Posted on 05/11/2007 9:18:14 PM PDT by teldon30
One of the more delicate areas I dealt with while running a dating service for more than two decades was the issue of race, and more specifically racial stereotyping by prospective members.
Stereotyping in itself is a volatile issue, and at some point during intake interviews, I often repeated the phrase “While there is some truth to all stereotypes, there are certainly many exceptions to every single one.”
However, when one is dealing with a sample of more than 20,000 single, divorced, and widowed men and women, I feel confident and comfortable making certain statements in a column titled The Truth about Dating.
Yet I was still hesitant to write this column, until a reader sent me an article from The New York Times, in which the author, John Tierney, published a story about racial preferences in the dating world.
Moreover, the article cited a study titled Racial Preferences in Dating that documented the preferences of more than 400 participants in speed dating sessions at Columbia University. A quick reading of both the Times article and the Columbia study seemed to support my own anecdotal findings.
(Unfortunately while reading the Columbia study I was overcome by the academic verbiage that authors of such studies feel compelled to use. Do they teach “Boring Writing 101” at Ivy League institutions of higher learning? I found it impossible to read more than a few pages without getting a headache. Here is a sample sentence: “Rates of inter-racial marriages thus capture both preferences and socio-geographic segregation.” Huh?)
Anyway, here is what I found in 23 years of interviewing singles, and I will attempt to communicate in my best “non-academic” language. When we interviewed prospective members, we always asked what their preferences were in terms of meeting people of different races.
Overall, women of most races preferred to meet men of their own race. Most Caucasian women wanted only to meet Caucasian men, the exceptions being women who were more educated and well-traveled, who considered themselves somewhat “worldly.”
Of all the races, African-American women were the most insistent about wanting to meet only African-American men. But most of those women excluded black men who had recently moved to New England from Africa or the Caribbean.
The one major exception to the finding that women wanted to meet men of their own race was Asian women, a vast majority of whom stated that they strongly preferred meeting non-Asian men.
The primary explanation offered by most Asian women was that they wanted to be matched with tall men, and they insisted that practically all of the Asian men they knew were short. But when I would ask if they would be willing to meet an Asian man if he were tall, most would simply shake their head and say they would rather not.
And what about Indian women? To be honest the sample of Indian women who joined my dating service more than 23 years was too small to determine any general statements about them.
As for men, overall they were far more open to meeting women of other races. In fact, and I find this especially interesting, the race of women most in demand were, you guessed it, Asian women. Therefore, almost all of the Asian women in my dating service had a very high Dating Quotient.
When I asked men to explain their preferences for Asian women, many shrugged and admitted they were just extremely attracted to them. But I also believe that many of these men, consciously or subconsciously, wanted to meet women who fit the stereotype of the submissive “Geisha girl,” whose primary purpose is to entertain and please men.
Interestingly enough, though, most of the Asian women we interviewed could not have had personalities more opposite than that passive stereotype. Many had Ph.Ds., M.D.s, or law degrees, and were extremely assertive. (Especially when I tried in vain to persuade them to consider meeting Asian men!)
Unfortunately for African-American women, most of the African-American men who joined stated a strong preference for meeting either white or Asian women. Many expressed the identical view, “I don’t have to join a dating service to meet women of my own race.”
The two groups of men who were the most difficult to match (and therefore had the lowest DQ) were Asian men and Indian men. Like African men, this was especially true of Asian and Indian men who had grown up overseas and relocated to New England, usually to pursue careers either in computer science or medicine. In a few cases I could persuade women to meet men of different races, IF the men were totally “Americanized.”
Of course Asian men were difficult to match because, as I previously stated, the one group of women who did not want to meet men of their own race was Asian women.
As for Indian men, they were the hardest people to match of any group of men or women of any race. And, with so many Indian men moving into the Boston area for jobs in high tech, rarely a week passed without several inquiries from men from India or Pakistan.
One reason they were difficult to match is that only a handful of Indian women joined over the decades, compared to hundreds of Indian or Pakistani men. But another is that many women, even the self-described “worldly” ones, expressed the stereotypical belief that Indian men had antiquated views of women.
To some extent, these women were correct. For example, of all the men I spoke with who wanted to meet women much younger than themselves, the largest group was, in fact, Indian men. Many told me that it was quite common back “home” for men to date and marry women at least a decade younger than themselves. And they wondered why they could not do the same here … which further lowered their DQ.
So that is the story from my own anecdotal experiences. Again, I am sure there are exceptions to every statement I made in this column. On the other hand, if you want “scientific” proof of what I am stating, just Google and download a copy of Columbia University’s Racial Preferences in Dating study.
But I suggest that if you do, make sure you have a bottle of aspirin nearby.
There’s truth to that.
Dude! I KNOW what wimin want...
I see a trend now of American women going after UK men. Poor bastards.
Some are. Some are butt uggggggly.
Filipinos don't seem to select for superficial looks.
A (white) friend of mine tried having black girlfriends a couple of times. Not for long. "Big bucket of crazy" was a good description
“I see a trend now of American women going after UK men. Poor bastards.:
Good grief..American women have become more stupid then even
I imagined.
