two couples in which a white man is in a relationship with a black woman. I would expect the numbers to be more equal on a college campus, but I don't think that my observations are unrepresentative of society at large.

Of course, the question I would counter to the OP is whether "attraction" is the appropriate activity being observed. A fairly large number of successful black women in the entertainment industry are married to white guys. Is it possible that various class distinctions, irrespective of race, drive the selection process?

I don't know. I have heard, for example, black women really chewing out other black women who had dated a white guy for not maintaining some sort of solidarity. I have only seen this on a couple of occasions, but if it were a somewhat frequent occurrence among black women to ostracize their friends who date whites, then maybe guys who do ask black women for dates just get turned down more often. There also could be a fear among some white guys that they will be challenged buy a black woman's family and so they simply avoid the situation. I really don't know, one way or the other. These are wild speculations on my part. I offer no proof or even evidence of what is going on.

Had the OP asked why black women don't look as good as white women, I'd stand back and let everyone rip him a new bodily orifice. That was not the question asked, however, and we might find some interesting sociological points if we consider the actual question.

[mouthbreather]

Hmm...good question.

I'll go ask my Girlfriend, who has "African features" galore.

I'll report back with my findings.

[tomndebb]

I do not offer the following as anything other than one person's perspective:
Black Women's Perspective

And from another perspective (including some graphs that are claimed to represent U.S. Census data):
Is Love Colorblind?

[manhattan]

Well, heck. I don’t know what to do with this thread. tomndebb is right; the question does not offend me as posed. But Dr. Fidelius is also right; the OP has not demonstrated that the assumption underlying the question has sufficient factual basis to explore the question itself (as phrased).

Fortunately, I have a solution for such occasions. It’s known as a "punt." Oh, slythe….

This thread is off to our new forum, In My Humble Opinion.

[hawthorne]

To put it mildly, my wife's features are most attractive.

However, if I were not married, as an Australia bloke, there are many women who are attractive, and they come from lots of ethnic groups. "African" is a pretty broad term. There are lots of different "looks" amongst African women. Personally I find Eritrean women (a major immigrant group to Aust in the 1980s) rather striking. My guess is that this is so because (i) they weren't here before; (ii) some of them are very attractive; and (iii) the number of bigots in my social circle is not sufficient to bias my evaluation.

I suspect varients in (iii) are an important feature (going both ways) in who ends up with who.

picmr

[SterlingNorth]

Robbespiere asked:

Why does it seem that white men are least attracted to women with African features. Is it because of the legacy of racism? Is it because these women look different from their mothers? What?

Wow!
If I had the answer to that, I could graduate early with a whole boatload of grant money and international fame.

Well not the Hollywood fame where I'd be a sex symbol to teenage girls and enough money to open the Planet SterlingNorth. More like the "I got my name published in the collection of Magazines with Long Acronyms and Abbreviations published by the pointy heads" fame. I'd get to hang with the Socialogist, Historians, Psycologists, Physiologists, Biologists. I'd get to be ridiculed by Limbaugh and Dr. Laura.

If you ask 1000 white men why they find who they find attractive and they told the truth, you'd probably get 1000 answers. If they lied, you'd probably get 1000 answers, too.
Same with black women. I can't answer for either since I don't belong to either group, nor am I their patron saint.

You're looking for a simple answer and quite frankly there isn't one. When there isn't a simple answer, always blame the parents.

Of course the initial premise may be flawed. I live in an area where there is a good amount of interracial dating. My good friend is the product of a white father and black mother.

Some related questions that just popped into my head just now:

• Would the white men of which Robbie ask of be attracted to white women if they had some "African features"? Would they be attracted to black women if they had a lot of "white features". What about the Japanese? Why do I find that Irish gal with the red hair and green eyes at the bookstore extremely cute? Why do we base who we marry on this strange thing called attraction?

_{a useless post from SterlingNorth}

[DrFidelius]

[Dr Ruth] Zo, Robby, how long have you felt zexual attraction for your mother? [/ Dr Ruth]

Not to say that it is unusual for white men to be attracted to Robbie's mother, just that it seems a tad, well, odd that Robbie feels so.

[galen]

[Dr Ruth] Zo, Robby, how long have you felt zexual attraction for your mother? [/ Dr Ruth]

Not to say that it is unusual for white men to be attracted to Robbie's mother, just that it seems a tad, well, odd that Robbie feels so.

DrFidelius, you are just plain rude. It so happens that I am white and my wife is a beautiful African-American woman whom I am very fortunate to be married to. Please read my post carefully. It asks a serious question. I've talked to enough white men over a lifetime to know their preferences.I am interested in serious opinion, not crude remarks about my relationship with my mother, rest her soul.

[Una Persson]

I do not offer the following as anything other than one person's perspective:
Black Women's Perspective

And from another perspective (including some graphs that are claimed to represent U.S. Census data):
Is Love Colorblind?

Wow, the "Is Love Colorblind" was a great link. I was recently called a racist for making the simple statement (in these exact words) which was based on all my years of door-to-door pizza delivery to several thousand houses:

"Doesn't it seem like there are more Black man - White women couples than Black women - White man couples?"

