From: ajh@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Alan Hu)
Subject: Interracial Dating FAQ (was Re: Montel Williams Show)
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University.
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 22:07:27 GMT

In article <2186@usna.NAVY.MIL> wdw@math2.sma.usna.navy.MIL (Wm. Douglas Withers -- math  FACULTY <wdw@sma.usna.navy.mil>) writes:
>I am not Asian-American, but I have been following this group for a while
>trying to get some insights.  Now from the commentary on the Montel Williams
>show and from other remarks made here recently I get the impression that
>there is frequently some resentment on the part of Asian-American men
>towards Asian-American women having to do with interracial relationships.
>
>Why should there be such a sentiment? Then again, am I misreading something?
>Anyone care to enlighten me?
>-- 
>Els Withers                   email: wdw@math2.sma.usna.navy.mil
>Department of Mathematics     phone: (410)267-3192 / fax: (410)267-4883
>United States Naval Academy
>Annapolis, MD  21402-5002     Senri no tabi mo ippo yori...


OK, let's try to nip this in the bud...



This is a subject that refuses to die, and it always brings out all sorts of
racist stereotypes, demeaning prejudices, obnoxious comments, and
brainless posts (as well as wonderful, reasonable people like myself :-) ).

OK so, here's a first crack at what will probably become my standard
response to these questions.

0.  Glossary of Abbreviations:  AAM = Asian-American Male,
	AAF = Asian-American Female, CM and CF are similar for Caucasians.
	Note that we are talking about Asian Americans, since this
	is soc.culture.asian.american, so we won't worry about things like
	Third World economic development here.  (Note to Ron Hira, and
	other Desis who dislike the common American usage of "Caucasian"
	as synonymous with "white":  Sorry, I haven't had time to rewrite
	this yet!)

1.  What do you all think about interracial relationships?  (Frequently,
	this is a polite phrasing of "Don't you think it sucks that all ____
	only go out with _____?")

	OK, let's spell this out.  There is nothing wrong whatsoever
	with an interracial relationship, as long as the relationship
	is healthy in general.  It's far, far more important that the
	participants are honest, trustworthy, loyal, etc., etc., that
	they care about each other, that they communicate, and so forth.
	Race should be an irrelevant triviality, as irrelevant as the
	number of letters in a person's name or the Mersenne-primality
	of one's birthdate.  If two people are really into hockey,
	ancient Chinese literature, and neo-Marxist theology, why should
	their respective races matter at all?

2.  So why do people always make a big deal about interracial relationships?

	People make a big deal because people are racist.  People
	make all sorts of assumptions about culture and personality
	based on superficial ethnic observations.  Furthermore,
	nothing brings out racism the way interracial dating does.
	My experience, both first hand and indirect, indicates that
	it's usually men of the same race as the woman in the interracial
	relationship that get the most upset.  A plausible explanation
	for this behavior is that American (and Asian and Latin and
	European and Islamic) culture is VERY male-dominated, so much
	so that men are socialized into thinking of women as property
	to be obtained, kept, and used.  Thus, interracial dating
	pisses people off because one of THEM is stealing OUR women.

3.  Wait a second, you (the author of this post) are always whining about
	interracial relationships.  So you're admitting you're racist?

	Well, yes, I'm still racist, but I'm trying hard not to be.
	But interracial relationships is not an area that's problematic
	for me.  See Question 1.  What many of the old-timers on s.c.a.a
	are talking about is the disparity between the number of AF/CM
	couples versus AM/CF couples.  According to the San Francisco
	Chronicle/Examiner (Sunday _Image_ supplement, December 2, 1990)
	[Look folks!  Real live hard data, not just someone's anecdotal
	evidence.] AF/CM marriages outnumber AM/CF marriages by 4 to 1
	in San Francisco.  In Sacramento the ratio is 8 to 1.

	So what, you may ask.  Well, anyone with statistical training
	knows to look for explanations anytime something deviates from
	randomness.  If someone reports that a whopping 86% of people
	born on Tuesdays marry people not born on Tuesdays, I don't
	go looking for birthdate-based-self-hatred problems among
	Tuesday's children to explain this outmarriage rate; one seventh
	of the population was born on Tuesdays, so an outmarriage rate
	near 6/7 = 86% suggests no birthdate-based influence.  Similarly,
	if a community has a 10% Asian-American population, you'd expect
	to see an outmarriage rate of around 90%.  The actual rate appears
	lower, suggesting that Asian Americans are not well-integrated into
	the rest of society, that Asian Americans prefer to stick together,
	or that being Asian American correlates with some other causative
	factor, like shared life experiences, for example.

