Is it racist to have sexual preferences for certain race?

[Tudo]

I, for example, find Asian women EXTREMELY attractive, more than any other race. But sometimes I feel some remorse for this.

[Razard86]

.....That's like asking if you are ageist for like women 5 years younger or older. Your preference is your preference, as long as you don't treat women who aren't in your preference range bad you're good.

[Eph75]

Of course not.

It's preference. 

Entertaining that kind of fear, would also make you a homophobe for preferring women.

Edited July 25, 2022 by Eph75

[Karmadhi]

Having preferences is okay, not dating a person only because of their race is racist in my opinion.

So prefering asian women over other races is okay, but not dating a girl because she is asian is racist.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Karmadhi

[Devon]

Of course its not racist. It’s not even racist in the reverse. However, you may find that many women especially find it a turn off if they think you are fetishizing them on account of race. I tend to be attracted to desi and Hispanic women 5x more than other ethnicities, but if I explain my type I do so in terms of complexion and features rather than saying “I like Indian women”. Bc in my experience women do not like that one bit.

[puporing]

You're attracted to what you're attracted to.. can't really force that..

[Arcangelo]

Yes.

[LSD-Rumi]

It is a good practice to teach yourself to embrace all kind of different things and variety. For example, I had certain preferances in music, but I taught myself to embrace all kind of music, from metal to classic and now I enjoy every kind of music but still I have preferances too if you get what I mean.

[Razard86]

5 hours ago, Karmadhi said:

Having preferences is okay, not dating a person only because of their race is racist in my opinion.

So prefering asian women over other races is okay, but not dating a girl because she is asian is racist.

Disagree, if he doesn't want to date somebody he doesn't have to. Let's use your sentence and take out the word asian and replace it with fat.

Example "but not dating a girl because she is fat, is fat shaming."

You see? You are judging his action and telling him how to think. Not dating a woman because she is asian is a preference. I don't like olives, so I don't eat them because its my preference. You only choose your preference and avoid what isn't it. If a room was too hot and you could leave you would leave. So if a girl is asian and he is not into asians he isn't a racist because he doesn't want to date her. It just means she isn't his preference. 

[Eph75]

6 hours ago, Karmadhi said:

Having preferences is okay, not dating a person only because of their race is racist in my opinion.

So prefering asian women over other races is okay, but not dating a girl because she is asian is racist.

@Tudo

This is something that we could dig into, in absurdum. 

You could assume that the person's sense making isn't affected by race [etc] and is driven by pure unbiased preference.

That option A would simply be more preferred than B, or B would be more objectionable than A. 

Nothing in existence is that simple, or black-or-white. 

There's plenty of bias in everything that we do, as a complex composition of factors that build on each other, throughout time, and at the roots these biases are likely to be influenced by race and other distinctions, in one way or another, along with many other factors, regardless of how far removed they might seem to us. 

Whatever that composition would be, they ultimately could show up as mere preference. 

How self-aware we are about our biases, values and reasoning/logics and whether we're exposed to our own inner workings to such degree that we are able to see, hold and question how race [etc] plays in, matters. 

That's when we give ourselves to choice to self-author who we are, and influence our choices in a more conscious and responsible way. 

We're still under the influence of our biases, it's impossible not to be, and we can still be self-deluded. 

Is it healthy to introspect to learn more about ourselves? Absolutely! 

What we find is important, but why we are looking, is important too. 

The OP displays a fear of being viewed as "racist" for having the biases [or preferences] that he has.

This, too, is interesting for introspection to learn something new about oneself, through that fear; the perceived consequences one risk facing, who the ones judging us really are, and what kind of power they hold over us?

Ultimately we can become [more/deeper] aware of our values, to accept and own the biased preferences that we have, and at that point it would not matter whether "someone" would label those preferences racist or not, or attribute some other label. 

Their labels would not define our preferences, as our preferences are ours to own.

The consequences, are also ours to own, regardless how fair or unfair they might seem, as we cannot control the interpretations of others. 

Edited July 26, 2022 by Eph75

[zurew]

2 hours ago, Razard86 said:

Disagree, if he doesn't want to date somebody he doesn't have to. Let's use your sentence and take out the word asian and replace it with fat.

