Interracial dating: could you, would you, with a fox?

In My Humble Opinion
81

I’m caucasian, and have dated girls who were Chinese, Japanese, and black (PC note, she preferred the term and thought african-american was a silly label).

They were all stunningly beautiful in their own right, and race was never a factor :slight_smile: My being white only mattered to the parents of the Chinese girl.

I’m currently married, and my wife is white.

I tend to be most attracted to those different than myself in culture and upbringing, I grew up saturated in suburban blandsville USA and have always found the most interest in exploring outside of that with friends, travel, and relationships.

82

[QUOTE=VarlosZ]
I’m a total cliche: a white guy who thinks Asians are cute, but who “just isn’t attracted to” black women. There are certainly exceptions, but it’s pretty rare that I see a black girl and get a memo from my gut that I want to throw her down on the floor and [transmission interrupted].
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I would say I’m much the same. However, I live in an town where blacks comprise only 1.13% of the population (as of the 2000 census), so my in-person experience has been quite limited. I’ve seen two or three young black women in my town that I wouldn’t have minded getting to know on a more personal level. One was a coworker, and she was actually biracial - black/Mexican. She was beautiful, smart, fun and had an awesome figure. When she left that job, her replacement was an equally beautiful/smart/fun Laotian girl. Had they been in my age range — I was in my mid-30s, they were both 18-19 — I would have gladly dated either of them (though the age difference would probably have been more of an issue for them than for me).

What I’m not attracted to is the look that is currently popular in black culture (maybe it’s just a hip-hop thing) - the “thick” look + heavy makeup. Then again, if I met a black woman with that look and we hit it off personality-wise, who’s to say? Way back in junior high school I was pretty good friends with a “thick” black girl, and it’s entirely possible we may have ended up dating had we not lost contact after we ended up at different high schools.

I wouldn’t turn down a date with Dana Davis :slight_smile:

83

I am a 26 year old white chick. I am so incredibly pale you can still see me me when you turn out the lights. I was engaged to a man who was hispanic and I have dated men from almost every ethnic group. I have never dated an asian man (which is too bad really, because many of them are teh sexxy.) The guy I am currently dating is Jewish, which I don’t think of as being a different race but I am sure my parents would feel differently if they ever find out about his ancestry.

FWIW, I find that I fit into a niche group simply by having red hair. I have dated many men who have told me they never dated a redhead before.

84

White Hispanic (50% Basque, 50% mongrel including Italian and Alsatian). Most of the guys I’ve dated were non-Hispanic white; the one Hispanic boyfriend I had was an American born from Costa Rican teenagers who drifted apart very rapidly (the mother into hippy-ness, the father into Southern Baptism). His lastname was from SW Spain and he had some “Moorish” ancestry but wasn’t exactly sure which current country would that particular stretch of Sahara be now, as his contact with that side of the family was very reduced (he barely butchered two words of Spanish, his maternal grandmother didn’t speakee English señor). Pretty much every one-on-one date I’ve had was with an American.

The “cultural differences” worked out more as excuses for bad comunication than anything else. I’ve never decided not to date a guy again based on his rejection of lasagna or of my favourite Spanish music groups, but I have done it based on informing me on the first date that he was looking for a wife and she would have to be a SAHM (and me in graduate school, u-uh).

85

Nava, where did you grow up?

86

Doesn’t interest me too much. I’m white, and white women are the ones that attract me, both physically and mentally. In my area we’re probably about 65% white and 30% black, very few Asian or Latino.

87

[QUOTE=wmulax93]
I guess I’m the only doper who has never dated or even wanted to date outside of his or her own ethnicity.

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Me either, which is fortunate, since it is emphatically not an option in my family.

88

Part I

I dated a Korean girl in college for a little while, but nothing serious even came of it. It never really occurred to either one of us that it might be an issue that we were of different races. Never got serious enough to meet each other’s families, that might’ve gotten interesting.

Part II

Years ago I dated a woman from Trinidad. I am white and she was black. The experience opened my eyes to a whole new world of prejudice. I didn’t really think that much of it when I aske her out. But in Prince Georges County, Maryland, I found that a mixed couple will get a lot of stares. Also, my family was not so receptive. I mentioned to my mother that I had a couple of dates with a woman from Trinidad and she went off–“I don’t want to have black grandchildren!” Wow. It was just a date.

And I was so worried about how my family would react that I completely forget about her family would react. She shared a house with one of her brothers, and we were downstairs watching TV one evening. Her brother called her from the top of the stairs. I heard a lot of muffled discussion but the one thing I heard clearly was, “I don’t want no white boy in my house.”

She also said that she was uncomfortable because she always envisioned raising children with pride of their African heritage, etc., etc. Not sure why we were talking about raising children, it wasn’t that serious.

But it just never worked out. We didn’t have enough of a relationship to want to overcome the barriers.

Part III

My wife of 15 years is Egyptian. I don’t know if you consider an Arab woman and a guy with European and Eastern European ancestors to be different races. There have been a few cultural differences to reconcile, but it has actually been more fun than a struggle.

