racist or preference?

[Harke the Boeotarch]

"
But Then, You are not - yourself - balanced at all.

Takes one to know one.

 

[KaraBulut]

Reminder- this is the support forum. Address your advice to the person who opened the thread. Any other personal commentary needs to move to private messages.

 

[Ganoderma]

Croft85, I always judge people on a one-by-one basis and with a default which is blank (so no opinion about people which I have not yet met [in real life]) and I always keep distance from people who have 'no blacks' or 'no asians' (or 'no philipino's', etc.) in their online profile.

I do admit that I have some slight preferences, but these slight preferences are identical to the way how mcbrion (January 27th, 2019, 11:47 AM) is describing preferences. I would like to suggest to read thoroughly the thoughtful comments of mcbrion.

 

[novastar]

RACIST is the belief of one race being superior/inferior to another

 

[mcbrion]

RACIST is the belief of one race being superior/inferior to another

It's not merely a "belief." It's an attitude, and attitudes find their way into behavior, which finds ITS way into daily life.
It's tiring to explain all the subtexts of racism, but if you're a minority, you know it well enough. It's something as simple as a salesclerk putting your money on the counter, when she's handed the four people she waited on ahead of you, their money in their hand.

 

[KaraBulut]

It's not merely a "belief." It's an attitude, and attitudes find their way into behavior, which finds ITS way into daily life.
It's tiring to explain all the subtexts of racism, but if you're a minority, you know it well enough. It's something as simple as a salesclerk putting your money on the counter, when she's handed the four people she waited on ahead of you, their money in their hand.

But taking that back to topic...

It's very difficult to find people who aren't racist or xenophobic.

So, when you see guys who have put on their profile things like "No Asians", are they putting that there because they had some negative experience with dating an Asian or is it there because they don't like how Asians "look" (with the itself racist idea that they all look a certain way) or is that just shorthand for saying, "I'm looking for someone like me"?

Sometimes these profile things are blatantly racist. Sometimes it's a lazy way of saying what they don't want instead of what they do want. Both options are something of a turn-off.

 

[mcbrion]

I suppose you're right, Kara, although, coming from a highly mixed family (American Indian and White on my mom's side, Fully Black on my father's), I've had enough experience to know that people are racist through choice, and through prejudice (aka: lack of actual experience with said people, situations, beliefs). Add to that the fact that I arrived right around the middle of the last century, and I've got some pretty extensive experience. And I have cousins who are gay who can pass for White, so they've heard things said when the darker-skinned gay cousins left the room, and what was left (in that room) was presumably an all-White ghetto of gay men/straight men/whatever. (I always marveled that the White guys didn't say to the cousins who looked White, "Are you just into Black/Indian guys?" I mean, it never even OCCURRED to the White guys that these other "White" and light-skinned and dark cousins could even be related, even though it was obvious we all knew each other really, REALLY, REALLY well. If they'd even been half listening, they'd have heard, "So, how's Aunt Agnes?" (That would have been a clue that maybe we were all related.) That kind of ignorance isn't laziness, it's an ingrained bias.

And I find it hard to believe that just because someone had a bad experience with one or two members of a group, they'd rule out everyone. For example, can you imagine a straight man putting in his profile "no blondes" because he's date one or two blondes and had negative experiences with them? I haven't seen that. I CAN imagine someone saying, "no HIV+ people," even though someone can be undetectable. Ignorance is a choice. I have a friend who likes Black men, but actually fought me on statements I would make about being Black. And I'M THE BLACK GUY (that's what I identify as). I told him THAT was one of the reasons I could never consider a relationship with him: he was going to tell me about "ME" (Blacks in general) when he has One 1/000th the experience with Blacks that I've had. I finally told him he was racist in his thinking and had nothing to back it up. And we're still friends. Actually, he realized that he expected Black men to play a certain role in bed (unrelated to the BBC thing since he doesn't really like big dicks. Says they hurt.) But he never considered that THEY might want him to fuck them (he has a beautiful and big enough ( 7 1/2") dick. But he just went by assumptions. Recently, he looked at a guy he was having his second playtime with, and it occurred to him that he'd never asked the guy what HE liked to do.
It's all consciousness or deciding to be ignorant and not acknowledge the individual who happens to be a member of any group (blondes/brunettes/Italians/Muslims/Blacks/Asian) as anything more than you using them for whatever purpose you need them for in the moment. ANY of that is heinous. Hence, the #ME TOO movement, where women are tired of being used for sex. It's the same thing as BBC. And "laziness" - from my actual experience in San Francisco, supposedly a gay "progressive" city - isn't usually the reason. I suppose it COULD be, but none of my Black, Asian, Lesbian, or straight female friends would accept "laziness" as anything other than a cover for something uglier.

