Race and Dating

Are you racist if you won't date outside your race? I've been thinking about this question ever since I read this article about a study of racial preferences in speed dating. Although I am in an interracial marriage, I can think of some valid reasons why someone might prefer a same-race partner. Maybe you're worried that your family or community will disapprove, and that will put a strain on the relationship. Not everyone can handle the conspicuousness that goes with marrying someone of a different race. And if it's a person of color dating a white person, there is also the issue of white privilege. Can a white partner really understand or empathize with the daily struggles that a person of color faces in our society? At the same time, I think if you refuse to even consider a partner of a different race, you may unknowingly be missing out on someone wonderful.

According to the study, women, more than men, chose same-race partners. African-American women were especially reluctant to date outside their race, and in the hierarchy of race/ gender, Asian men were (surprise) at the bottom.

What do you think? Are there valid reasons for not dating outside your race? And why are women biased against Asian men?

--Weigook Saram

See what you're missing, ladies?

Comments

[Sallie]

See now, I find that odd. I'm white, and I'm quite attracted to Asian men. Actually, I'm always worried that it's the Asian guys who won't be attracted to white girls like me. ):)

[Ellie]

I'm attracted to all different kinds of guys...but as I'm heavily tattooed and pierced, I always think that those nice Korean boys just aren't going to be interested, hence I usually date caucasian guys :/

[jstele]

I don't think it's so much race as cultural. I know a lot of Korean women who only date Korean men and vice versa because they are looking for someone who understands them culturally. They're not concerned if someone's Asian or not. It's more about self-understanding and identification.

[christine]

I agree partly with jstele. As long as I make my own personal choice that I want to be with someone who can completely understand my background/culture - and especially if I don't judge other people's choices - I don't think it makes me racist to say I would only marry (and hence date, since my personal attitude is "why date someone I konw I would never marry") a korean guy. I just don't believe a nonkorean could become part of my family, or could ever fully understand what I think it means to be hanguksaram.

[Susan]

I'm Korean-American and I married a white man. For me, it was probably cultural. I was one of four or five Asian students at my high school in Kansas and even though I went to Korean school on Saturdays, I was pretty "Americanized". I've always been attracted to blond hair & blue eyes. I dated a few Korean and Asian boys when I was in HS & College, but never found the "one". I've been in the US since I was three and because my parents were still learning how to speak English, my mom was working as a nurse and my father was studying at the local university, I didn't keep up with my Korean. But, now that I'm married and have a son, I wish I'd kept it up and could speak/read/write Korean better.

[Mama Nabi]

In my attempts to date Koreans while in Korea, I found out that our family being somewhat unconventional, my family's social status vs. economic status (they had lost/relinquished all their assets in Bangladesh before returning to Korea yet they retained their educated upper middle class social group in Korea), and my big mouth had rendered me as undesirable - most Koreans in Korea date to marry. I was possibly a 'fling' material but not the girl the family would approve as a daughter-in-law.
The couple Korean-American guys in college on whom I had crushes were dating blond Minnesotan girls.
When I was at school in India, I had dated Indians, Iranians, a hapa, Africans, a Brit, etc.. so it was all new to me, in the U.S., when my race played a factor in my dating life.
Now that I am in an interracial marriage, I can see why some do strive to date within their race and/or culture. Sometimes, somethings take too long to explain... and priorities are sometimes divided by cultures. I think deep interest in each other's cultures helps make an interracial relationship healthy.

[carolie]

I am, by heritage, a total WASP. But I grew up with a rather hippie mother, and my best friend in the whole world was (is) black, gay and Jewish. Mom made such an effort to make sure we were exposed to various cultures, ethnicities, faiths, etc., and the vast majority of my friends were non-white or biracial. The funny thing is that I married someone whose background is STRAIGHT out of Prairie Home Companion, and I'm more lost with Lutherans and lutefisk and games of whist after dinner every night than I might have been if I'd married someone of a different race! (I was always most attracted to the Asian boys in school, but figured they were not into a plump white girl.)

