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.
What about Celtic people (i.e. the IRISH)? For the most part, natural red hair is reserved for Europeans, but not only Nordic Europeans.
But I’m not talking about Asian women who still live in Asia. I’m talking about Asian women who’ve come to the U.S.
As opposed to our daughter, who spent a good bit of her school years here in Hawaii. She much prefers Asian guys. She's about as haole as they come. We haven't had much trouble here with the whole racial thing - I agree with Fishhawk that it just isn't that big an issue here. My son has had an easier time here as a haole in a school full of Japanese and Filippino ancestry than he did in Texas when he was just the smallest in his class.
While would argue that you were a bit harsh with your comment—and those other people gave plenty of valid points, agree with you that assimilation could be a strong part of it. As another freeper mentioned, the motive may not be for themselves but for their children and their posterity. There has been a decent number of Americans of Asian descent since the Californian Gold Rush in 1948, and yet (even on this thread) Americans are considered to be of only European or African (and occasionally Amerindian—there are so few of them) descent. Americans of Asian descent who have no non-American accent, whose families who have been here in some cases for generations, and earlier than many ‘white’ American families still have to put up with people asking them what country they are from (i.e. an Asian country). On this thread, one freeper contrasts ‘Asians’ and ‘American’ women; another ‘Americans’ and ‘Mexicans.’ American runs the gambit from very dark to very light. Hopefully, there will be the realization that this is the case, so people can marry people they love rather than people who will help their children look more ‘American.’
True celts tend to be dark haired and dark eyed. The lighter celts are so because of mixing with anglo-saxons and danes. Ever heard of danelaw? The british isles were ruled by denmark for a long time. Vikings plundered the celtic lands just as they did the rest of europe.
“nordic” refers to a genetic type that, thanks to viking raping and pillaging, has become the predominant type of all whites. Nordic genes are not limited to scandinavia.
Several Asian women I’ve dated have said Asian guys tend to be too short. Also that Asian guys tend to be less romantic, less sensitive, less communicative, and less likely to treat them as equals.
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Do you really beleive that tripe? They are just being good women that know how to stroke a man’s ego to get what they want.
They Danelaugh (or Danelaw) did add Viking blood to the Irish and other British populations, but red hair was prevalent in Celtic lands before that era. Romans considered the stereotypical Germans just to their north to be red-haired and blue eyed (instead of blond haired), and a lot of those ‘Germans’ were Celtic (same with the Thracians) and while Germanic, Germans today aren’t Nordic.
I know many Asian women....married to one btw...i am very fair skinned, they marvel at my skin and wish to be that light...i don’t see it myself, i always detested having fair skin...being raised on the gulf coast, hats and SPF 1000! :O...i love dark skin asian and latin....mmmm....it’s just a case of grass is greener i suppose....I know for a fact that Taiwanese women that are darker complected tend to be frowned upon in their culture...they prize the very fair skinned Japanese....Filipinos praise the ones with Spanish ancestry (lighter skin)....give me a dark island girl anyday :)
Also...my wife was cruelly teased as a child for being darker complected...i btw love it...go figure.
Romans had a penchant for wearing german hair. Blond colored hair was considered desirable back then too, but they didn’t have the ability to dye hair back then. So what they did was hunt “barbaric” germans for their hair. They made wigs out of german hair and wore them. Romans had naturally dark hair.
I’ve never heard of these ancient celts being red haired. They were called gauls back then, or gallic. This is why the irish language is called gaelic. gallic...gaelic...same thing. They all wore plaid and marched to bagpipe music. To my knowledge, the gallic people were black haired and black bearded. The romans called them ghouls...a derrogatory term we still have today that means monster or blood thirsty demon. Gaul...ghoul...same thing.
As for the 'notion' that Romans considered the Germanic tribes to be stereotypically red-heads, that would be from Tacitus.
And a quote: "All have fierce blue eyes, red hair, huge frames, fit only for a sudden exertion."
They are less able to bear laborious work. Heat and thirst they cannot in the least endure; to cold and hunger their climate and their soil inure them.
From the article...very interesting...thanks for the post....btw...is he saying they are good at starving? ;)
Tacitus was one of the few Roman historians who respected the Germanic tribes—if that helps answer the question.
I understood what he meant...just being silly.... it’s kind of neat to see how people spoke of others back then....no threat of a PC police...just calling it as he sees it.
Most American women who have gone to college, and who are presumably intelligent, have been exposed to radical-militant-man-hating courses designed to make them mistrust men. American women have infinite power over men, since they have preference in hiring, and can accuse any man any time of anything, and be believed.
American men are hired last and fired first. They have been castrated and are not realizing their full earning potential.
It isn’t surprising that in this climate relations between the 2 sexes is not at all normal.
I like an intelligent confident woman who is still feminine, sadly I don’t see much of it here anymore in quite a few years.
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While grocery shopping with my wife recently, I noticed a young white woman in the store who was slim, shapely, well dressed, nicely coiffed, no tattoos or piercings and I suddenly realized that I was struck by what an exception whe was! I struggled with an urge to approach and tell her how nice it was to see someone like her, maybe I should have done so.
I mean, I'm not particularly attracted to them, but they typically do have heart shaped faces, long beautiful hair & thin frames. Add in some store boughts, and what you have are pretty hot looking females.
Btw, the least common mix is asian male/white female. On the few occasions I've seen these couples in public, the male's parents where with them - ay carumba LOL! While it's ok for the daughter to marry a white guy, the Ps definitely don't look too happy seeing sons dating white chicks.
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