IS IT RACIST TO ONLY DATE YOUR OWN RACE?

I had a recent conversation with a female associate – a white woman – who admitted to me that the life partner she was in search of must be a white dude.

As a black male, I had that natural, visceral “why he gotta be a WHITE dude??” response. That type of gut reaction, I think, is to be expected when directed from someone of the majority race to someone of a historically oppressed race. This woman must be a bona fide racist, right. She’d put the first Negro she caught in her net on the spit to feed her dogs if there were no consequences, true?

Fortunately for me, I’m able to move past the emotion to reach the nuances, and I’m not willing to condemn her as a racist scalliwag for her connubial preferences without digging a bit deeper.

Physical attraction is very subjective, and I don’t think it’s much of a coincidence that, by and large, we’re attracted to our own kind. Nor do I think it’s a testament to racism. For example, many of you are not attracted to anyone that’s not a black man, for many reasons. Does that necessarily make you a bigot? Methinks not.

However, there are almost always exceptions to every rule of attraction, so I think most people can’t honestly say they aren’t attracted to any person in a given ethnic group. I’m not attracted to western African women in general, but I’m sure there are some I’d find banging.

The biggest issue for me is when people aren’t attracted to anyone of their OWN ethnicity. I find that odd, but then again I also am not sure if it’s an issue of self-hate so much as it’s a by-product of how and where a person is raised. For example, black men who are raised around nothing but white people in a white school with white friends…I don’t expect them to necessarily be down with the Nubian Bourgetto Hood Princesses (NBHPs), and neither should you.

I realize that we have been conditioned by standards of beauty, but I’ve always thought it far more complicated than being forever programmed to like a certain type of woman based on growing up looking at Cosmopolitan magazine cover women while waiting with our mothers in grocery store lines. I’m no social scientist, but common sense and experience has led me to believe our environmental upbringing is big in our attractions.

Now, if someone is not attracted to another race because they are worried about how they would be perceived, how their friends would think or anything along those lines, that’s racist. Being into someone and rejecting them due solely to the inherent challenges of a mixed relationship is b*tch-made, period.

So while the girl’s response didn’t surprise me, it made me think of how many white girls I’ve tried to mack on throughout the years that felt exactly the same way. It also makes me wonder how many white women I was with that wouldn’t have gone for me if I weren’t high yellow…