BE HONEST: Does race matter when dating?

Yes. I really only would date people who are of European decent. Otherwise... I'm not into the person.

 

Ethnicity/color hasn't been a preference for me. I've never really had much of a "type" of any kind, except for now I know I'm attracted to men and women who are in the middle of the femininity/masculinity spectrum. So I like men who have feminine traits and I like women who have masculine traits.

Back when I thought I was only attracted to men, I crushed on, or dated, or slept with: Japanese, White, African American, Moroccan, East Indian. Since I've become aware that I'm attracted to women, I've done the same with White and African American.

That's not to say that there aren't still, sadly, issues in dating across "racial" (<--- social construct, no genetic basis for this) lines, especially in the US, where I live. However, I would never allow this to stop me from being with the person I want to be with. The patriarchy and white privilege needs to change, not me.

 

Not really. I also have my preferences. Mostly my colour or lighter. But Ive found some darker men attractive before. But they were taken at the time :-(

Emotional connections do really discriminate by skin colour.

 

Yeah I don't go for black guys or Asians but I like brown/dark tanned guys; not continental type though. By preference I like whites, just my taste.

 

But it still isn't hard and fast science yet. The research indicates sexuality is the result of mixture of genetics and environment. The same may be the case with "preferences". Fear of certain stimulu (e.g. things dangerous to us) or desire for certain traits can certainly be passed down. Even future food tastes can be influenced in the womb.

E.g. You don't have to have ever seen a spider to have an innate fear of it as a child.

And you seem to be suggesting heterosexuality develops out of desire to reproduce, whereas in gay people this is turned off? Many gay people have strong desires to reproduce.

But in that example society you might still have people with a preference for the darker-skinned Caucasians and those for the paler. And as shown by a few comments in this thread that often has little to do with the perceived social status of the desired person.

Also, studies have shown there is a preference of blue eyes in many people. This is despite us being exposed to a variance of eye colours from birth and eye colour not having a a big influence in society (i.e. people do not suffer segregation or widespread discrimination due to their eye colour). To me this suggests there is at least an element of innateness or even general randomness to this. The brain is a complicated thing at the end of the day.

But again, I've mainly been exposed to white and black people growing up but also like people beyond those groups?

But you are essentially saying that anyone who has a preference is a closet racist. I would say the only thing troublesome would be someone having attraction to another person and refusing to date them based on their race (that is racism). If people just genuinely don't have attraction for a particular person that isn't a big deal.

 

The thing is that the various posters who have spoken about the negative aspects of these preferences were never the ones to bring hate, prejudices, and discrimination into the discussion. We are simply saying that race shouldn't be as big of a factor in the dating world as it is in our present society. There shouldn't be vast imbalances in what is classified as beautiful and attractive and what isn't. No one is calling anyone hateful or prejudice. This thread has escalated because people who hold firm racial preferences don't enjoy hearing the reality that these things are based on environmental influences and aren't a benefit to society and the social groups within.

However, exactly as I said in my analogy, it is not anyone's fault alone. Obviously, the ideal of white until specified as otherwise that exist in literature and forms of fiction and entertainment does not classify someone as racist or we would all be guilty. Likewise, the Caucasian default for beauty is not anyone's fault. It is a product of the society we live in. There is no reason for anyone to get defensive if you hold those preferences; we are all guilty of playing into these standards to some degree; however, claiming that these influences do not exist and couldn't have possibly had an effect on your or anyone else's preferences just isn't realistic.

Speaking on the English language, there is a reason why "fair" means beautiful, pure, and white. There is a precedent here and it effects the minds in society because it is the collaborative mind of society that created it.

 

I'm no expert in this, but I'd be inclined to say they are experiencing unconscious prejudices that are there at the behest of the society they were raised in. Not explicitly racist, but relatively unbeknownst to any particular person.

The key fault is with society - but I will admit the levity with which I have found people on EC, now and in the past, proclaim their preferences with no regard to how hurtful they are deeply concerns and sickens me every time.

 

I just want to express my agreement with Gen, and I'm quite sure that people don't like how stridently I express myself on these issues.

The fact of the matter is that many people do tend to have racial preferences based on the majority of people they've been exposed to. In the West, we are also exposed to a lot of beauty literature that shows white people as the canonical examples of beauty. When almost all we see is whiteness, we're going to think "I'm only attracted to white people."

What we need to be thinking is "all I ever see is white people." Now, you might think I am being hyperbolic here. I'm not. I see almost always white people, some Indians, some African Americans, and some Native Americans, in that order.

It really is in fact problematic to have the racial preference because of how that came about: we're exposed almost exclusively to whiteness, and we're taught that white is beautiful, and everything else is at the margins.

People should be interrogating why they really think "everyone from race X or skin tone Y is not as attractive to me as someone of race S or skin tone T."

I mean, how do we think they feel?

 

It doesn't matter to me, However I do have Preferences and I can't Help who I'm attracted to.

 

Firstly I don't mean to pick on you - you're merely the most recent reply displaying this line of reasoning, but:


Yes, you can seek to change or at the very least acknowledge (which you just did) racial biases. To steal from Pret Allez:

 

And I think it's very, very sad that we now have people conditioned this way.

 

But wouldn't it make you sad if the majority of white guys you were interested in didn't reciprocate interest because they only like other white people?

I mean, surely that's gotta hurt at least a little bit, right?

 

Regardless of his answer to that - it hurts others. A point not to be missed.

 

I disagree with you wholeheartedly. First, I'd like to say, and this is NOT specific to your post, that the term "white" encompasses more than Anglo-Saxon. It includes Hispanics as well. So, I think before anyone here or elsewhere can have a fruitful discussion about race or racial preferences, we need to understand exactly what we are talking about. This issue really bugs me because I'm a white Hispanic, I consider myself (and am) racially white and culturally a mix of American and Hispanic.

Secondly, I disagree with the idea that we are "only attracted to that which we are exposed." My social and familial circle have almost entirely been made up of people who look like me. It was only when I started expanding my social and professional circles that I came into contact with women who I found attractive. As a matter of fact, my family (who is very well-known and renowned for may different things in my country) look down on Anglos as being "people without a history." I have "not only seen whiteness," yet my attractions have always been with Anglo-looking women.

As a final matter, I think it is highly improbable and probably unlikely that "the other," i.e., non-anglo, non-white people don't have their OWN set of preferences. I am always amused by the thought that minorities do not discriminate (and I use this in the very loose sense of the term) or that we ALL think that Anglos are superior or epitomize all things positive. We all "discriminate in some way," on a daily basis--from the type of car that we drive to the clothes we wear to our sexuality. Making ANY choice is a de facto act of discrimination.

 

If I'm being honest, I've never found women from the far-east to be attractive. "WHHHHAAAAAATTT?" you all say? I'm very aware that women who are Japanese or Korean etc. are very desirable to a lot of people :lol: Anyway, it's not because of the way they look (Kou Shibisaki anyone?) but because of the way they act. And this is only my experience with Asian women but the whole very quiet, shy, childlike, little girl demeanour really doesn't appeal to me. At all. And that's just my experience, before any accuses me of stereotyping!

I have met a lot of children of Chinese and Korean immigrants, born in the UK, who don't pick up this behaviour and I've gotten along with them just fine. So it's not a racial thing, more like a nationality thing.