89

[QUOTE=pbbth]
FWIW, I find that I fit into a niche group simply by having red hair. I have dated many men who have told me they never dated a redhead before.
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My only regret in life is that I have never dated a redhead.

90

I am a redhead who has never dated a redhead either.

91

All of my (limited) dating has been interracial. And as it happens, the woman I ultimately married is a product of an interracial marriage herself.

Interracial Dating – Catch the Fever! :smiley:

92

I went throught a “Men of all Nations” phase, yeah. I might still be in it, but I can’t bring myself to date at all, so who knows?

93

[QUOTE=pbbth]
FWIW, I find that I fit into a niche group simply by having red hair. I have dated many men who have told me they never dated a redhead before.
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How you doin’?

(I lost my virginity to a redhead, and I’ve kinda had a thing for redheads ever since)

94

I know that it’s really late in the thread to ask this question, but why “with a fox”?

95

I’m good baby, how you doin? :smiley:

96

I’d date outside my ‘race’ but they’d never date me.

97

[QUOTE=Illuminatiprimus]
I know that it’s really late in the thread to ask this question, but why “with a fox”?
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I thought it was a riff of Dr. Seuss:

Or something like that.

98

[QUOTE=Belrix]
I’m white and for the most part I’ve dated white women. I did date a Hispanic woman for a good while and it didn’t bother me a bit.

Rather than color/language, I’m much more aware of culture. My Hispanic girlfriend was about as Mexican as I am English, we were both 3rd generation Americans and about the only thing left of our native cultures was certain traditional foods at the big holidays.

If I were to date a black person (if I can be “white”, she can be “black”, otherwise you can call me “West-European American” if she wants to be “African American”, anyway…)

…if I were to date a black person, it’d be someone who shares my culture. I have little in common with the urban-hip-hop-Tupac-was-god-whitey-is-keeping-me-down black person. On the other hand, I work with some lovely black women who’d I’d not have much of a second thought about dating- they’re just average, educated, homogenized, American cultured similar to me.

(I’d be just as unlikely, by the way, of dating some backwoods, trailer-living, honey-chile’ white woman from the mountains of West Virginia. I don’t match up with that culture, either.)

So - to summarize - it’s not about race - it’s about similar backgrounds & cultures.
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What Belrix said. I date background/culture and not race.

99

[QUOTE=Fish]
As a parallel to the Great Debates thread on Asian men and black women being at a disadvantage on the dating scene, I thought I’d start this thread for people to chime in with their opinions and experiences.

If you have ever dated outside your race* I would like you to share with us how this came about. Were you seeking someone of that race or did it simply happen? What did other people say? Did you marry him or her?

If you haven’t ever dated outside your race, would you consider it? And if you’d never consider dating outside your race, why not?
…
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More than 20 years ago now I was in my very early twenties. To paraphrase someone upthread I too was Whitey McWhiteguy from Whitesville USA. I did not have a lot of dating experience to say the least, I was in my first somewhat serious relationship with a (white) girl I first met at my high school.

I was working a summer job at a Very Famous American Computer Company. There was a temp in the same department, a black woman a couple of years older than me. She had been in the Navy, married, divorced, and had a child, a girl who was about 5 years old at the time.

We ended up working together once or twice and to my great surprise there was almost instant chemistry between us. It became pretty obvious that she was interested in me, the only thing holding me back was the fact I already had a girlfriend who I therefore unceremoniously dumped ( :rolleyes: ).

I distinctly remember asking myself if I could really get involved in an interracial relationship. I didn’t have anything against them in an intellectual sense but I had honestly never thought I would be involved in one. I was definitely concerned about how my family would react, my parents had always come across as accepting and relatively unprejudiced but I really didn’t know how they would react when one of their sons brought home a black girl. I was more worried about Mom than Dad. Also I wasn’t sure about my extended family.

In the end it worked out OK although I don’t think my mother was ever thrilled by the whole thing and was probably relieved when we broke up for good a couple of years later.

I got some slight flack from one of my girlfriend’s brothers, he was afraid I was just seeking a thrill or something and would end up hurting his sister, but it wasn’t a big deal.

I’m married now but if the opportunity had come up to date someone else from another race I probably would have done it, but I wouldn’t have necessarily sought it out.

(A perhaps interesting postscript: as it turned out my black ex-girlfriend was essentially bisexual when she met me, but has only dated women since. She eventually told me that when we met she had figured out she wasn’t looking for a black man, she had had several unsuccesful relationships with them including her disastrous marriage. She was pretty actively seeking out a relationship with a white guy when we met, in order to try to figure out if it was just cultural factors that doomed her relationships with black men, or if the problem was men in general and she should start dating women).
Illuminatiprimus, the “Would you, could you, with a fox?” is a quote from Dr. Seuss’ “Green Eggs and Ham”, which was mentioned in the OP.

100

[QUOTE=levdrakon]
I thought it was a riff of Dr. Seuss: Or something like that.
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Yep. Better yet, the OP’s title is essentially a paraphrase of one of Seuss’s lines from Green Eggs and Ham.