“Look, that post wasn’t meant to say that people who only romance white dudes are like the devil, but we all have biases, some of which we aren’t even aware of until someone else brings it to our attention. I do, you do, we all do. Even the best people do.”
I never used the word racism, subconscious or otherwise, anywhere in my post. I would appreciate you not putting words in my mouth that I never put out there. Especially because you agree with me saying all of us have inherent biases.
I will use the word now, though. You saying you’re “not attracted to [PoC] physically” is a racist statement. It is called sexual racism. European beauty is pushed constantly as the ideal and we are all exposed to it on a regular basis. We are told that white people are the most attractive ones out there and white beauty supersedes any other racial beauty. And a lot of us don’t question that, especially if it’s never pointed out to us. We don’t question how it hurts people of color or how it perpetuates the idea of white superiority.
Like I get when someone’s personal dating pool is homogenous. There are a lot of factors that go into who we date. Like I don’t assume my dad is racist for marrying a white woman and only dating white women (afaik; we don’t exactly talk much about his dating history), given that where he lived growing up and in his adulthood had very high white demographics and online dating wasn’t a thing yet (since the internet wasn’t even a thing).
I never dated in my teens, but if I had and had only dated white people it would have been very suspicious because almost everyone I knew was black or latine and the white dating pool was practically nonexistent.
Like let’s say you heard a black guy say “I don’t date white women because I’m not physically attracted to them”. Not “I don’t find THIS SPECIFIC WHITE WOMAN physically attractive” but white women as an entire group. Wouldn’t that sound pretty shitty? Even if you personally didn’t care, wouldn’t you understand how that might make other white women feel shitty?
I get not finding specific people attractive. But to put a blanket statement on entire races? Even people you’ve never met?
I do agree that what we are accustomed to does influence who we date. But that is not the same thing at all as not finding entire demographics attractive. Like by that logic, I wouldn’t find Asian women physically attractive at all, since I spent most of my life interacting with very few Asian women. But that isn’t true at all.
“So be willing to take a critical look at why your faves are your faves and the patterns you fall into, especially with what the media pushes (personality traits that are considered attractive or positive in white men are not acceptable in any other demographics AND that European features are the most attractive…).”
This is not me singling you out. This internalized racism is something we all have to deal with, including me. I’m not pretending like I haven’t also absorbed these messages and am not affected by it. As I said before the important thing is how you react. We can try to pretend it’s not there or say it’s a preference and doesn’t harm other people. We can try to come up with justifications for why we think the way we do or get defensive and angry. Or, maybe, we can start taking a deeper look at why we think the way we think, even if we may not like what we find? And what do we do then? Do we take what we learn and start to slowly work through it? Or do we meet it with denial and try to say “that’s not me, it can’t be me”?
Questioning ourselves is hard. Accepting the ugly that is within us is even harder.
I feel like I have to say this because I can hear the accusations now: I am still not calling you a racist. I also know you may look at this and not believe me. And I get that because I was in your place more than once.
But here’s the thing: I have been exposed to the same type of subliminal messaging throughout my life. I have internal biases, not just about PoC, but about queer people and trans people. They are not benign ideas. These are not preferences. These are homophobic, transphobic, and racist things that have have been drilled into my brain since before I was able to think conscious thoughts. I don’t think anyone would call me, a very out and proud lesbian, a homophobe, but I still have absorbed homophobic things throughout my life. It’s not something I have escaped as a queer woman.
That is not what defines my character. My character is defined by how I react to it. What I do with it. I have chosen to acknowledge that there are shitty thoughts in my head and my first reaction may be homophobic or racist or transphobic and I don’t want it to be. So I then go “no, we’re not doing that” and start dealing with whatever those thoughts might be. It takes time to undo and I know there’s stuff I haven’t even realized I’ve internalized yet.
It takes continual effort and self-reflection and questioning what you’ve been told and why you believe what you believe and it isn’t fun. It’s uncomfortable. But I am glad that I am not the same person I was even last year. And while it’s still not easy, it has in some ways become easier over the years.
Dealing with conscious racism is only the beginning. Internalized racism is an even bigger beast that is much harder to identify, accept, and dismantle, but it’s something we all have to do.
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