I read it. If she meant to say "institutionalized racism", she should have said that. Otherwise, I have no interest in getting into a nitpicky semantics debate, especially over "this kind of racism vs. that kind of racism". It's all just racism. Call it whatever you want. Racism is racism.

Even if TheSlothPrincess was referring to institutionalized racism the statement "Racism against white people does NOT exist" is inaccurate because in various countries at various times white people were and/or are the minority. The statement may be true right now in whatever country she comes from but racism (however she defines it) will have occured against white people at some time somewhere therefore it does exist.

Isn't merely saying "Racism against white people does NOT exist" racist against white people, and therefore proves it does in fact exist? Bet you didn't think of that one...

Not dating someone over their skin colour isn't racist at all. Just a personal preference.

To me, racism is about judging/hating people over their race.

Honestly, racial preferences link back a lot to the idea that all members of one ethnicity look similar. There's not a single feature that every single member of a race has in common; human beings are extremely diverse and different. There's millions of black men in the world, youre seriously gonna look me in the eye and say all of them are unattractive? Get real.

racist!
you implied that because a "white" dude wrote it, it cant be a valid definition!
(side note: what exactly are they supposed to be, to make the author of the dictionary an OK ethnicity to you? whats the "correct" ethnicity to be, if you want to write a dictionary but also not offend people with your you-ness? do you see the hypocrisy? can i stop pointing it out now?)


hey, you said it, not me...


*shrug* i always thought i had light skin in common with a lot of white people.

@Suicidia
That's fantastic, but we're not talking about white people. Can there can never be a single discussion on racism without someone butting in to defend white people, when no one was talking about them in the first place? This conversation isn't *about* white people. Don't derail the topic.
You want to escape reverse-racism? Go out in the real world where it doesnt even exist, and stop throwing a fit because someone nudged your ego the wrong way on the Internet.

oh really?



huh.

looks like somebody needs to check herself before she wrecks herself. maybe youre just angry because they didnt mention asian other girls?



right back at you. C:

Suicidia, I would love to stay here and bicker with you, but you're not actually bringing anything to the table. Until you can manage to come up with a feasible argument besides childish insults, this debate is boring and I'm not here for it. Grow up.

MOD HAT ON:

Enough, ya'll. Debate the topic, not at each other. If you can't do that, don't post - or ya might just find yourself locked out of the Debate Room.

Sorry 8( I get too pumped about politics

... And the heart is a racist moron if it believes there's something invalidating about a person because of the color of their skin, as opposed to anything that actually has to do with who they are as a human being. If that's what your heart "wants" then it's a shallow douche.

No that's not what I meant, I just was saying it's no different than a man preferring a woman with blonde hair over a woman with red hair. I didn't mean to come off as racist or a douche.

not sure if this is a dead topic or not, i was kinda browsing the forums and found this...i just wanna say that i skimmed a lot of the previous posts and saw people mostly trying to defend thier dislike of non-white people as sexual partners so as a person of a non-white race i just wanna butt in and say that i'd probably date a white person if i knew for sure that they wouldn't treat me like some exotic fetish or new conquest.

personally my prefrence is guys with big noses or girls with chubby stomachs so it's less of a "race thing" and more of a "every other white person i've met has looked at talked to and touched me like i'm either the sterotype of thier dreams or the racial profile of thier nightmares" thing. of course you could argue that not all white people are like that but i'm not gonna let my guard down again on the off chance that this one might be kind, y'know? who wants to take that chance and be wrong again and again and again? i don't have the strength or time for that anymore.

anyway, about OP's question; i don't think it's inherently racist but i do think one's prefrence for anyone of a race that isn't thier own probably has some heavy undertones related to it

Has anyone ever wanted to come across as a racist or douche?

