How bias, prejudice impacts relationships
Dating, friendships, sex. How do people determine whom they form relationships with? Some people have a diverse set of friendships, romantic and sexual relationships, while others, not so much. How does that happen? Is it just because some people happen to be prefer one race other the other, or is something else?
A question many people ask: are preferences racist? Not necessarily.
We all have preferences.
It is normal to have preferences. However, just because a preference has to do with attraction or sex does not make it immune from being influenced by bias.
Friendships
I’ll start with racial preferences in friendships. To be blunt? They are based in prejudice. There is no good reason to exclude someone from being a friend solely because of skin color.
Intimate relationships
Now on to romantic and sexual relationships. Exclusionary racial preferences in intimate relationships are also based in prejudice. I say this from experience, because I used to have exclusionary preferences. Exclusive preferences also may be because of fetishization of race.
There is a difference between exclusionary/exclusive preferences and general preferences. For example: someone who finds that, in general they are attracted to dark-skinned individuals. Most of their relationships have been with dark-skinned people rather than light-skinned people. But they are still completely willing to pursue romantic or sexual relationships with light-skinned people.
Another example: A woman exclusively prefers men with light skin for intimate relationships. She has dark-skinned friends, and is completely fine interacting with them. But when one of her black friends expresses romantic interest she says, “I don’t date black guys.”
One last example: A different woman, when approached by a white man, says that she only has sex with black men. She prefers “black bulls” and according to her, she can no longer be satisfied by white men. Perhaps she has a certain tattoo.
The first example is a person who chooses whom to date or have sex with based on an assessment of each individual, without necessarily taking race into account, even though this person tends to be attracted to people with dark sin.
The latter two examples are people with exclusionary or exclusive dating preferences, respectively. These are the preferences which I claim are based in prejudice, and the latter is racial fetishizing.
Like I mentioned before, I have held exclusionary preferences. At various points throughout my earlier years, I convinced myself that I was unable to be attracted to: white, Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern and black women. In my experience, I became familiar with the excuses people use to explain their preferences.
Why do people say they prefer certain racial groups?
Culture
The idea that people of different races have different, incompatible cultures. This reason is completely prejudiced. What does this even mean? You don’t like a culture’s food? Music? Or maybe some people think certain cultures are “uncivilized”, maybe more “thuggish” or maybe people from some cultures are more loud and obnoxious?
Someone’s skin color does not determine their culture. For example, I am a black man. Based on that, some people might think I like some stereotypical cultural aspects:
Rap/Hip Hop — Most of the music I listen to not is rap or hip hop. The so-called culture associated with rap and hip hop is not something that anyone who knew me would use to describe me.
Basketball — No good. Don’t watch, don’t play.
Fried chicken — Don’t particularly like it, or many fried foods.
The point is, I went to school with mostly non-black people, and lived at home with my black family. I have been influenced by various subcultures. My culture has become a mix of so many things that the only word to describe it is American. Culturally, I’m basically able to fit in with most American subcultures. And if not, I’m eager and willing to learn.
When I was in middle school, I can distinctly remember convincing myself that I couldn’t be attracted to Asian women because I thought they were too smart and they spend all their time studying. I can remember convincing myself that white girls were too different culturally because they only listen to country and metal music. In my mind, I couldn’t be attracted to Indian girls because I didn’t like curry and I associated Indians with curry.
These were all prejudiced views, and when I went to high school I met girls who didn’t fit into the stereotypes, and I chose to challenge my prejudices.
I also wonder if people who cite incompatible cultures for their preferences would exclude people from different countries who had the same skin color. How many white Americans would refuse to date or have sex with a white European person because their cultures are too different or incompatible? Yet, many of those same people who would have intimate relationships with white Europeans would refuse to date an American who was black or Latin or Asian.
I have little doubt that an average white American and an average non-white American are much more culturally similar than they would be to someone from Europe. They’re both American, even if their respective subcultures have differences, there is much more they likely have in common which would be foreign to Europeans with the same skin color.
Along with culture comes values. Like culture, skin color does not determine values. I understand that some people feel that any intimate relationship they have will either be marriage or a search for a suitable partner to marry. Some people feel like they want someone with values identical or nearly identical to their own so they won’t have value conflicts while raising children.
The only thing I have to say in response to that is, again, that race does not determine values. Someone who dismisses people of a certain racial group based on the idea that they’ll have different values is projecting their own biases onto those individuals.
Attraction
It’s true, we don’t directly control whom we’re attracted to. If someone isn’t attracted to another person, I don’t see any reason why they should pursue an intimate relationship if physical attraction is a priority for them.
The thing is, people with exclusionary preferences lump people together and say that they don’t find all white/black/Asian/etc. people attractive, and they most certainly have not met every person in any given racial group. All white people do not look the same. All black people do not look the same. In any racial group, all the people in that group do not look the same.
The real question regarding this is why someone would think that they can’t be attracted to whichever racial group. I think at some point, some people decide that they can’t be attracted to a racial group, and then they start dismissing people solely because of their skin color or perceived race, without even looking at a person’s individual features.
I can remember, when I met an attractive girl from a racial group I excluded from my preferences, I told myself: “She can’t be attractive, she’s Asian,” or “She’s a white girl.”
Rather than looking at an attractive woman who happened to be Asian, or an attractive woman who happened to be white and assessing them by their individual traits, I reduced intelligent, kind, multi-faceted individuals down to their race.
Attraction is not 100% physical. There have been times when I initially met women I wasn’t overly attracted to physically, but then I became more attracted to them over time.
I (stereotypically) find women with a certain body type very attractive. In the past because of this preference I have initially overlooked many women because they did not fit into my preference. Then after interacting maybe I find her humorous or she has the same interests and then I become more attracted.
There are many factors to attraction, and it disappoints me that to some people, skin color is one of the more important ones.
Fetish
For years in American culture, white skin has been the beauty standard. Attractive white people were the ones featured and glamorized in magazines, TV and movies. Models were, and still are, predominately white.
In response, some people want someone more “exotic.” They want someone who’s “different.”
Some people exclusively date Asian women, maybe because they think they’ll be submissive. Some people exclusively date black women because of “jungle fever.” Some people only date black men because they want a “BBC” and once they go black they’ll never go back. Likewise, some non-white people only date white people because “white girls aren’t crazy.”
This type of exclusive preference is extremely objectifying. People are not fetishes and should not be treated as objects.
Conclusion
Of course, people are completely free to choose whom they date or have a sexual relationship with. There certainly is no need to have racial quotas in intimate relationships.
My assessment is formed from my examination of my own prejudices and what I have observed of others. Perhaps other people have different experiences. Perhaps they don’t have any problem with a racial group, they would just prefer to not form relationships with members of that group because of reasons unrelated to bias or prejudice.
Everyone has dating preferences. Having them does not mean someone is racist. People’s preferences are not formed in a vacuum, they are influenced by our experiences and the society around us. However, someone with exclusive/exclusionary racial preferences in intimate relationships likely has unexamined and unchallenged prejudices.
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