 

[KaraBulut]

I suppose you're right, Kara, although, coming from a highly mixed family (American Indian and White on my mom's side, Fully Black on my father's), I've had enough experience to know that people are racist through choice, and through prejudice (aka: lack of actual experience with said people, situations, beliefs).

And I have heard the opposite, too- where when the white person leaves the room, the conversation changes. And not just in the United States. It's also amazing what you hear when people don't think you understand the language they are speaking.

And I find it hard to believe that just because someone had a bad experience with one or two members of a group, they'd rule out everyone.

I think that's what happens very often. It's reductive and ill-informed but it seems that it's human nature. When it comes to skin color, it's just too easy to pigeon-hole people by a trait that we all can see, instead of seeing the other factors like socio-economic factors. For example, statements like "Black people can't manage their money."- as if it is their skin color that is responsible for their spending habits, not the fact that the particular person has never had money and never had to learn to manage it.

Your earlier post did hit upon another situation that is all too common- that the line between reductive thinking and pure racism can be discerned by a simple question, "...and that is based upon what?". If the answer is based upon a belief that "they're all the same", then that's where it borders on racism, xenophobia, bigotry. If the answer is, "I'm just not turned on by...", then it's a preference that has been distilled in the most reductive manner possible.

 

[mcbrion]

Agreed!
I might have - at one time - thought, "I'm not attracted to Japanese guys." That was based on the fact that I hadn't seen any guys I was attracted to (I thought Bruce Lee was handsome as hell, but I wasn't attracted to him (it takes more than just physical beauty - for me - in most cases).
Yes, I later worked at a place where I saw a Japanese guy who worked there whom I would have LOVED to be holding in my arms and kissing. So, yes, reductive is the order of the day. Not that it matters to me at my age: I've watched people for decades (some of it for survival reasons, especially in the '60s) and hearing the things they say. If the Internet did not exist, I doubt any of the "BBC crowd" would walk up to a Black guy and ask him, "Do you have a big dick." The Internet brings out the best in people, but it also brings out the shallowness in people. And on forums like this, shallowness shows itself (in this matter) more often than "Best."

 

[sosotun9091]

I was on another forum and they said it was racist because one guy said he doesn't find black guys attractive. It's just his preference. He said he was open to it though. So my question is what is the difference between racist and preference?

I have a racial preference when it comes to choosing sex partners and I don’t give a fuck if anyone thinks it’s racism. Ultimately it’s MY cock which needs to be hard.

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

And I have heard the opposite, too- where when the white person leaves the room, the conversation changes. And not just in the United States. It's also amazing what you hear when people don't think you understand the language they are speaking.

Me too, but it was because I was eavesdropping. They didn't say anything awful, just that they didn't trust white people. I was snooping on them.

I think that's what happens very often. It's reductive and ill-informed but it seems that it's human nature. When it comes to skin color, it's just too easy to pigeon-hole people by a trait that we all can see, instead of seeing the other factors like socio-economic factors. For example, statements like "Black people can't manage their money."- as if it is their skin color that is responsible for their spending habits, not the fact that the particular person has never had money and never had to learn to manage it.

Generalization is how the human (and animal) mind works, and I'm sure it's for a pretty good reason. It only becomes a problem when that generalization is inappropriate to the situation. With human beings it normally takes generations to change ethnic the behavior that is generalized into ethnic stereotypes.. they exist for a reason.

