Inter-racial dating, a websurfing chronicle and some thoughts

So last week, toughstuff from belowthebelt emailed me and asked me to look at the blog. I, flattered, did so and paid particular interest to some of the recent posts about asian men and white men dating (by the way, has anyone else noticed that often "inter-racial" dating discussions default to POC-white? I've dated interracially several times, and not always with whitey).

Anyway, one of the posts (the first link) led me to Andy Quan's page for his campaign against racism in online personal ads. Quan calls for an end to online ads which contain charming racially-exclusive lines such as "no GAMs" or "no fats, fems, or asians."

From that page I clicked through to his archive of and response to Dan Savage's callous and (un)shockingly privileged advice to an Asian man experiencing sexual racism (the one I read back in the day in SF Weekly right before I stopped reading both Savage Love and the SF Weekly).

From that page, I went to modelminority's repost of a student note in the Harvard Law Review about the use of race in personal ads, which I found quite well-reasoned. I have to admit that, as an example of law review writing, the student note is almost parodically methodical. Still, it gets the job done. Those Harvard boys are nothing if not thorough. Take, for example, the introductory paragraph of part II:

The use of racial signifiers in personal advertisements may have a stigmatizing impact on the excluded group. Moreover, such signifiers may perpetuate the notion that racial group members should "be with their own kind," which in turn may lead to increased social segregation and economic stratification. It is possible, however, that racial signifiers in personal ads serve valuable purposes that outweigh any harms they pose. This Part explores these purposes, and weighs the social costs and benefits of this conduct. There are several possible motives that lead advertisers to specify the desired race of respondents . . . [author then goes on to give each possible motive a heading and analysis]

I wish Supreme Court justices would write as clearly.

Meanwhile, some hetero Asian bloggers I follow (well okay, I just follow Jenn at reappropriate, but she linked to the other blog!) are having their own discussion about Asian-white dating. Oh, and also marriage. Of course.

Jenn's first post that I read on the subject links to C.E. Le's statistical analysis of inter-racial marriage, which seems to show that Asian women marry white men more often than Asian men marry white women. To be precise, my understanding of the numbers on Le's page is that his analysis shows that asian-women-who-marry-white-men are a greater segment of married-asian-women than asian-men-who-marry-white-women are of married-asian-men. Which makes me want to know what percentage of asian men are married, and what percentage of asian women are married. After all, the other stereotype/perception of Asian men is that we are losers who can't get dates. It wouldn't surprise me if this social stigma was reflected in lower marriage rates for Asian men.

Of course, I have issues with both Jenn and FF44's posts (would I be FiF if I didn't?), though I tend to side more with Jenn's "don't blame the person of color for stereotypes imposed on their dating choices" approach than with FF44's "be a role model, date Asians" exhortation (which is a little creepy, and reminds me of the oft-unspoken "only gender-normative, clean-cut, monogamously coupled gay men and lesbians need apply to be LGBT community spokespersons" attitude that I've always deplored).

I do think that Jenn is a little too quick to dismiss as "stereotyping, pure and simple" Asian (presumably hetero or bi) men's complaints about certain Asian women's explanations of their choices to date white men. I've personally heard Asian (and white) women, in explaining their preference for white men, denigrate Asian men's masculinity and sexual attractiveness, or make the same old tired excuses that feminists rightly called men on when they were used to devalue women ("oh, Asian guys just never ask me out!" sounds a lot like "oh, women just don't participate enough at meetings!").

I do think that Asian women should not be singled out as the cause of the sexual disenfranchisement of Asian men (and thus saddled with the burden of undoing it), but neither should they (or any of us) ignore the many ways they have been affected and are sometimes complicit in that disenfranchisement.

Image from daviddarling