Example "but not dating a girl because she is fat, is fat shaming."

The difference is the reasoning behind your position. There are two things here: are you basing your stance on generalisation (not liking an entire race of people) or you can point to tangible things that you don't like/don't prefer.

For instance, if you don't prefer traits that asian people usually have and you have that set of traits lets be it inner or outer traits, then you have a set of tangible things you can point to and you can say you don't prefer those things when it comes to dating. But even in that case, you could most likely find a few asian people who don't have those traits, so you could date them.

So hypothetically, if there would be an asian person who don't have the traits that you don't prefer, then you could date that person, but if you use this reasoning "i don't date him/her just because she/he is asian" , that would be racist, because at that point, you don't even care about traits, but only care about race.

But if your stance is relying only on the big generalisation that i won't date this person only because she/he is asian, that  could be called racist, not because of what you prefer or don't prefer, but because of your line of reasoning.

 

Now, OP wouldn't be called racist in this case, because he is not saying that he wouldn't date other people just because they are not asian.

Edited July 26, 2022 by zurew

[Razard86]

30 minutes ago, zurew said:

The difference is the reasoning behind your position. There are two things here: are you basing your stance on generalisation (not liking an entire race of people) or you can point to tangible things that you don't like/don't prefer.

For instance, if you don't prefer traits that asian people usually have and you have that set of traits lets be it inner or outer traits, then you have a set of tangible things you can point to and you can say you don't prefer those things when it comes to dating. But even in that case, you could most likely find a few asian people who don't have those traits, so you could date them.

So hypothetically, if there would be an asian person who don't have the traits that you don't prefer, then you could date that person, but if you use this reasoning "i don't date him/her just because she/he is asian" , that would be racist, because at that point, you don't even care about traits, but only care about race.

But if your stance is relying only on the big generalisation that i won't date this person only because she/he is asian, that  could be called racist, not because of what you prefer or don't prefer, but because of your line of reasoning.

 

Now, OP wouldn't be called racist in this case, because he is not saying that he wouldn't date other people just because they are not asian.

.....Here we go....look I used to do what you do...which is overly deconstruct something into more categories and more labels, what you just did, you can do onward into infinity. Right now we could sit here and debate and deconstruct this topic right here from so many different perspectives. We could bring in different philosophical theories, we could argue social influences, history, evolution, even spirituality. At a certain point you have to realize, it is, what it is. Does it matter how many different ways we can deconstruct a point of view and what it could be? Or do we simplify it.

Wisdom is simplification, complexity is chaos. You are doing what you are doing because its fun to mental (fundamental) to how you currently cognize things. I used to do it when I was younger...but I realized its just a mental game of perspectives. There is no absolute truth to any one perspective. All you find is what is more relatively true for that particular situation in time/space/history. 

I'm going to stick to my premise, its simple and straight to the point. I don't have the patience to deconstruct it from all these different angle, that time in my life is over.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Razard86

[Eph75]

14 minutes ago, Razard86 said:

Wisdom is simplification, complexity is chaos.

14 minutes ago, Razard86 said:

I'm going to stick to my premise, its simple and straight to the point.

This is true, but only when it's standing on a foundation of higher level of complexity, or enough complexity to be able to hold on to it, that allows for producing a wisdom and a simplification. 

And this is evidently true in your case, as that underlying complexity shows up in what you write [not just here] without any need to explicitly deconstruct, as that deconstruction happens implicitly, to a certain depth, as part of one's sense making. 

But that's not true for everyone, depending on how much we've developed that complexity, and it's not true to the OP, as the question in the OP would not exist if it did rest on that complexity. 

Blind/parroted/learned wisdom, and leaning onto simplicity without that having that complexity is simply foundationless ignorance.

Besides, it is fun, and why not deconstruct only to reconstruct 

 

Edited July 26, 2022 by Eph75

[zurew]

@Razard86 I didn't intend to make things unnecessarily more complicated. I didn't even attacked your position, my intention was to make it more clear why people sometimes say you are racist in the context of sexuality. I think the nuance what i've made is useful, and maybe it will clear things up, especially for the OP.