[felicity]

When I think about all the guys I've been interested in, they run the whole range - Asian, African American, Hispanic, Caucasian, and some cute French, German, and Belgian guys! And for most of middle and high school I was infatuated with a Korean guy. But for the most part, Asian men have been a very small fraction of the available dating pool so I've always ended up with Caucasians. I think my personal bias is that I have a hard time understanding excluding any ethnicity from the dating pool. You can't help who you love, it doesn't always fall along cultural lines.

The flip side of that is that I can't respect the occasional white guy I meet who almost exclusively dates Asian women. I really hate the "But Asian women
are so cute" BS.

And even though my white FI will never understand what it's like to be a minority, for me that is far outweighed by all the ways that we fit together.

[Angie in Texas]

i'm full korean but was raised here from 3. i have always dated mostly white guys, though have had hispanic and 1 black guy. i have never dated another korean. there isn't a lot to choose from here in san antonio . . . i find some asian men attractive, like i find some white/black/hispanic guys attractive.

i admit i do spend a lot of time explaining korean-ness to my white boyfriends before they meet my parents . . . but i am curious to know what it would be like to date/marry a yukwon or a daniel dae kim . . . =P

[Nikisma]

damn that's one fine-looking man. a better question might be - why are korean-american men biased against korean-american women? apparently i wasn't 'korean' enough for the aa men i dated before i got married, by which i suppose i wasn't pliant, subservient, didn't defer to the man's obviously superior intellect, etc. even my political views were 'wrong.' had to date outside my race to find men who accepted me as i was instead of trying to get me to be more like them. looks like there are stereotypes on both sides of the gender divide that need to be overcome.

[beloved]

This is interesting. I am white and in college I dated a black guy. I never told my parents about him because we weren't all that serious, but I did bring up the topic of interracial marriage and my mother said she was fine with it, but would feel sorry for the children of such a marriage. She felt that they would be made fun of and have a hard life (in the whitey-white area where I live). That was more than 13 years ago and she probably had a point, but only because the kids would probably look black and there just were no blacks where we lived. I'm not sure they would have been ostracized for the fact that their parents were of different races, but I don't know.

I am now married to a Korean Korean. Surprisingly, Korean women are shocked and sympathetic(!) when they hear that my husband is Korean. One woman I know locally goes on and on about how hard it is to have a Korean husband and she's not the first Korean woman who's acted like I was completely mad to marry a Korean guy.

I feel that after living in Korea for 6 years and now having my husband live here in the U.S. for 5, we have come full circle, culturally-speaking. He really "gets" me now and knows where I'm coming from. We've never had any huge cultural issues, but we're both pretty laid back and easy going, so if a conflict arises we're both willing to see the other's side--and now we actually understand the cultures that are influencing those sides!

[RobynT]

I'm Japanese/Chinese, grew up in Hawai'i, and am married to a guy that is Portuguese/Hawaiian/Chinese/English/Dutch/something else I always forget. I dated Asians (Japanese, Chinese, Filipino) before, but I always felt that Japanese boys (especially) were strait-laced, baseball-playing, and sort of along the lines of Nikisma's description of Korean-American men. Mostly I felt that they didn't like girls like me.

I sort of think my view of Japanese/Asian men is unfair though. It's a stereotype that I would critique if it came from an outsider. And I feel like I can see the consequences of the stereotypes of Asian American men in my peer group. In one group of friends, all Asian Americans, all the women are in relationships and only 1/3 of the men are. And of the straight women (five of us) in this group, only one is with an Asian American guy. I know you can't choose partners based on race but this pattern bothers me.

[Rachel aka Weigook Saram]

I just wanted to clarify that the original study didn't really focus on the Asian men/ Asian women dynamic. When I said that Asian men were at the bottom of the hierarchy, I meant that women of other races were less likely to choose Asian men than men of any other race.

