I voted “other,” because we live together and have children together.
I’m white, late forties, in the D.C. suburbs. He’s Asian. Interracial and intercultural couples are extremely common in this area. I have a grown son (white) who lives with his black girlfriend. (They get some puzzled looks when they take the white-Asian mix kids out.) If I stop and analyze, I notice many combinations of mixed couples and families in my neighborhood, among colleagues, friends, on the streets. (Anaamika, our kids’ dentist is a Chinese woman married to an Indian.)
I don’t particularly notice mixed couples, unless it’s one of the rare combinations. (I think black woman/Asian man would be the rarest.)
Race hasn’t really been a factor in my dating choices. I was a military brat, and now that I think of it, interracial and intercultural families and dating were always pretty normal to me.
I’m a suburban white boy; I haven’t had a lot of dating experience. However… the first girl I had a serious crush on in high school was Japanese. My last girlfriend was Jamaican. I went out withn a Chinese girl in school. Later, I went out with a Finnish-Canadian (blonde). I’ve been interested in Irish redheads, South Asian women, all sorts of women, you name it.
So variety? I’m all for it. Whenever I see a mixed couple on the street (and this is very comon in Toronto), I give a slight smile, because old barriers are breaking down. The thing I notice in small-town Ontario is that there isn’t as much of a mixture of people as in Toronto, and I kind of miss it.
I agree with previous posters that culture and especially religion are for more likely to be barriers than mere physical appearance.
I am 49, I am white, and have lived in the Nashville, TN area all my life.
My longest romantic relationship was with my college sweetheart, who was a black girl. We dated during college (of course), and had an odd “distance relationship” for a few years after that.
Race is not really a factor in dating choice.
Interracial couples will sometimes grab my attention, but most of the time I am oblivious.
If someone told me they were only interested in dating white people, I would not really care.
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I will try to post more later, when I have more time!
I’m 22, white, and I answered that I’ve never been involved with someone of another race, though I’d have no objection to it (were I single). This has a lot more to do with the extremely white places I’ve lived since I was of dating age than any actual bias.
However, on reflection, the girl I’m with right now is Jewish, so some of my more rural relatives might object that I am in an interracial relationship. She’s Ashkenazi and looks it, especially in the summer when her skin darkens enough that she’s occasionally mistaken for Latina. So no, I’d certainly think that I’ve never been in an interracial relationship, though there are people who’d disagree with me, either before or after having the particulars explained.
I’m Indian, and I’m about to marry a chick of Swedish and Irish descent. I guess that makes us both Caucasians, technically, but I voted for the interracial marriage option.
I’ve only dated white and southeast Asian girls. I’d have no problem dating a black girl, a nonwhite Hispanic girl, a native American girl, a Pacific Islander or an Eskimo. Or another Indian person, for that matter.
I tend to notice interracial couples in the same way you notice ads for products you’ve just bought. Call it positive reinforcement or something.
I would be turned on sexually but probably turned off emotionally. It depends a bit on the phrasing, though; if it’s “I’ve only ever found Indian guys attractive (hah!)” then no big deal. If it’s “I won’t date anyone but Indian guys,” that’s a problem.
23, raised in a semi-rural town living in Pittsburgh now, with a brief stint in LA.
I remember being young and my mom rooting for me to like a little Latino boy in like, the first grade. I also remember my dad being totally and unabashedly over the moon when I dated an Indian guy briefly in the 10th grade. My parents are Kashmiri and Cuban, but when it came to me dating, they rooted for their own. So, so strange.
Race isn’t so much a factor to me however; I think having similar religious beliefs and socioeconomics are far and away more important to me. As in, an agnostic black guy from an upper-middle class background would be much more attractive to me than a Kashmiri Cuban who was raised in either country and was deeply religious. That said, I’d probably never date an Indian/Kashmiri guy who was born or raised in India. Just too much misogyny and differences in what the role of women in society are for me. It’s like my (54 y.o) Mom telling me she pretty much ruled out Cuban guys in her early 20’s for the same reason.
