I would never date Halle Berry. But I don’t think that makes me racist. After all, she’s the one who filed the restraining order.
If you’re talking about sexual attraction, I don’t believe that being attracted to a particular ethnicity is any different than being attracted to a particular sex. You are what you are, and you like what you like.
But when you limit yourself to your own race or religion because you don’t like associating with “those people,” or you’re afraid what other people will think, or how your family will react, or what your kids will look like . . . well, that’s pretty obviously more than just a personal preference.
My family is Jewish and my partner’s family is Muslim. There are some people in both families who have more of an issue with our religious/ethnic difference than with the fact that we’re both men. And the difference isn’t even relevant, since we’re both atheists . . . which some of them also don’t accept. That’s just crazy.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve actually become MORE discriminatory in my dating preferences. <Married now, so it’s moot anyway, but…>. And there are definitely cultural aspects of dating someone of a particular culture WHICH MAY BE BASED ON RACE that are extremely unappealing to me.
There’s no real social pressure for people to look outside their own race, but there IS a lot of pressure to date within one’s own race. So, it doesn’t happen as much. Also, it’s a big wide world out there, and people are as choosy as they can afford to be. A lot of people will choose dumb or shallow criteria to eliminate potential partners–simply because they can. For example, even if I were to eliminate all fat men, all men without full heads of hair, all men over the age of 30, and all non-white men from my dating pool, I would *still *have a whole hell of a lot of guys to choose from within 10 or 20 miles.
It seems possible for someone to dislike another race on a purely aesthetic basis too, though. Maybe a white person finds the shade of non-white women’s genitalia offputting. Maybe a person finds a white guy’s junk to be too pale and weak-looking. Maybe a person digs fat chicks, but doesn’t like the color of stretchmarks on white skin. Maybe a person has a fetish for natural redheads… etc.
So I guess what I’m saying is, this *can *be a result of internalized racism, but it doesn’t *have *to be. I think it’s fairly presumptuous to assume someone else’s motives are sinister without corroborating evidence, anyway. Unless they admit to being racist, you just can’t know for sure.
Why are you making other people’s dating pools your problem, though? It doesn’t matter at all, because you can’t force someone to date someone they don’t want to date–no matter if the reason is race or height or religious affiliation or baldness or fatness. It isn’t like applying the civil rights code to businesses-I never have to date anybody at all, if I don’t want to. But *everybody *needs to eat and go to school, so grocery stores and high schools were forcibly desegregated. There is no way to forcibly desegregate someone else’s dating pool.
It can just be preference and it can be racism. But really, the one area where it should be permitted to be racist is in choosing who you have sex with or marry. Who are you harming there? Should they force themselves to be attracted to, say, brown-haired men even if blonde hair really gets them going?
And I bet that if they met someone of a race they’d previously ruled out and really clicked, then, especially if it were just skin colour rather than culture or religion (which do sometimes place actual obstacles in the way of long-term relationships), they’d get over it.
I think your aunt and uncle were sensible - looking kinda like them just makes it easier for the child to slot into the extended family, if there’s no biological connection; it makes the transition easier, and adoption has enough difficulties already. Not that it’s impossible for a child of a different race to be accepted as part of the family, of course - superficial resemblances just help a little. I have a slightly mixed family and nobody ever doubted that my white siblings were my siblings, but they often did for my non-white siblings.
My daughter looks a lot like my (non-biologically-related to her) ex’s family, and it really did help, because everyone out and about assumed we were a family and she was the little ones’ cousin, etc. People very often assumed that my ex (we’re both female) was my daughter’s biological mother and I wasn’t, based on hair colour above all else. It didn’t bother me at all because she is mine; however, if she’d been adopted, then maybe it would have been an issue.
Given her fertility problems, it would have been really horrible for your aunt if people asked, every time they were out, “is this your daughter?” rather than just assuming she was.
It’s not just “what someone looks like”. It’s a culture thing.
I’ll date black guys, white guys, Asian guys…as long as they’re Jewish.
Note that in his post he mentioned that he was dating in the 70s. Mixed race kids/families were much more unusual then. I would have been leery of such a thing at the time: I wouldn’t want my kids to be seen as oddities or novelties. I wouldn’t want their racial background to be the most notable thing about them.
And even now–my husband and I used a sperm donor to conceive our son and I insisted we not use a non-white donor (we are white). I don’t plan to make a secret of his parentage, but I don’t really like the idea of anyone asking our son where is “real dad” is or anything like that. There was no real advantage in going outside our race, so we didn’t. There were plenty of white donors to chose from.
As far as dating preference goes, I think the test would be how you would react if you found out your partner or crush was a different race than you thought. If it turns out the girl you thought was Asian is actually Hispanic, and when you learn that she goes from looking beautiful to nothing special, then there is something beyond physical preference going on.
People should have the choice to date, or not date, whoever they want without judgment, IMO. If someone wants to date interracially then that is their choice and they should not be judged, same as if they don’t.