I understand the cultural argument. Being in a cross-cultural marriage is more work in some ways, although for me it's been rewarding as well (and I think my husband would say the same thing.) But it's not for everyone, and I understand the desire to preserve one's culture.

I strongly believe people have the right to date or marry whomever they choose. However, I do think it's worthwhile to look at the patterns and ask ourselves, "Why am I attracted to X but not Y?" And I don't think it's fair to say, "Well, I had a bad experience with this ___ man so I'm never going to date those ___ men again." Before I met my husband, I dated some white guys who were jerks, but I would never say, "All white men are jerks." I often hear the stereotype that Asian men expect women to be subservient. It may be true in many cases, but that hasn't been my experience in my own relationship, and if you read some of the Asian Daddy blogs on our blogroll, most of them are very progressive.

[eliaday]

this is such a great topic.

i feel very strongly that i want my partner to be asian american. i think it's because i need my partner to *get* that part of me. i also think part of me views this as a political choice.

in my opinion, asian american men are just as diverse and varied in values, experiences, etc. as any other group of men.

and, well, you know, i feel for the brothers!!

i have admit, these kinds of statistics are hard for me to digest. i wonder if there are cultural confounds for asian american men - are they less likely to ask a woman out than men of other races? and this is 2007, why is it that the women have to say yes to the men? can't they ask them out too? and what if they date someone of the same sex? where does this fit in?

[Rob]

From what the article stated, it seems that Asian men are held in the lowest possible regard which isn't surprising to me honestly.

What saddens me is that while Western society has emasculated Asian men, Asian women dating white men are unintentionally promoting that image.

[Rob]

I also found this very interesting.

“For equal success with an Asian woman, an African-American needs no additional income; a white man needs $24,000 less than average; a Hispanic man needs $28,000 more than average.”

The above quote implies that an Asian man needs to earn $24,000 MORE than a white man to be equally attractive to a woman of his own race?

Is this correct?

Wow, Asian men are so low on the dating hierarchy that even women of their own race aren’t interested in them.

[Anita]

Just a thought, but as I read the comments, I wonder about the role of parents in Asian men's expectations? Ditto for the expectation of both sets of parents in an Asian--or to be more specific, Korean--marriage? Especially in one that takes place between members of the second generation. Sometimes immigration "freezes" cultural concepts from the time when immigrants leave their native country, so that the values they instill or reinforce in their children is a sort of hyper-realization of past concepts of their parents' culture. My Korean parents realized a while back that after 20 years in Canada, their ideas were different from those of Koreans who immigrated later. They also began to question the meaning of wei-gook saram, although it took a while!

Thanks again for this wonderful blog. I've found great comfort in it during a time in which I've wanted to revisit my Korean-ness outside of my own family. It's always a pleasure to read this blog.

[ampha]

The income statistics for equal success are startling. I had previously seen data that showed the education levels of husband/wives for different racial pairings. Asian father/white mother families were the only pairing in which the father averaged greater than 16 years of education (into grad school). More education correlates with higher income, which is necessary for better success with women. It's all circumstantial evidence, but still.

Rob's comment about Asian men needing to earn 24k more than white men to be equally attractive to a women of their own race, that's just eye-opening.

[michele]

Absolutly interested in dating/marrying an Asian Man!

[Shawn]

People have to realize that these so called "study" is not reflective of society and is not conclusive. I can't believe some of this stuff passed as "science" now aday. What a shame.

[Jen]

I'm an African American female who happens to find Asian men attractive, especially Korean men. However, I know from cultural differences that the chances of me realistically ever getting so far as a date with an Asian man is slim to none.

[Annie_123]

I have never dated outside my race. It never dawn on me to be interested in anyone other than a Black man. My daughter is in high school and currently likes a boy who is Korean. He was born in this country but is very tradition Korean. I cannot believe he will be able to understand my daughter her needs, likes and dislikes, and what it means to be black in America. I find Koreans of all the Asian races to be the most intolerant. I pray everyday that this relationship comes to a end and she finds herself a nice boy of any other race.