Other interracial couples grab my attention when they’re older than 45. This is because I rarely saw any growing up and still they’re a bit of a rarity. I definitely know they’ve encountered racism - my parents openly experience it - so I secretly think “Good for you!” when I see them. For couples under 30, I don’t blink. I do, however, feel more comfortable in my own skin and relationship when I’m in areas of the city that are more accepting - the university and “nicer” areas of the city, than say, when I’m in my SO’s family’s suburb. There, in 99.99% white Mayberry, I feel awkward and stared at.
I would be so utterly weirded out if someone told me they predominantly were dating me for my race. I would be unaffected if it was an small aside from the person if they were a member of one of my two races - Kashmiris and Cubans are pretty rare in my neck of the woods, there’s no harm in seeking out those who are similar. But I’d be very creeped out if, say a Chinese guy said “I’m totally into Cubans, baby!”. That’s weird.
I think I’ll modify my answer to whether or not I look twice at an interracial couple to this. If they’re older, there’s a part of me that thinks, “Hey, you two were probably together before it was okay to be all intermixin’ outside of yer kind. Cool.” Young people, don’t notice, and if I do, I haven’t cared enough to make note.
I couldn’t agree more. But nothing is fair when it comes to picking partners/spouses. But it’s most definitely a common sentiment among friends who either are first generation (their parents emigrated) or those who are dating/getting hitched someone who is first generation.
Dated a Brazilian and an Indian Hindu. More briefly dated an Afro-Puerto Rican. Ironically, I think I’ve had the least success with white guys! I just went on a first date with a Chinese-American (with a smidgeon of British) that went really well, and we’re going hiking this weekend. I guess we’ll see what happens!
As far as family goes, my family is probably not thrilled about my choices, but by this point they’ve long since come to terms with the fact that I’m going to do whatever I want. As I’ve told my mother, you don’t have to like it, but you do have to accept it. I don’t give a crap if people like it, but they better damn well put up with it.
Cultural differences, yes, there’s going to be cultural differences, but honestly I feel like it’d be there anyway, as I’m a Southern transplant in NYC. Even if I got with the lily-whitest white guy, he’s still a Yankee, and we’re still going to have cultural differences. I’d have to delibrately seek out another native-Mississippian-white/mestee-atheist, and honestly, that’s too much work.
If a guy told me he had some kind of fetish for white girls, I’d be creeped out. It’d make me think he had some kind of ‘Sticking it to The Man by screwing his women’ kind of thing going on, and uh, no thanks. Not going to be part of someone’s weird power-trip fantasies.
There’s a cool factor, I suppose, and also the fact that Black men often aren’t as enlightened as the kind of White men I see in these couples. I don’t think economics comes into it much - mostly, we’re talking college/professional couples here. But mostly, I think it’s the other way - that Black men are still perceived as a threat by most White women.
When I was in my adolescent years, most everyone I knew thought that “attractive women come in all colors” – I remember a lot of guys had major crushes on two black sisters (they looked like models!) that moved into my neighborhood in the early 1970s.
( A lot of white guys that I knew were crazy about “Star Trek’s” Lt. Uhura, Lola Falana, Pam Grier, and also Teresa Graves from the short-lived show “Get Christie Love”, so pop culture played an influence.) Their older brother would sometimes date white girls, and I don’t remember any one my age thinking much about it, although some parent voiced objections.
My best friend (white) wound up marrying a Filipino woman that he met overseas.
Another friend, also white, dated a lovely Puerto Rican girl for a while.
My mother really liked my college girlfriend, although sometimes she worried about us going out and encountering “old-fashioned people who don’t understand”, if you know what I mean. But we never got harrassed!
I went to a conservative Christian college (David Lipscomb College, now a university), and no one thought much about it. I think most people there at the time (1979-1983) were “religiously conservative but racially liberal”.