From which, a typical response was:

"I dont know what your trying to suggest here but you certainly seem to have some racist views."

Sigh.

I really don't notice skin color when I check out other women. And Hale Berry is hot, and so is Sade, and so is Tyra Banks, and...

[SterlingNorth]

galen

DrFidelius, you are just plain rude. It so happens that I am white and my wife is a beautiful African-American woman whom I am very fortunate to be married to. Please read my post carefully. It asks a serious question. I've talked to enough white men over a lifetime to know their preferences.I am interested in serious opinion, not crude remarks about my relationship with my mother, rest her soul.

Whoa, whoa, wait a sec.
Did I is a joke in there somewhere?
I thought Robbespiere asked the question about relationships.
I thought DrFidelius was mocking Robbie.


You're not allowed to make substitutions in the cast in the middle of a play; it makes me think I'm going senile.

[mouthbreather]

Sterling, I was just wondering the same thing.

[DrFidelius]

Odd. [b]galen[/i]'s first post in this thread is the one where he replies to my second post to robbespeirre.

Yes, it was a damn rude post from me, but we do have rules against multiple Usernames here. I am almost sorry that it was my post which caused you to expose yourself.

Okay, not really.

[labdude]

humm. I don't know. let my white male self go ask my black girlfriend........


really I dont know any white women with black men, but I know many white men with black women. Maybe its a regional thing.

michael

[labdude]

I just had a thought. Maybe white-man+black-woman combos are more common among colledge educated persons. And black-man+white-woman are more common among non-colledge educated persons.

My girlfriend is a colledge educated black woman and her friends are also colledge educated black women. They all have white boyfriends or husbands. This might be because of the lack of colledge educated black men in america.

michael

[Heloise]

My boyfriend is white. I am a mix. An extreme mix. I've been compared to different famous black women since puberty and have been given some very interesting nicknames because of my unusual skin color/features. The interesting thing to me is that white guys seem to like me more than black guys do. Perhaps I have Asian features, too, because I have had people ask about an Asian background (that's the one I don't have and the one I would most like to, irony, no?). Have you ever seen Eve's Bayou? The girl in the movie looks almost exactly like I did at that age. She is on the new Cosby Show as well, if you've seen that. Anyway, the point is, I look nothing like my boyfriend's mother, and I can't think of one of my boyfriends' mothers over time that I have looked anything like. And they run the gamut in different races. So, I'm not really certain your question makes much sense to me. Perhaps it doesn't relate, because I am American, not African. I've never even been to Africa.

[HomeSlice]

I dont find either black women nor women that look like my mom(she's korean BTW) the least bit attractive.

[TubaDiva]

At the risk of feeding trolls, let's take a poll:

Hey white men, who are you more attracted to, a woman who looks like Halle Berry, or one who looks like your mother?

I am a white man and I love my mother dearly, but based solely on looks, I'll take a woman who looks like Halle Berry over one who looks like my mother any day.

I've also noticed that women of African descent come in many varieties, ie gorgeous, plain and ugly, to name just three, just like women of other descents, and just like men, for that matter.

Hey, be original!

You're ripping off Lenny Bruce, who summed up this question by saying: "Choose between two women: Lena Horne or Kate Smith."

(For those of you that were born yesterday, Lena Horne was a gorgeous black woman and Kate Smith was white and big as a house.)

your humble TubaDiva

[PatrickM]

Pardon me, TubaDiva, but I did not knowingly rip-off Lenny Bruce. I was merely stating the obvious, (ie the Halle Berry is a gorgeous woman) as did he (ie that Lena Horne was a babe and Kate Smith was not). I'd wager that Lenny Bruce, despite all his other fine qualities, was not the first person to notice that Lena Horne was better looking than Kate Smith. So please don't rag on me for not quoting Lenny Bruce, unless you're prepared to rag on each and every poster who states the obvious when someone famous made had a similar comment.

[Diane]

I am blonde and green eyed. My son's latest girlfriend is a gorgeous black girl. Before her he has dated a redhead, a blonde, and a hispanic.

Now how does that dating/mom thing work again?

[DougC]

- - - I asked a few friends as old as I am (30 ish) and we all agreed: we (all white) guys had rarely ever been given signals by black women that they were interested- or if they did signal, we didn't understand it as such. None of us goes anyplace that an interracial couple couldn't go; it just seemed that black women never seemed real hot on the idea.
- We all noticed that interracial dating seems more common among people ten years younger than us, but this wasn't any sort of scientific poll. We blamed it on MTV (as usual). - MC

[xizor]

The topic of why there are more black male/white female relationships vs black female/white male relationships was debated by several of us during our stay in the army (where it was very prevalent), the only thing we came up with was that the black males who were dating white females were not intimidated by white females and more willing to risk rejection and ask them out. Whereas the white males were more intimidated by the black females and left the idea as a mere fantasy. The old nothing ventured, nothing gained adage.

[Modian]

Something sorta on topic, sorta off.