[moni]

Wow I agree that this is a great subject!

Lately, because I have dated outside my race so much so, I've wondered why I'm so into the idea of dating "my own" I'm not traditional or even remotely religous.

I googled a few words, out of feeling shallow for this, and found your very cool site. I never dated within my own race. I suspect a bond like this may be, for me at least, stronger than others that I've had.

I also think I would feel more comfortable because this person would in a way already know me by having similar cultural experiences as a child.

Because of this I think thier would be more unspoken commonality in regards to mindset.

I also measure the amount of "how alone I feel with each person" and have found an immediate and instinctual attraction (may sound silly) with others of my race.

(american born - east indian nyc)

[Evelyn]

My God this is such a good topic for me!
Well, I am a mixed Hispanic girl who adores one thing.
Men.
Men from an races and any country. I do not care at all. I happen to find Asian men so attractive. In fact, I am planning to move to Korea to have some fun and sort out my life.
But I think people should love and like who they love and like. Besides, men are men in EVERY CULTURE.
The world is changing and I prefer having someone of outside of my ethnicity.
Wish me luck in Korea!
Thank you for reading!

[REvOluTIon iS iNEviTabLe]

Although, I am moreso attracted to men of my race, however attracted I may be to a WASP I doubt that I will ever act on this impulse simply because they would never understand how difficult it is to be a "minority" in America. With this said I would still consider dating a man of color (even if it isnt mine--so I guess Asians arent at the bottom of MY list)

[Sashimi]

I am an African-American woman and have dated a Chinese man for many years. After a few years of dating him I ended up marrying him. I was raised to accept and appreciate men of all cultures and to pay the most attention to how they treated me not the color of their skin. The biggest challenge for us was how outsiders perceived us and dealing with stereotypes that border along ridiculous. Being with someone of another culture is like living outside the box and it's interesting how much we learn from one another everyday. So if anyone is considering dating outside their race it is definitely worthwhile to take that step and explore. Otherwise life could be like eating popcorn everyday!

[Michael]

Wow Annie_123 you come to a website that is PRO IR relationships and marriage and you say "I pray everyday that this relationship comes to a end and she finds herself a nice boy of any other race". Please stop being so ignorant and give you daughters boyfriend a chance. Yes I know Koreans are considered intolerant of African-Americans however, not ALL of them are. My parents used to own a corner store in a very dominant black neighborhood we got along with ALL of them. My two BEST friends to this day are two black twins that I met while my parents had that store. There are even a few of the neighbors that my KOREAN parents still talk to this day and it's been almost 15 years since we've sold that place. So please don't think that your daughters boyfriend is a bigot like you.

[Carol]

"I find Koreans of all the Asian races to be the most intolerant." - Annie_123's comment above

Wow again. Thanks for visiting and sharing. I'm not sure what exactly you were trying to accomplish by writing that, considering that this is a blog written mostly by and for Korean-American women who are also mothers, many of whom *are* married to men who are not Korean, or have a parent that is not Korean ... wow. That's quite a statement. Of course someone who is not black cannot fully understand what it means to be black in America, the same way someone who is not asian cannot fully understand what it means to be asian in America. But they can understand how to love each other, if they indeed do, and find a way to make it work. Just like I absolutely love my husband and half-Korean child. I wish your daughter well.

[RareAngel74]

I have to say that I am very attracted to Asian/Korean men but they don't seem to be attracted to me. They will look at me but I'm thinking maybe they are reluctant to approach me because I am African American. Men of other races find me very attractive. I'm not really sure what that is about. I am even learning different asian languages so there won't be such a big language barrier just in case I run across one that doesn't speak english fluently. I love Asian music and some of the artist. So can someone tell me what that can possibley be about or tell me what am I missing.

