Not colorblind

I was chilling with the Naysayer the other day, telling him about one of the guys I had a crush on when I happened to mention he was Asian. The Naysayer paused for a moment and was like, "Dude, no way, he's Asian?" I too paused. "Uh...yeah." The Naysayer replied, "Dude, no way."

Why was it a shock that I was interested in an Asian guy? And then I thought about it. I have encountered a couple similar comments over the last several years.

I was once at an Asian party with my Asian girlfriends. It's one of those parties where some Asian social organization rents out a huge club in the city and gets all these sponsors and a bunch of Asians go and dance to hip hop and/or trance. I was sitting on the couch people watching, when my yellow pal asked me, "Do you find any of these guys attractive?" I looked at her. "Sure."

"Oh okay. So you still find Asian men attractive?" she asked.

"Uh, yeah," I replied.

"Oh okay," she said, as if reassured.

Then several years later, I was hanging out with a white pal totally unrelated to the yellow pal, and I mentioned something about some guy being cute. The guy happened to be Asian. She looked at me. "Wait, you like Asian guys?"

"Uh, yeah," I replied.

"No way, I thought you only liked white guys," she said.

"No, I like Asian guys too," I insisted.

"No way, I thought you only liked white guys!" she repeated.

"Um...I never said that."

"Oh okay," she said.

So what gives? Okay, so I admit, I talk and act very "white." And yes, the last several guys I've dated were non-Asian. But that was just a result of circumstances. It's not that I deliberately shun Asian men from my dating pool. There were simply no viable candidates. And when I see one I find attractive, I like. Like right now, I have a crush on this totally cute Cantonese guy. Totally out of my league. Totally revolted by me. Hence we're not dating.

All of this led me to believe that Asian chicks are pigeonholed into two main dating categories: Asian chicks who only date Asian guys, and Asian chicks who only date white guys. As much as I pontificate on the evils of racism and stereotypes, I myself am guilty of pigeonholing Asian chicks into those categories. For example, when I see an Asian chick with a white guy, I automatically assume she only dates white guys -- even though I myself have dated a white guy and still am open to dating other ethnicities! It makes no sense. And when I see an Asian chick with an Asian guy, I make that corresponding assumption. I also assume they're both fluent in their native language (even though they might not even be the same Asian ethnicity) and that they intend to make their kids go to Chinese/Japanese/Tagalog/etc.-school.

Maybe part of the reason I harbor this stereotype is that I've met other yellow gals -- a number of yellow gals -- who openly admit, "I only date ___ guys." So maybe it's not so much a stereotype as it is a pattern I've noticed.

Another interesting thing I've observed about myself (i.e. another facet of my inadvertent racism): I see white guys differently than Asian guys. Not in a bad way, but in a neutral-different way. It doesn't just apply to guys, just people in general. When I meet someone who is Asian, something clicks in my mind, "Oh, she's Asian." Something very subtle just registers in my mind. And if the person is the same Asian ethnicity, it registers again. It's neither good nor bad. Just different.

Anyway, I suppose my point is, I shouldn't pigeonhole and I try not to pigeonhole myself. A person is attracted to a person, not a color. At least that's the way it's supposed to be.