	Given that the male/female ratio in the population is roughly
	1 to 1, the 4:1 and 8:1 ratios cited above deviate significantly
	from randomness.  Thus, we reject the null hypothesis and search
	for explanations.

4.  That's easy to explain -- Asian guys are too sexist, or Asian guys
	look feminine, or Asian guys have language and social-skill
	problems, or Asian guys are geeks, or Asian guys are wimpy, or
	Asian guys have small penes.  Besides, it makes sense that
	Asian girls are in heavy demand, since they're oh so sexy
	and nice and, like ultra-feminine, and they know how to treat
	a man right, and if there are any hot Oriental I mean Asian
	babes out there, please send me some email, 'cause I'm a really
	nice guy.  Right?

	Wrong.  These are some of the standard lame things people
	say whenever this topic comes up.  Let's deal with these one
	at a time.  "Asian guys are too sexist."  Well, granted Asian
	culture is more overtly sexist than modern American culture,
	but we're talking about Asian Americans here, so this is irrelevant,
	except that the general confusion between Asians and Asian Americans
	means that these stereotypes haunt Asian-American men.  Personally, I
	know plenty of sexist and non-sexist men.  They come in all sizes
	and colors.  The real problem is that MEN are too sexist, but
	that doesn't explain the lopsided dating ratio.  "Asian guys look
	feminine, or Asian guys are geeks, or Asian guys are wimpy."
	Caucasian guys who look "feminine", geeky, or wimpy abound.
	Anecdotally, the CM I see in CM/AF couples are not usually body-
	building testerone-crazed types anyway.  And there are plenty
	of Asian-American netters who are huge, muscular, and have threatened
	to beat the shit out of anyone who insults them like this.
	Again, it appears that these are not real problems, but the
	*perception* of a problem may be.  "Asian guys lack necessary
	language and social skills."  Again, this is irrelevant, since
	we're discussing Asian Americans.  "Asian guys have small penes."
	Sex researchers have repeatedly documented that penile size has
	no relevance to sexual satisfaction.  Fixation on penile size
	appears to be more of a trans-pubescent adolescent male fantasy,
	rather than anything significant in social settings.  "Oriental
	girls are meek and submissive and treat a man right and know
	all sorts of exotic Oriental sex secrets to keep their man happy."
	This is the classic stereotype.  It needs no further refutation
	than going out and actually meeting some real Asian-American women
	and being willing to see them as human beings rather than as
	sex toys that also cook and do your laundry.  "I'm looking for
	an Asian-American penpal."  These usually come from men with
	non-Asian-appearing last names.  Some people are direct enough
	to ask "Where are the women?"  I've actually responded to a couple
	people who weren't overt in specifying the gender of the replies
	they were searching for.  None has even bothered to acknowledge
	my email.  I wonder if they'd be really friendly if my name had
	been "Ellen Hu" instead.  Given that I'm root on my workstation,
	I might run an experiment someday...

5.  OK, those are stupid things.  What are some reasonable explanations?

	There's two I remember offhand as liking.  The first is
	that since we're living in a sexist, male-dominated society,
	with sexist, male-dominated dating rituals, the males of the
	socially dominant ethnic group (Caucasians) have a built-in
	advantage.

	The second (my personal favorite) I've hinted at already.
	If you believe that AAM are more sexist, for example, you
	will never give one enough of a chance to disprove your
	stereotype.  Whether or not an AAM is actually sexist won't
	matter; the stereotype has already poisoned the interaction.
	These problems go all directions and can even have second-order
	effects:  if I believe all AAF hate their ethnicity and only
	want to date CM, I'm committing the exact same stupidity.

6. So how do people end up with these warped perceptions that
	have no relationship to reality?

	People seem to form stereotypes as heuristics to guide
	their behavior based on past experience.  What we actually
	experience first hand, though, is fairly small compared
	to the amount of information we receive through books,
	magazines, newspapers, radio, the net, etc.  Furthermore,
	our current stereotypes further color our perceptions,
	influencing even how we perceive first hand experiences.
	Now, let's suppose that the media has a pervasive bias.
	Something like, say, "Women are dependent and not very
	smart," or "Blacks are criminals."  Wouldn't this have
	an enormous effect on our perception of reality?