How come the most attractive black women are usually mixed? This isn't just my personal view, but look at all the acctresses, models, etc. That girl in Clueless (Who I also think was in Mo'Money), the one in Boomerang (tip of my tongue but can't remember her name), the one in MI2 (Actually, I wasn't sure what she was except English, but DAMN). The ones they show in movies almost always have a euro, white-bread, cracker cast to their features (thinner lips, smaller nose, straight hair that flows instead of stiff that don't go nowhere in a hurricane, lightter skin), instead of a more pronounced African feature set.

Is it just me noticing this? Or am I off base?

[Ceejaytee]

Are they really prettier or is it that the more African features (full lips, flatter nose, darker skin) are less acceptable to some people? I've seen outrageously beautiful dark-skinned African-featured women. Are these total goddesses (I'm a hetero white female, but hey, I can enjoy beauty too) less beautiful than Thandie Newton or Halle Berry or is it that we have been taught that white is better, lighter skin is better than darker skin, European features are better than African?

I think we have a messed-up idea of beauty. I find it interesting that all of the black women discussed above are light-skinned European-looking women. Doesn't anyone know any attractive dark-skinned women?

This feeds into the white man/black woman relationship situation. If light-skinned women are prized, then less white men will be in relationships with black women (in general--of course there are exceptions). I find that pretty sad.

[tracer]

I had a girlfriend in high school whose father was black and whose mother was Latino. (This was back when you didn't have to worry about saying "black" in public.) Unfortunately, her mother hated the idea of having her hang around boys, and probably would have put a chastity belt on her if anybody still made them.

[TheNerd]

Well, to answer honestly, I generally do not find black women attractive. I don't think it's skin color so much as features (face and body). I do find Tyra Banks very attractive, and Halle Berry is good looking too. But in real life I can count the number of black women that I've found attractive on one hand.
In fact, I can only recall one. And she had the most amazing green eyes (Hi Stephanie! Are you out there?).

Make of that what you will.

[tracer]

Ceejaytee wrote:

I've seen outrageously beautiful dark-skinned African-featured women. Are these total goddesses (I'm a hetero white female, but hey, I can enjoy beauty too) less beautiful than Thandie Newton or Halle Berry or is it that we have been taught that white is better, lighter skin is better than darker skin, European features are better than African?

If you grow up in a household with white parents, you get used to seeing white features from a very early age (as in, from birth). People form a lot of their personal preference for what looks good and what doesn't while they're still babies, and generally speaking, what your used to is what looks good.

It's an ancient survival instinct. Mommy and daddy survived the rigors of disease, predators, starvation, etc. until they were old enough to have you, right? If mommy and daddy have X, Y, and Z features, then maybe X, Y, and Z features are indicators of good survivability and thus good breeding stock. X, Y, and Z features are also indicators of similar genes, thus increasing the chance that your mate (should you choose your mate based on X, Y, and Z features) will have a genome similar to yours and thus increase her chances of passing on genes identical to yours.

[HomeSlice]

I think we have a messed-up idea of beauty.

Wow, and all this time I thought that beauty is based on opinion...

[Koffing]

Ceejaytee wrote:

I think we have a messed-up idea of beauty. I find it interesting that all of the black women discussed above are light-skinned European-looking women. Doesn't anyone know any attractive dark-skinned women?

Sure do. One of the most beautiful women I've ever known is very dark-skinned. I met her in college. She had a boyfriend. I was sad. We were good friends, though.

[zero]

Back when I was an undergrad pursuing a cultural anthropology degree, I remember several professors claiming this parent hypothesis. The hypothesis is simply that people select partners based on a parent's features. So, if a man had a mother with dark hair and light skin, then he would likely select a partner with dark hair and light skin, all other variables kept equal. I suppose that this could also work in same-gender relationships as well. Dunno though.

The problem with this idea is that "all other variables" are never kept equal. So many other factors play a role in attraction--including say education, social class, religion, common interests, etc.--that ethnic features can be considered relatively unimportant. On the other hand, if you give 100 men a Playboy and ask them to sort the women on basis of attraction, you may find those men rate women higher if they look like mom.

As a side note, I have Caucasian features, yet there's an African woman I work with who I'm very attracted to.

[AHunter3]

Women in our culture have been oppressed as women (institutionalized sexism), and black people have been oppressed as black people (institutionalized racism), therefore...

We have some white men (not victim of either),
some white women (victim of sexism),
some black men (victim of racism),
and some black women (victim of both).

(Never mind the finer points such as the ways in which institutionalized oppression also hurts white men or how the situation of black women is not precisely understood as the sum total of sexism + racism)

So...white woman meets black man at party. Each has the personal experience of some legacy oppression even if (as we hope) much of that is fading away these days. Each is on the other side of the one that the other has been the victim of. So there's a set of tensions, a mirror-image set of guilts and angers that sort of balance out, see?

And...white man meets black woman at party. Instead of mirror-image mixtures of tensions composed of guilts and angers, any such angers are all on one side (hers) and any relevant guilts are both on the other side (his). Much more awkward.