I voted, “You left out this option”. I’m half Japanese, half mixed British. I’m the product of interracial marriage.
I married a white guy. I only dated white guys, but honestly, I only dated two guys total. I wouldn’t have particularly- noticed? Cared about?- racial background, I just happened to have dated Caucasians.
My parents are 66 and 79. They married in the late '70s, before interracial dating became common.
The only relationship I ever “made official” (as in, “am I your girlfriend” “yes you are my girlfriend”) was indeed an interracial relationship. And of course I noticed it - it’s not something you don’t notice. I don’t think it was at all a factor in whether she was or was not attractive to me. Just like gender isn’t. Nor is height or weight, barring extremes. I don’t have a physical ‘type’, but I very much have a mental one. So even if we were from different races and cultures (I’m white and from the USA, she was (well she still is, she’s not dead) black and from South America) we still had some kind of mutual culture in common - we shared many interests and a sense of humor.
-No. I know my society and, unfortunately, my family have some ‘skanky race issues’ but I can and will put up with that to be with someone I love.
-Yes. It makes me happy. I think a lot of people in the US (and most likely the rest of the world) are still nervous about interracial relationships and I’m glad to see people being unashamed.
-Yes and no. “I would never date someone who isn’t white.” = GJ, you’re kind of racist. If it’s more like “I only date Jewish women because sharing my cultural background with my loved one is important to me” = okay, I can understand that, even though it’s a bit silly.
I do find people who look different than me (I’m a white male) to be attractive, it’s something about the contrast I guess. It catches my eye and so I guess you could say it’s a factor in the way that physical attraction necessarily is, but it’s certainly not the deciding factor; as others have said, hot is hot, regardless of skin color or hair or whatever. I would not make my decision to date or not date a person on the basis of their race.
Sometimes - either I notice the contrast, or the thought comes to my mind that the more couples we see who aren’t identical, the better we as a society will be because we’ll stop noticing it any more than we notice that, say, husband has blond hair and wife has brown hair.
Hm, never happened to me but it strikes me as prejudiced and I think it’d turn me off to that person.
Based on various replies herein, I wanted to add a couple of other questions.
How much would a negative reaction from a family member to you dating interracially impact your decision to continue dating a) the same individual, and b) any future individual of a different race?
Do any of you feel that it’s completely inappropriate for you to date outside of your race (or for anyone to date outside of his or her own race)? There was some discussion earlier of the idea of black women perhaps getting the short end of the stick when black men date interracially, and I’d love to explore that further, particularly if it relates to other races, as well.
I have dated two men and had sex with both of them, so picked the 5th option. My first boyfriend was Native Central American (born in Guatemala and came here when he was 18), my current boyfriend is white (but he is both 100% Italian and ‘ethnic’ looking, and here in Philadelphia Italians or anyone who ‘looks Jewish’ are not really considered white, as per informal polling).
I prefer non-white men, really. I’m crazy about dark hair (I don’t even know if I could date someone who didn’t have it) and prefer darker skin tones (olive, tan, brown, black) as well. I myself am a WASP and very pale, light haired, blue-eyed. I just don’t think men with the same characteristics as my family are sexy.
Interracial couples do grab my attention, because they are still more rare (and taboo, though not to me), and I guess because I always used to assume I’d end up with someone of a different race, so it’s particularly interesting to see other people who are doing it. Compared to other areas it seems there are lots of interracial couples round here, and I went to high school (moved here around that time) with a ton of biracial kids (majority black/white and black/Korean).
I think honesty is the best policy and there’s nothing wrong with people having racial preferences in their romantic/sexual relationships. I sure do and I’m pretty honest about it. I know my boyfriend has only dated white women, so I assume that’s his primary attraction. In this area at least I assume if you always date your race, that’s what you’re most attracted to, since it’s pretty diverse. There is a lot wrong when you express such a preference in ignorant, racist terms (positive or negative) and that would be a huge turn-off for me.
