“When it comes to dating, people should stick to their own kind.”
That, of course, is the advice you’d expect to hear from, oh, I don’t know, a beer-chugging, long-bearded man, while his girlfriend, clad in a confederate-flag-printed bikini, is in the next room putting the finishing touches on the couple’s all-white ensembles for the night. (No offense to beer and beards.)
We commonly think of such people who’d say such a comment as racist.
Because they are! Thankfully, though, attitudes toward dating someone of a different race have changed over the years. And we’re not just talking attitudes. Studies show that about half of Americans have dated someone of another race. More specifically, 36 percent of white Americans, 57 percent of blacks, 56 percent of Latinos, and 57 percent of Asian Americans have interracially dated.
That’s not good news. It’s not bad news. It’s just news. There’s nothing inherently good or bad about whom we choose to date (unless you’re hooking up with someone from the couple above). But when does a mere preference cross the line into racism?
Research consistently shows that white women and men remain the most preferred partners. (I know, you’re shocked.) Blacks are the least preferred. (You knew that, too.) And Asians and Hispanics fall in the middle. (Where else?)
What about biracial and multiracial individuals? Do we rank them according to their skin shade too?
A new study looked at how this last group managed in online heterosexual dating. It turns out that—get ready for it—whites are not the most preferred group. Asian-white women were most preferred by white and Asian men. Asian-white and Hispanic-white men were also most-preferred by Asian and Hispanic women, respectively. And Asian and Hispanic women, in fact, responded more frequently to multiracial men than to males of their own race. (You can read more of the study’s findings here. You can find still more interesting stats here.)
In the meantime, researchers point out that none of this is to “say that the color line has been erased.” Interesting, they found that “white men and women are still less likely to respond to an individual who identifies as part black and part white than they are to a fellow white. But the color line has certainly been blurred, with whites responding more favorably to such individuals than to blacks. And white women actually prefer black-white men to Asian and Hispanic men, a phenomenon that explicitly contradicts what the one-drop rule would predict.”
Are you getting confused? Let me break it down. White women want to date men in this order of preference: white, white-black, Asian and Hispanic. Something else, black daters of both genders responded more to whites, as well as black-whites, than members of their own race.
So what to make of all this? “How Asians are treated in the dating market is highly gendered,” University of Texas Austin Assistant Professor of Sociology Ken-Hou Lin told NBC News, “Asian women often receive similarly favorable treatment as white women do, while Asian men experience a level of discrimination that is comparable to black men.” At the same time, it’s no surprise that Asian-white women are eroticized in online dating.
Again, preference or racism? I prefer dating white guys, but rarely turn down the advances of hot black or Latino men (it’s the advances that are rare!). I’ll even hook up with an Asian guy (and have with more than one, not at once). I say “even” because I’m least attracted to that group. Am I a racist?
I don’t think I am, because I don’t think sexual preferences are necessarily a form of bigotry (though obviously, they can be). Some people like chocolate ice cream, some like vanilla, some like coffee, and some like a swirl.
Or maybe the reasons we prefer what we prefer stem from the media’s covert and overt influences. Not maybe. Definitely. So now what? Now I’m confused.
“I prefer dating white guys, but rarely turn down the advances of hot black or Latino men (it’s the advances that are rare!). I’ll even hook up with an Asian guy (and have with more than one, not at once). I say “even” because I’m least attracted to that group. Am I a racist?
Yes! you do to some extent since you have a racial preference totem pole. US gay men are even more racially obsessed than straight men, that would even make a certain dead German leader proud.
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Thanks for chiming in with our comment, even if it is too harsh a judgment. I don’t think a racial preference is akin to being racist. When it comes to sex and dating, each of us has many preferences: tall, short, skinny, fat, attractive, attractive enough, and so on. I don’t see race differently than those traits. (I also have a thing for British guys, but Swedes can be hot too.) Only an unrealistic or naive person believes the cliche that it’s only what’s on the inside that counts.
I also highly doubt that gay Americans would make “a certain dead German leader proud.” I love some good hyperbole, but that’s a bit much and, frankly, detracts from the conversation.
I think there are racists with sexual preferences and I think there are just people with sexual preferences. If I am gay, I’m not sexist for not wanting to sleep with women. If I don’t want to sleep with people over the age of 60, I’m not an ageist, and so forth. And on top of that there are religious rules governing peoples sexuality as well, theoretically Jewish people are not allowed to have relations with non-jews (AKA gentiles) and it’s not racist, it’s their religion… So I think this is a loaded question, but no I don’t think having sexual preferences that involve race are racist.