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Becoming the Rainbow's avatar

Life is hard enough -- why be judgey? If you're only attracted to your own race, you're racist. If you're only attracted to a different race, you're a fetishist. If you're a heterosexual man who is not open to a transwomen, you're transphobic. Particular about body size? Fat phobic. About age? Ageist. Don't want to push a wheelchair around for the rest of your life? Ableist.

We've all got biases and being willing to look at them openly is a good thing. But when it comes to picking out a life partner -- what should be our most tender, intimate relationship -- we need to give each other a little slack.

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Hélène Isabelle B.'s avatar

I have a couple of thoughts on this idea that racial preferences in dating stem from unconscious racism:

- If we consider assortative mating, isn't it normal for people to generally prefer to date and marry people of their own race? I understand that we tend to pair up with people who are similar to us in terms of looks, level of income, education, social class, etc. Of course, there are exceptions but it seems that in dating and love, like attracts like. If that's true, it wouldn't be surprising that people tend to prefer to date people of their own race, on average (of course, there will be numerous exceptions to the rule). I'm just not convinced racism or unconscious bias are the main factors at play here. Even if society became magically non-racist tomorrow, it's not a guarantee that most couples would become interracial.

- To what degree does society actually shape our preferences and desires? When you look at reality, it seems to me like no matter what restrictions and norms you put in place, people will like who they like and fuck who they want to fuck. In countries where homosexuality is a punishable offence and has been heavily stigmatized for generations, gay people haven't developed preferences for straight people or relationships. Not only are they still very much attracted to the same sex, they're willing to risk torture and even death to fulfill those desires. When interracial marriages and relationships were stigmatized, people of different races still got together to have sex and relationships. Sure, maybe some people manage to repress their innate desires to the point they're not even aware of them, but evidently plenty of humans don't and like who they like, society be damned.

And no matter how long Cosmopolitan and Hollywood have been ramming images of insanely gorgeous and perfectly symmetrical women down our throats, it seems men just keep falling in love with perfectly normal women who don't look like Penelope Cruz - women with average looks, graying hair, and zits. You'd think that would be impossible if society influenced our preferences that much.

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