	Well, it just so happens that the pervasive media bias
	about Asian Americans coincides exactly with many of
	the problems Asian Americans face.  To a first-order
	approximation, in the media, Asian Americans do not exist.
	This belief generates many of the Asian-Americans-as-foreigners
	racial problems that we face.  At a more detailed level (with
	Asian Americans lumped with Asians, since that's what the
	media does), we finded a marked gender-based difference in
	stereotypes.  Asian men are portrayed as:  asexual martial
	arts masters, asexual viet cong guerillas, asexual servants,
	and asexual geeks.  Asian women get to be prostitutes, geisha,
	prostitutes, repressed-daughters-named-May-Ling-of-cruel-oppressive-
	emporers-(there's another male role)-waiting-to-be-sexually-liberated-
	by-a-real-(white)-man, and recently, newscasters.  Strange, there
	seems to be some similarities between what we observe here and
	the stupid explanations given in question 4.  As another data
	point, look at the (infrequent) interracial couples in films:
	the man is almost invariably white.

7.  Media bias shmedia bias, that's just for weak-minded people.

	What is the circumference of the Earth?  How do you know?
	Who is the president?  How do you know?
	Who first invented movable-type printing?  How do you know?

	If you were able to answer all of these questions based
	entirely on first-hand knowledge and your acute mental
	powers, I'll be thoroughly impressed.

	My point is that everything we know is shaped by the media.

8.  You seem to harp on media bias a lot.  Why the personal vendetta?

	Confession time.  My name is Alan Hu, and I'm a media-slave.
	From the time I started dating in high school until half-way
	through undergrad, I exclusively dated Caucasian women.  In
	my high school in rich, white suburbia, you could attribute
	my dating preference to my lack of interest in the two available
	Asian-American females.  But at Stanford (where the Asian-American
	percentage was floating between 7 and 9 percent thanks to racist
	bias in the admissions process), there were plenty of intelligent,
	assertive, articulate, artistic, athletic, beautiful, and successful
	(traits I find attractive) Asian-American women.  Somehow, I still
	only dated Caucasian women.  It wasn't until Junior year, when
	my (militantly Korean) roommate jokingly called me a twinkie
	for my dating preference that I started wondering.  At first,
	the knee-jerk answer, "well, I just find white women more
	attractive" popped up.  But the key question became "Why do I
	find attractive what I find attractive?"  After considerable
	soul-searching, I realized I had internalized a standard of
	beauty that excluded all but Caucasian women.  (Charlie's Angels
	had been the definitive standard of beauty in my formative years.)
	I had been swimming in media bias all these years without realizing
	it.  I consciously examined my standards of attractiveness,
	considerably broadened my dating behavior, and became much
	happier.

	So I have little patience for people who say "I just find X
	attractive; it's like ice cream flavors."  People are NOT
	ice cream.  I only ask that you ask yourself WHY you find
	attractive what you find attractive.

9.  Well, that may be a fine analysis, but don't just sit around and whine.

	Excellent point.  On a societal level, look around you and
	look into yourself.  Recognize media bias and attempt to
	counteract it.  If you see something egregious, point it out,
	write a letter to the editor, do something.  If you see
	racism and prejudice in yourself, attempt to eliminate it.

	On a personal level, if you're happy with your social life,
	great, more power to you.  If you find yourself having difficulty
	forming relationships, here's a few suggestions I've found
	helpful over the years:
		1.  Love yourself.  If you don't love yourself, how
			can you expect someone else to?
		2.  Take good care of yourself.  This is a corollary
			to number 1.  Be happy.  Do things you enjoy.
			Be actively involved in life.  A study on
			loneliness indicated that married people are
			as lonely as single people.  Being with people
			doesn't cure loneliness; enjoying your own
			company does.
		3.  Improve yourself.  Honestly evaluate yourself.  If
			you don't like something, don't feel bad about
			it, but consider working on improving it in the
			spirit of self-improvement and self-esteem.
		4.  Don't fear rejection.  People have different tastes.
			If someone is racist and rejects you, that's
			his/her problem.  If someone can't appreciate
			your virtues, that's his/her problem.  The right
			person for you will love you for being you.
		5.  Have a good time.  Life's too short to waste time moping.
	A relationship book I particularly like is Intimate Connections
	(yeah, I know it's a hokey title) by David Burns, MD.

	May all of you be happy in your relationships...
						--Alan J. Hu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american