I make no conscious choices when dating; it just happens. I don’t limit my choices to any particular race or ethnicity but I do find myself gravitating back to the same thing time after time; telling me that I am predominantely attracted to a particular look. The vast majority of the women/girls I’ve been involved with in my life have been white (like me). I don’t generally find black women attractive; it’s their features. I also find that when a black women has atypical features (light eyes, facial bone structure), such as those typically found on a white woman, that I am much more attracted to her.
I think it really depends on what is going on in your head.
If you are just more attracted to a certain body type, skin color, etc., that’s a preference.
But it can get to fetishization, where you are attracted to a race rather than to particular individuals. To give an example, I’ve known guys who liked any and all Asian women, and no other attribute was really important. Stereotypes can also be a part of the equation, and dealing in racial stereotypes is usually based on racism.
Then there is the “it’s just easier to date ___________.” Frankly, I find this pretty cowardly, but YMMV.
Could you expand on this? I am not really sure I understand what you mean.
Ah, how many times have I had to answer this question in defense of myself. I think there is a definite difference in being racist and having a personal preference for dating. I’m Black, but I have primarily dated white guys and am engaged to one. I don’t see other people, including my own race, as lesser. I just like pale brunette white dudes.
To me this is very different from people who will sleep with people of a certain race but deem them not good enough to date or be in a relationship with. That to me is racist. I also don’t understand how someone can say something like “I don’t like xyz race…because of their features.” How is it possible that an entire people share the same features?
Also dating people of other races that only resemble their own race. What is the purpose of this? Why not just stay within then? I’ve had guys tell me I was pretty for a Black girl due to what can be considered “European features,” this rings racist to me as well. Seems a way to have one’s cake and eat it too.
In other words if you only date white guys/girls because mom and dad would have a fit otherwise or because you think other races are inferior/automatically ugly, you got a problem. If you date white guys/girls because you like gingers and that’s where the gingers are, no problem imo.
I kind of agree with you but I am slightly confused You do on one hand say that it is due to preferences that people may go in one direction or another when dating (hence why you tend to go for white guys, since you like the specific features) but that it does seem racist to go for only those of other races who have features that resemble their own… is that not kind of sticking to their preferences, but with a twist? Maybe I just misunderstood what you were trying to say.
Well, you are right of course. I really have no right to judge people’s dating pool, and I certainly can’t force people to date a certain person. I’ve been married for nearly 10 years, so I haven’t been in the dating pool myself for quite awhile. The reason this topic comes up for me, is that my wife and I will often “set up” our single friends (yes, I know that is a horrible habit of married people), and I often get the "Oh, I’m not going on a date with THAT guy because he is (Asian, Black, Hispanic, Jewish, whatever). And then it ends up becoming a philosophical discussion on dating preferences which is half serious, half joking. After reading the comments here, I will have to agree that it can be either a subtle racism or personal preference depending on the person and the situation. Perhaps that is why there has never really been a definitive answer to this question for me.
I wasn’t very clear with that (that was my first post on this website and I was scared I was being too wordy!).
I think maybe I was talking about something very specific that I noticed has happened with me and a poster in here mentioned something about features and it got me thinking. I’ll use myself as an example. One time a guy, who was white, told me I was pretty because I had features that were not typical of Black women, but of White women. This is why he thought I was pretty and these were the only types of Black women that were acceptable to him.
To me this is not a “twist” to me it’s finding a Black woman that’s deemed acceptable by his Western beauty standards aka doesn’t look super Black. I mean I guess on paper to some that might not seem problematic, but it definitely comes up a lot amongst people I know in regards to dating. I hope I explained this well, it’s hard to explain something coherently that’s emotionally charged for me.
Maybe my perspective on it is influenced by the fact that I am not black, so it’s difficult for me to be in the position to understand why it’d be deemed so offensive… but explained the way you just did, I can see why that could be deemed as a racist tendency… the idea that a black woman is only beautiful if she looks facially European-like.
The heart wants what it wants!
That would be me you are talking about, I presume. Let me clarify. I didn’t expect anybody to take my comment literally that every-single-black-woman shares the same features. I was talking about the features typically found on a black woman. Just as white women share common features and latino women do as well. I also said that when a black woman doesn’t share some of these typical features, I find myself more attracted. None of this is a conscious thing; it’s just what I gravitate towards. What I’m attracted to.
I wasn’t taking you literally. Perhaps I was being hyperbolic, and I apologize for that. I already explained to the other poster why stuff like that seems like BS to me. I got what you were saying though and perhaps it’s because I seriously don’t know what our “typical features” are because we all look different to me, but that’s my opinion. I digress I guess this is off topic. I wasn’t insinuating it was something you were doing on purpose or consciously, sorry for the misunderstanding.
I’m a white guy who prefers brown guys over either black or white. Am I a racist? And if races don’t exist, can racists?
There’s so many things that have to be negotiated in an intimate relationship, that it’s not a big deal to be fickle with regards to obvious things like physical preferences.