By Sam Yim
A 2018 study found that “couples who met online are more likely to be interracial, interreligious, and of different college degree status,” with the authors presenting a utopian cyberscape of endless dating possibilities. This is a fantasy that holds more weight for some users than others—particularly, the white folks salivating at the prospect of a veritable smorgasbord of racial menu items.
OkCupid’s self-released user data from 2009-2014 reveal that our economies of sex and desire are not perfectly natural, but instead socially and politically informed. They show that Asian men and Black women are often relegated to the category of undesirables, and that white partners are generally attractive to most racial groups.
On describing his relations with his white partner, critical theorist Frank Wilderson says in Incognegro, “I rub against you that you might rub off on me.” Wilderson is acknowledging that seeing his white lover as a way to find proximity with whiteness suggests an attempt to travel “up” a racial hierarchy imposed by white supremacy.
I recognize that my past sexual relationships with white people have also subconsciously been just as much about distancing myself from Blackness as they were about forging a proximity to whiteness. And in this reading of desire, the conventional value of snow bunnies and snowmen as interracial partners to POC can be seen as a machination of white supremacy itself.
Imagining a future rife with interracial consumption might be comforting. It appeals as a sex-fueled avenue toward a post-racial world. But “interracial” dating is not a pure construction, or a solution to anything by itself. Progress isn’t marked by a rise in relationships between white folks and people of color—especially for Asians raised in households full of skin lightening products like myself. Dating people outside my race means nothing for “progress” toward dismantling white supremacy if they’re all lighter skinned than me. This kind of dating habit, though interracial by definition, only presents a future where people of color strive for whiter partners and lighter children.
Having known the romantic limitations of being a yellow man all my life, OkCupid’s data revealed some familiar trends. Asian men on average proved less desirable to all groups of straight women except Asian women. Asian men are commonly understood as insufficient partners both romantically and sexually, which is supported by stereotypes in pop culture that include the asexual sidekick, the effete nerd, the perpetual foreigner, etc., that portray us as unlikely mates and incapable of a legible masculinity.
The racial stereotypes misrepresenting Black women are very different from those for Asian men, but the effects are similar. Black women are also shown by the data to be only slightly preferably rated by straight men of their race, but the numbers for other races are worse. Preferences of straight male OkCupid users revealed that Black women are consistently the least preferred racial group among all other women. Black women are plagued by stereotypes dating far back to ante- and postbellum era justifications for the sexual terrorization of Black women. Still to this day, the mass media structure misrepresents Black women as hypersexual Jezebels or domineering matriarchs.
Investigating these statistics and stereotypes is crucial to understanding what a nightmare dating as a person of color can be. For many, each new romantic interest is an opportunity to ask daunting questions like:
“Do they date Black girls?”
“Will they give yellow boys a chance?”
“Am I even an option?”
“Do they want me, or am I just a type?”
Black girls and Asian boys alike exist in a racial position that compels many to negotiate between asserting their humanity as always-and-already valuable partners, or compromising that humanity to find validation for their desirability.
The latter means to accept the possibility/threat of becoming another person’s fetish object, an object that they can assign perverse meanings to while dismissing the sum of its humanity. East Asian women are touted by many white commenters as superior partners for their perception as yellow virgin Madonnas, simultaneously docile and sexual. Black folks fetishized by “jungle fever” are pursued as hyper-lascivious sexual partners. Dating while a person of color can then become an exercise in self-abnegation, in parsing through social circles for romantic prospects like minefields of unsolicited racial fantasy.
But the trials of dating as a person of color go beyond the racial fetishes of a few white people. OkCupid’s report shows Asian men as rating Black women lower than any other group of men. My own experience makes this no surprise to me. Colorism lies in plain sight in many Asian cultures, where darker-skinned (and especially Black) folk are seen as unfit life partners.
While Asian men should understand intimately and sympathize with the difficulties of dating for Black women, we are more often found supporting the racist structures that undervalue all non-white peoples. Unfortunately for many POC, “interracial” dating is more often than not about scoring a white partner, in an attempt to liken oneself toward a more legible humanity.
Asian Americans have made other notable attempts to seize whiteness as their own. In a 1927 case that would go all the way up to the US Supreme Court, Gong Lum sued the local Mississippi school district for not allowing his daughter Martha into a school for white children. His argument was not that such discrimination against people of color was wrong, but that his daughter should have been recognized as white. He eventually lost this case. Like the skin lightening masks my mother put on me as a child, it was an example of believing distancing his daughter from Blackness would make a better life for her.
My past relationships with white partners have always been about validating myself as deserving of a white love, as able to just touch the peaks of privilege and conventional beauty on which whiteness lives. Desire is always political, always racial, and often makes us vulnerable to our ugliest sides. Every dating practice is worthy of interrogation. And for non-Black folks of color especially, critical reflection often has much to teach us about our own prejudices and how white supremacy informs them.
Practicing a conscientiousness of desire means making oneself comfortable with the discomfort of our often deeply prejudiced feelings. It challenges living content with our problematic attractions. The tendrils of white supremacy reach into our unconscious lives as much as they do our waking experience. Disarming white supremacy then must also include wrenching off its grasp on our minds and libidos, to see even our romantic endeavors as sites of resistance.
But a conscientious desire is also against recklessly jumping into interracial relationships, as some do in an effort to prove how not racist they are. Reckoning thoroughly with our desires as people of color (especially non-Black POC) means examining how we can hurt both ourselves and others when we adhere to the values white supremacy assigns us, in the hopes of understanding love as an act of resistance.
Suggested Readings:
Roseanne Liu, “OPINION: Asian, black and Latino solidarity should come first“, High School Reform, 2018
Alvin Chang, “Asians are being used to make the case against affirmative action. Again.“, Vox, 2018
Sam Yim (he/him) is a queer Korean American immigrant. He is a senior at Beloit College, double majoring in Economics & Critical Identity Studies.