Racism isn't about race. There's only one race, the human race. It's about stereotypes, and stereotypes are what they are because people keep perpetuating them and at some point everyone just starts waving them off - "grain of truth" they'll say or something like that. And it's true there's almost always a grain of truth in this crap, but the thing is that as homogeneous as humans are (and we're incredibly, frighteningly homogeneous genetically not to mention decreasingly varied culturally thanks to globalization and the internet) we're just different enough that going "Oh, but I don't date redheads" is just as dipshit as "I don't date blacks" or whatever. You don't what? Whatever the fuck for? What possible issue could there be other than the douchiest, racist, nonsense reasons to not date someone before you invest some sort of particulars of their person based on something as incredibly vague as a singular aspect of what they look like? I mean, think of all the possible people you know of in the whole world and classify them based on some sort of single, narrow, physical characteristic and then look at every other way they're all incredibly different. People say shit like "I don't think I could like 'x'" because they've got nonsensical expectations based on stereotypes and stereotypes just aren't good enough an excuse to make boolean pronouncements about anything regarding people. There's always exceptions, not to mention a lot of busted preconceptions.

If it feels different to fuck a black person versus a white person, or a redhead versus a brunette, then let's be very clear: The difference is in absolutely no place outside of yourself. It's a difference born out your own head, based on some terrible information, shitty learning that your head is trying to apply "all apples are red" when they're not. Even over actual cultural lines - I can safely report that within the same sorts of variance you'll find picking up people at the local bowling alley. Taking someone home from another country? Not actually all that different except for the menu and slang.

When you say "the heart wants what it wants" what you're really saying is "it wants something based on a stupid distinction dreamed up based on bad information." Your heart is dumb, and if you let it stay dumb you're doing yourself a disservice (as well as perpetuating a disservice to others) because there's not one single group of people, large or small, where everyone's the same, even when those groupings are voluntary and self-proclaimed, much less when they're arbitrary and informed merely by a gene cluster firing in the womb.

If you want to stay away from people, do it for the right reasons, they're dicks, or they're dangerous, or boring, or they smell. But you can't just go "well, black people are boring, and redheads are dangerous" even if you're simply doing it implicitly and definitely not doing it because you want everyone to think you're being a douche. Because "they" aren't, some might be and if you want to stay away from them because "my heart doesn't want to sit around and watch terrible TV with Mary all day" then that's great. It shouldn't matter if Mary's a redhead or if she's black, or if she's a redheaded Martian. You turn off the lights and you'll never know, unless she's got that damned television on. There's ample reasons to not go out with anyone without letting skin color enter into the equation.

It may be that people are confusing preference with attraction.

Preference is a conscious thought, sometimes based on shallow things like skin color or hair color or where the person comes from.

Attraction is more of a subconscious thing, rooted in your base instincts. If the caveman part of your brain goes all drooly over someone, then that's attraction.

The two can overlap when you're out hunting for a possible mate, but without attraction you can prefer anything you want without finding anyone at all, and a relationship not based on mutual attraction usually goes fast downhill.

I remember vaguely that there was some research that said that if women had a good relationship to their father, they would often pick someone who reminded them of him. Can't remember if the same applied to men and mothers, but there might be something to it. The caveman brain wants to carry forth your own genes, and if the mate looks quite like you and has all the necessary qualities the caveman brain looks for, then attraction will happen. If the oher person looks different, be it skin or hair or something else, then maybe there's something that stops the attraction from appearing in the first place. For most people, that is. There are of course also a lot of people who are attracted to differences from their own characteristics. Personality plays a big role as well as first-glance attraction. Even if Caveman-brain goes all drooly over someone, that does not mean it's the perfect mate.

Saying "I don't date so-and-so" can be meant in a racist way, but it can also mean that the person who says it happens to be more attracted to people with those qualities they mention. Maybe they've just not met someone of another skintone (or other quality) that they felt attracted to, and therefore think like this. If they on the other hand say "I don't date black people because I hate black people," then that's clearly racism.

I don't find it weird that people with white skin prefer people with white skin, and people with black skin prefer people with black skin, and that asian people might prefer asian people, and so forth. First of all, it's caveman-brain talking, and second it's cultural. If you are white and live in a place where 90% of the other people around you are white, it's more likely you'll find someone who is white. Same for the rest of them. If you instead live in a very blended, multi-cultural place, it's likely (but still not certain) that you'll find someone who does not have a similar background and the same looks as you, and feel attracted to them.