[Razard86]

5 hours ago, zurew said:

@Razard86 I didn't intend to make things unnecessarily more complicated. I didn't even attacked your position, my intention was to make it more clear why people sometimes say you are racist in the context of sexuality. I think the nuance what i've made is useful, and maybe it will clear things up, especially for the OP.

I didn't say you attacked my position, you are just adding more complexity. You don't make things clear with complexity you just add more variables and potentialities. A map is only as good as its ability to lead you to where you are trying to go, not point out all the aspects that exist and could happen. If what you are trying to teach needs more and more explanation then its not transferable. 

When you enter systems thinking you need to focus on simplicity. If what you are teaching cannot be explained to the average lay man then its not a good map. Don't fall into the trap of loving the depth of your logical thinking that you cannot make sense to the layman. The layman is a much larger group than the educated, than the philosopher.

I had the same issue in the past when I was younger and have learned how to simplify concepts. Its called keep it simple stupid. 

Now this isn't exactly the same, but is simple. https://explorable.com/occams-razor

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/kiss-keep-it-simple-stupid-a-design-principle

https://topquestionsandanswers.com/home/2016/4/1/how-to-master-the-art-of-brevity-and-present-clear-simple-communication#:~:text=The modern%2C multitasking mind is,in the first few minutes.

[zurew]

@Razard86 The question in what case or cases you could be considered a racist when it comes to dating. I think i showed a tangible line between being racist and not being racist. Too much simplification can cause more confusion too. 

In order to make sense of things we need to be able to distinguish between them. So in the context of this convo we need to be able to differentiate between being racist and not being racist.

7 minutes ago, Razard86 said:

You don't make things clear with complexity you just add more variables and potentialities.

This is not always true, this is only true when unnecessary complexity is added. Even Leo has a video on learning, where he is talking about making distinctions = learning. Leo also has a video where he explains that not everything can be dumbed down and explained easily. 

13 minutes ago, Razard86 said:

If what you are teaching cannot be explained to the average lay man then its not a good map.

I agree with this statement in the vast majority of the cases, but there are instances where this is not applicable. I think my thought process on this dating topic is nowhere near complex, i also think blurrying the lines in this case would cause more confusion than clarity, but it seems we don't agree, but thats fine.

 

The only relevant question here is that,  when it comes to dating how do you differentiate between being racist and not being racist?

[Roy]

No not at all. You can't control who you are attracted to, it's just biology and cultural conditioning. I'd probably end up finding black women more attractive if I was born and raised in Africa, but I am white and was conditioned in North America.

You aren't at fault for any preferences you have.

[LSD-Rumi]

11 minutes ago, Roy said:

No not at all. You can't control who you are attracted to, it's just biology and cultural conditioning. I'd probably end up finding black women more attractive if I was born and raised in Africa, but I am white and was conditioned in North America.

You aren't at fault for any preferences you have.

That's also wrong. You can transcend biological prefernces if you want to. 

[Yarco]

Instead of asking "Is it racist to have sexual preferences for certain race?"...

...I think what you're really asking is "Is it bad to have sexual preferences for certain race?"

Racism is defined as: prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.

Prejudice is defined as: preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience

You like what you like, and don't like what you don't like. Majority of that is social conditioning you passively absorbed as you were growing up. Society and the people around you informed what you found attractive or unattractive. Now those prejudices are cemented into your brain and it's not something that you can change.

Is it racist? Yes. Is it bad to feel how you feel? No. You have no choice in the matter.
Accept that maybe there are situations where you can be racist and it's not a bad thing.

Same as... homophobic is defined as: having or showing a dislike of or prejudice against gay people.

If you have a prejudice against gay sex and don't want to have it, by definition you're homophobic, and it's also totally fine.

The same is true for gay people, they're prejudiced and cis-phobic about having sex with people of the opposite sex.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Yarco

[Loba]

I don't know to be honest.  We are attracted to what we are attracted to.  I'm straight, but if I was to go gay I probably would for a really beautiful East Asian woman as well.  They can be quite stunning aesthetically, I get it.