[nichelle]

I suppose people may have valid reasons for dating within their own race but it always comes across as polite prejudice to me. Though coming from a mixed immigrant (Jamaican/Cuban/Chinese/Indian) background it'd be much harder for me to find someone who shared my cultural identity.

[Tamar]

Re: Annie 23's comments, I feel that I understand exactly what she is stating and it can be interpretted as a mother's love and fear. I know her words well because I heard it from my mother when I entered into IR relationships. As a black person she knows that in the racial hierarchy blacks are considered the lowest by many races. She knows that it likely that the boyfriends parents will have the along as she's not black mentality. She fears that and sadly in a lot of cases it is the case. She knows this because of the acquaintances she has with people of the BF's rface, media and historical experiences. She warns her daughter and btries to prevent the relationship from going further because she doesn't want the daughter to experience the first hand pain of being rejected solely because of her race (there is nothing woese than that feeling, knowing that people who have never met you despise you because of the colour of your skin) and there is nothing you can do about it. When you continue the relationship your mother continues to tell you these things to warn you to prepare you for what will almost always happen in these cases with the BF's parents and family, rejection. If it doesn't happen she is releived that her fears did come to fruition, but if the rejection occurs she hope that her wolrds have prepared you for it, and that you have suffered less damage from it as a result of her words.

having been in many interacial relations and being a black female have experienced the rejection over and over again, if it is not the both parent, it is one, or the extended family or close friends. Some times the BF is silent and some defend you and tell you that they chose you over their parents. But even in those situations I couldn't be with him, and know that his once close relationship with his family ended because of me.

For awhile I swore off IR. It was too painful for me and I believe even more painful for my mother who held me and cried with me in one case. But I've learned that you don't choose who you love or who loves you. And as soon as I tell my mom who I'm dating she gets "scouting reports" from colleagues at work from that racial/ethnic group re the general view of black people, and chances of my being excepted into that group.

As Annie states on average most other groups will except blacks more easily that Asian families. I know this because the majority of my girfriends are asians, and some of their parents seem to occasionally forget that I am black (I've been called an honour asian by friends b/c of my education and shape and long friendships with the families) I have heard the discussion about IR dating and the phrase as long as he's not black several times. I have been there when my friends had to hide there black boyfriends, where called whores for dating black, and when one was disowned and thrown out for dating a black boy. When that same friend mentioned the families relationship with me and my education/ status as a good black, she was told that I was different I am a girl and I am not dating anyone in the family. Another friends parents wouldn't mind having me in the family b/c "I'm not really black, and I would make good looking babies with her son, but my friend should not bring any black guys home.

As much as this site and myself would like to beleive that an asian family would readily except such a relationship it is simply not reality. It is very different for asian parents when the person their child is dating is not only non-asian but black. For many that is the worst sin a child can commit.

Please not that I know that this is not the case in some asian communities i.e. Filipinos and Chinese caribbeans have historically been more accepting of relationships with blacks. Please forgive any sp errors, I don't have time to edit

[Kristen Hill-Clemons]

As an African-American/mixed female dating a Korean I do feel the pressure on our relationship -- mainly from other Koreans when we are out in public.I can't help to imagine what they/ or anyone else may be thinking when they see us together. Yes it is hard and very frustrating, but if you really care for the person your with what others think shouldn't matter.

The most frustrating part is that his parent's don't accept me and after 2 years of dating I have yet to meet them. I understand that they might find me a "disgrace" to their family and that hurts the most, when my family accepts him with opened arms. I am no different than any Korean girl -- I work hard in school (UCLA) and maintain a 3.8 GPA. But I've come to realize even if my GPA was a 4.5 it wouldn't make a difference to them...I'm not Korean and I never will be.

At the end of the day it's only the two of us..the only two people who matter in this relationship :)

So the best of luck to anyone who is in ANY IR relationship.