The last time this particular behavior among people from the Dutch Antilles came up, it was corroborated up by a black man, originally from Ghana, that I met in Stuttgart a few months ago.
He had lived and worked at a Dutch Flower Auction near Rotterdam, back when I worked at another company at the same Auction (they are huge commercial complexes that house scores of businesses that are all related to the buying and selling of the various wares sold at the Auction, which is also why they are near the big Dutch cities and not in them, as the hundreds of trucks that arrive there daily need to be able to dock there at a reasonable pace). I disagree that this particular group of people had never had money. Most had been living in The Netherlands for decades at this point and had the same salaries and (lavish welfare) the various other ethnicities in Rotterdam had, yet the number of their people with problems of this kind was disproportionally high.

uch degrading language. People spoke of 'dating' a Black guy (or woman). Of course, I also heard, in the '80s when talking to sympathetic White guys (especially Swedish guys) in San Francisco of all places, the way White gay men would talk about Black gay men once the Black men had left the room.

Not surprizing, as the Swedes are basically Nazis with better public relations (and admittedly less genocidal).


So what do I have to add to the discussion in the OP?

Racial preferences can be informed by historical racism perpetrated by the state, can be informed by pre-existing racial tensions between various racial groups, but it can also be informed by appalling first- and second-hand experiences.

Then there's also the biological preference for light, which I'm sure translates into an overall culture-independent preference for fairer skin.

Many animals are drawn to the light, and I'm sure man is no exception.

Who knows which is the case, when they don't say which one it is? And if they do, who knows if they're not lying about it?

 

[texan_slant]

This is always a touchy subject, and I stopped reading the comments, because I think the opinion DOES vary; I have my own thoughts that I am sure others disagree with; and it's hard to place my exact thoughts into words. NOTE, that I do give respect to where it's due, esp all of you posters!

I might get tomatoes thrown at me by some of you, but I am Asian, and not normally attracted to my own race. It's not just with the physical sense of attraction, but also with the mental sense because I have my own hang-ups about my own race, and growing up with adversity around that. So, a lot of it has to do with inadverdant/subconscious circumstances, that might seem innate to me, but prob aren't.

I am also one who is driven by my gut intuition, esp. when it comes to "attraction", or what I am drawn to, first; this includes physical appearance. Here is my own humble feedback/definition/summary -

It's a preference when you're refering to what you're naturally attracted to;
it's rascist when it's intentional, while passing negative judgement.

 

[luckynumbah7]

People don't glow with light and albino animals aren't more preferred by species that involves visual cues in sexual selection. In fact, I believe they tend to have a more difficult time of it when they don't match their fellows.

Preference being what you're naturally attracted to and a definition of racism being intentional means there's a pretty wide swath of 'unintentionally racism-induced learned bias that isn't being examined and worked through to the best of an individual's ability' getting swept like dirt under the rug of 'natural attraction'.

 

[Diver58]

Preference, the same way some guy like me, older , white, it’s what they want. I am not overly attracted to coloured men or women, but I struggle to see how it’s racist. I could never say never if I meant some one I liked

 

[darian]

I'm generally not attracted to men of colour, but couldn't give you a reason why. I suspect it is a fear of difference combined with reinforcement by some unpleasant experiences (threatened with physical violence by men of colour in my history).

I consider this a personal choice or preference rather than a racist attitude.

What is difficult is advertising this preference as it is seen as being racist, however there is no point me advertising being open to everyone when I in fact have a preference.

I'm sorry that men of colour might feel disparaged by my personal preference, but I don't agree with the implicit demand that I should be open to everyone and not have a preference. Men reject each other for many and varied characteristics apart from race, so should we not be allowed to have a preference for age, personality, body shape, gender, etc as well as skin colour because it is ageist, attitudist, shapeist, sexist, etc as well as racist? Or worse still, not be allowed to advertise for our preferences to suit ourselves, rather than some abstract notion of inclusiveness.

Just because I am personally not attracted to men of colour, doesn't reflect negatively on men of colour. Live and let live.

Curiously I have come across a few men of colour whom I felt attracted to, however they were very light skinned, so I guess my preferences are motivated by similarity to myself (ie a reduction in the fear over difference).

 

[texan_slant]

I agree with darian^^!

 

[TX-Beau]

Yeah, dismissing everyone who is black because they are black, then justifying that by saying that a black man menaced you once - is the fucking textbook definition of racism.


No one has to date anyone they don't want to, for whatever reason - but let's at least be honest. Cultural attitudes and biases, including racism are in all of us, they affect our choices, YES if you dismiss all black men based on their color you are being a racist, there it is, but no one is going to force you to fuck a black guy.