About two years ago, this one lady, within minutes of meeting me, asked if I could recommend any places of interest to visit in Africa because, apparently, she and a few friends planned to visit at the end of the year.

For context, before she asked that question, I hadn’t told her about my adventures drinking tea with Tuaregs in the Sahara, or that time I was hunting big game in Kenya. There was no mention of the time I met Hector Pieterson’s mother while strolling the streets of Soweto, or the hilarious old man I smoked hashish with on the banks of the Nile. I hadn’t told her any of that partly because we weren’t on the topic of travel at the time, but mostly because I hadn’t done any of that. Like, at all. Ever. Not even remotely.

My point is, there was nothing about me that alluded to the fact that I liked traveling or knew anything about places to go in Africa. In fact, now that I think of it, I don’t even remember mentioning that I was from Africa — except, of course, for the obvious: my skin colour.

Earlier today, I took a picture of a dame who I think looks like a colleague of mine, and naturally, I sent the picture to said colleague. My colleague, she didn’t find it amusing. In fact, she thought it was racist.

“Why, because we’re both Chinese?”

I read this thing on medium a while back. The writer wrote about how she went out on a date with a guy, and during the date, the guy offhandedly mentioned that he loved “Asian girls”, at which point she realized that he didn’t necessarily see her as beautiful or smart or even lady for that matter; to him, she was Asian first.

A friend of mine from Western Europe — let’s call her Margaret, because that’s her name — is dating a Middle Eastern guy called Walid (not his name). One night, the two had a fight, and it got so heated that she left the apartment they shared and went to spend the night at her friend’s place.

That night, Margaret told her friend about the fight, and the friend, she said something along the lines of — “Arab men are like that because they come from a country that doesn’t respect women”.

“I’m sorry to hear that your best friend is racist,” I told Margaret after she told me the story.

I wrote a post on my blog a while back about when having a racial preference in romantic relationships turns into actually being racist, and right after the post went up, at least three people asked me to justify my own “obsession” with Indian women.

“Why do you only take pictures of beautiful Indian women?”

The short answer is, of course, no; no I don’t only take pictures of Indian women. The longer answer, the answer those who asked were looking for, is that I’m attracted to a certain kind of look, and as a photographer, I like taking pictures of things I’m attracted to.

Being attracted to someone based on their physical features is not racist; assuming that those physical features carry some sort of meaning or cultural significance is. Like when you meet an Asian-looking woman in Los Angeles and you insist “No, where are you REALLY from?” and she finally resigns and says Korea, and you smile and say “Oh, I love kimchi!” — that’s racist.

See also: Assuming that my black skin grants me knowledge of African geography and culture.

No sir, I do not know anything more about that African language with the clicks. Like you, my knowledge is limited to that one Russell Peters joke on Youtube.

A while back, I came across this documentary called Seeking Asian Female which is about (mostly) white men’s obsession with dating Asian women. The documentary starts off with the Asian-American filmmaker interviewing a bunch of men who were “seeking Asian women” on the internet. For most of the men, their desire to date Asians was because Asian women are “docile” or “humble” or “feminine”, and or a combination of similar adjectives.

Also: They’re kind, and they put their men’s needs before theirs.

The “Asian lady” from Medium, she wrote that she’s adopted. By two white parents. If you’re going by stereotypes, by her own admission, she’s more white than Asian.

See Also: Walid, my friend Margaret’s boyfriend, actually grew up in Berlin.

I bumped into the African tourism lady recently, and the topic of our first encounter somehow came up in conversation. I mentioned how I didn’t appreciate her asking me about travel tips in Africa when she didn’t even know whether or not I liked traveling.

“Africa is fucking huge.” I told her, “What made you think I was an expert?”

“I didn’t expect you to be an expert,” she said, “but you could’ve at least told me what you knew.”

In my head, I thought — what made you think that I knew anything at all? Would you have asked me the same question if I looked Mexican?

And that was the eureka moment: Would you make the same assumptions about someone if they were a difference race?

Me, I’m attracted to women with a certain kind of hair. Do a lot of the Indian women I meet happen to have that kind of hair? Yes. Would I be less attracted if a white, Jamaican or Iranian woman had the same hair type? No.

Did I just write a 1000-word essay to prove that I’m not racist? Maybe.

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