I see many Brits here in Bratislava and they are the pits.
Never be here on a weekend when groups of Brits come here for stag party weekends.
They parade through the old town laughing like Hyenas, destroy monuments, puke on the streets, you name it...
Many mature Brits that I know are pompous asses.
Like any nationality, there are some good ones that I know.
Unfortunately, she's gay. *sigh*
She's bi, or she wouldn't hang out with you. There's no such thing as a "lesbian". Keep at it, you might have found a gem.
I’m with you. Although I adore my (German/Scottish, blonde, blue-eyed, voluptuous, almost 6’ tall) wife, and have no desire for anyone else as long as she is alive, if I were to become a sudden widower (God forbid) it would be Japanese women or Latinas all the way. Both have a sweet, lovely appearance and demeanor wrapped around a core of solid steel. Our exchange daughter Yuki (17 now, back in Japan and in college) is sweet, softspoken, fashionable, and well-mannered to a fault, but woe betide any man who tries to put one over on her or mistreat one of her loved ones! Fiesty doesn’t even begin to describe it! She once told my wife that she only likes American boys, because they are “gentlemen”. (The guy lucky enough to capture her heart had better be — because if he isn’t, when she gets through with him, it’s my turn!) We’re hoping that she comes back to America to get married after college.
As for Latinas: no woman knows how to take care of a man than a Latin lady. And most of them are beautiful and dress like models to boot.
It’s all academic to me — as I said, I’m perfectly happy the way I am — but in my experience American women tend to be whiny golddiggers or ball-busting manhaters or spoiled Daddy’s Little Princesses or just plain nuts. (And most men in America are similarly screwed up.) It’s no wonder American men are seeking fresher fields abroad.
We're friends. We have similar tastes, politics, senses of humor, etc. I don't think I'd want to ruin that but having a 'relationship', nor do I think she'd go for it.
Still, you're right. I could do a LOT worse. (Come to think of it I have done a lot worse!)
Trust me, she’s in denial. Maybe she had a bad experience with men once, and just needs you to lead her back to a more balanced perspective. Don’t give up. ;)
Yeah. Parts of her life were way screwed up.
Welcome to the human race...
Why White Men Prefer Asian Women
The View From A Sushi Bar
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Some excellent observations.
My own experience in Asia has led me to understand dating dynamics in Asian cultures are very nearly what American dating dynamics were in the late 1800’s.
Back just after the industrial revolution. Men worked. Women were quite feminine, and not embarrassed to be desired for being so. Marriage meant a real commitment.
You could walk on the streets of major American cities at night, without risk of urban gang drive-by shootings or random violent psychos.
Liberalism has consciously torn down all those old values.
Women think they should be ashamed of being beautiful, and of being desired. Both sexes think marriage is an arrangement, which can simply be walked away from if it doesn’t work out — so many don’t really do what is necessary to make it work out.
Welfare has built a social structure which reinforces anti-family behaviors.
Asia is still early in the industrial curve.
They have not allowed their societies to be rotted by counter-productive social experimentation, so most still adhere strongly to the most important social tenets.
Especially marriage and family.
Asian women are far from submissive, but most are fundamentally monogamous and traditional about commitment.
Finally, all Asians (men and women) take care of themselves much more carefully than most westerners.
Morning exercise. Holistic medicines. Herbs. Diets rich in vegetables and steamed rice. Rich histories of culinary traditions.
American society has much positive. But family values seem to have become a shrinking outpost of political identity. Family values in Asia, mean mainstream tradition.
Family values in America has come to mean almost exclusively, religious values.
Not that religious values are unimportant, but they’re not what is most important about family. Family values are important as a stand-alone pillar of a civil society.
America really needs to get back to valuing honesty, integrity and committment.
American women could do well to drive that dynamic. Instead of so fiercely working to be so much like American men.
Women are the ones honestly, who most efficiently could change American society back to traditional values. Because men will do what they can get away with.
Women allow men, to get away with far too much. Giving away what should be earned. Not realizing American feminism is profoundly devaluing American femininity itself.
Instead, too many seem almost fanatically determined to tear down those values they should be standing for.
With alarming success.
So much so, that the family is now almost a vanishing American institution. Driving our need for millions of illegal immigrants to work — simply to make up for the millions of American babies which are never born. Lives ended instead, at the end of a scalpel, in an abortion clinic.
Almost a million, every year.
Probably if American women do not take it upon themselves to rebuild our nation’s families, nobody will.
Except immigrants.
As they reshape America yet again.
“Black women are equally unpopular because men of all races find them unattractive.”
Speak for yourself. I find a lot of black women very attractive, but I never have found a black woman who didn’t insist she wanted only to date and marry a black man. The odds of finding a black woman and white man together are far slimmer than the odds of finding a white woman and a black man, and that’s not entirely because of the biases of black and white men.
Thank God.
.
Good post!
LOL! Dude, you are sooooooo confused you don't even know you are confused...
or maybe not...
Hot topic.
Yes, they are also quite nice. I had a girlfriend in Brazil and one in Barcelona.
They would be next to Asian women in the most desirable
category.
Sorry, but I don’t think women are as obsessed with dingy size as you guys seem to think.
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