“Yes, Your Dating Preferences Are Probably Racist”
“Here’s the thing: when asked during in-person meetings, 90% of my clients report having racial preferences. Which maybe doesn’t sound so bad, because I mean, they have other preferences, too. Height, religion, career paths, Netflix show most recently watched, the list goes on and on. But of the 90% of the reported racial preferences, 89.9% are preferences for white people. So . . . that is bad. And I’m not just talking about white-on-white preferences. I’m talking about all my clients, only 55% of whom identify as white. (This seems as good a time as any to mention that when I say “all my clients,” I do mean clients of all sexual orientations. Let’s not get heteronormative now; we’re only in the third paragraph.)…
But no one will talk about this, because no one likes being called racist. Except it’s hard for me to find another word to refer to “people making negative assessments of large groups of individuals that they’ve never met, based solely on the color of their skin.”…
this kind of racism is so deep-seated, so ingrained, that peoplegenuinely believe their attractions are chemical. That these “preferences” are out of their hands.”
There are a lot of conversations that happened with/around me in college where this question of dating preferences would come up, and people would say things like “I would totally date someone who isn’t white” or “my parents would be fine with me dating someone who isn’t white!”. But it’s clear there that it isn’t a preference, or even something they really expect to happen. It’s like they are answering a question along the lines of “if you hadn’t been accepted to this college, where would you have gone?” or “Hmmm, if we can’t get a reservation for our preferred restaurant tonight, would you be okay ordering pizza?”
This feels like one of those problems that can’t be solved as much as phased out over another generation — and by phased out, I mean that our generation has to actively address the problem and aggressively interrogate the institutions that are creating these racial preferences.
Related:“Playing with Matches” on how one dating site deals with this; “The personal is political, and also personal: Why choosing to date within your race isn’t racist”; “What Dating Abroad Taught Me About Stateside Racism”; “Want to be attractive to online daters? Be biracial.”