There has to be a reason why animals prefer animals that looks the same as they do, and I'm pretty sure some of the same is in effect with humans as well. While we on the outside know that all humans are the same race even if we happen to look different, our animal instincts will sometimes butt in and say we're not. Unlike most animals, humans are able to look past the outside, but that does not mean we always do. We're a lot simpler in our mindset than we like to think, and we have less control over our brains and our initial instincts than we think we do...

Except that if you're self-selecting ahead of time by a declaration that you "don't want to date someone based on the color of their skin" then you're not messing with attraction - you're declaring that out of a billion or more people maybe within the vague defines of a skin hue there's not any possible chance that there might be someone within that rough, arbitrary classification that you'd be attracted to. If you're saying that, doing that, you're being a racist, not "following your heart" or "just not attracted." You're making a choice based on the premise of lack of attraction based on what probably seems like merely skin tone, but what's actually the stereotype preconceptions of what that skin tone brings to the table. It's not that someone doesn't want to date blonde women, it's that they believe that blonde women are stupid. It's not that someone can't be attracted to Polish people, it's that they've had a bad experience with someone who was Polish and that's colored their preconceptions about what Polish people are in a wholly incorrect manner. There's a billion Chinese people just in China, if you say that you're "not attracted to Asians" you're making a grossly blanket assumption about a huge percentage of the human race.

It's just not needed, you can dislike the vast majority of the human race based on personality and merit without imagining traits they may or may not have based on attributes they don't have anything to do with. For every person you run into that fits your preconception of just about any group you can imagine, there's probably at least as many outliers and differences in that group - even when that group of people is very small and tightly focused. Throw out a group that's a vast and as vague as "skin color" and you're entirely into wtf territory.

To me, this is the whole premise of this debate. Are we talking about "All the people I've been attracted to in the past have been from X race (or not from Y race) and I see no reason why that wouldn't continue in the future", possibly mixed with "There's something about that skin/hair/whatever that I find amazingly sexy..."? Because that's a preference that you can't exactly control and so not really racist. Maybe it will change one day... or maybe it won't.

Or are we talking about "I won't to date anyone who isn't X race because..." kind of preference? Whether the "because..." is based on culture or stereotypes or whatever? Because this one (which seems to be what Mistermook is talking about) probably is racist. It's dismissive of all those people who aren't X but might well have whatever qualities you're looking for.

In other words, don't can mean haven't or won't. And haven't is a lot less racist than won't.

??? i've been turning this over in my head and i need you to be a bit simpler. am i racist for not wanting to put up with racists or am i misunderstanding? in all honesty i'm not even sure if you're all referring to my post! i never said i wasn't attracted to white people-i'm attracted to all people; hell i'll fuck almost anyone, my problem isn't with attraction its with shitty personalities. when i was fourteen and fifteen any white person was supposed to be some kind of treat but the more white people i hooked up with the more racist shit i noticed they had in common. save for a few folks it was either "i don't date your kind because of X" or "that's not racist i'm also into non-white people!" like humping a latino person excuses the use of the word sp*c

call me bitter but it's like that everywhere i've been. for every one white person that's a close friend of mine i can name at least five times a white person that was either a stranger to meor a good friend treat me like shit, like the lowest of the low, like you could separate who i was from my ethnicity and that's what made me "good". I'd love to feel safe and be comfortable in a relationship with a white person but first i need to learn from my mistakes and be very cautious before i try anything because as i said every other white person that i've tried to make aquantance with has tried to slip in some very subtle racism and tried to get away with it it's not that i see your skin and go "oh gross, i don't want them in my life" if i see you more than once i make note of your personality and decide-based on what i've witnessed- if you are worth my time. especially if it's unintentional. nobody TRIES to be racist but if you say it and you mean it and it happens to be racist then you need to make an evaluation and see why you think that way. i know why i think this way, i've posted it here at least twice now and i think my mental and emotional health is worth quite a bit more than a few hurt feelings

that's not to say non-white people don't discriminate against non-white people for thier race either, but non-white people are either more tolerant or more blatant than white people. its either "we're in the same boat" or "your ethnicity disgusts me, go away!" and i'm ok with that; i can deal. if you're gonna hate me don't wait until after i've fully trusted myself w/ you ya dig? my most important quality for a partner is someone that won't turn to me when we're watching tv half a year into the relationship and tell me that i'm "one of the good ones" or try to slip n-bombs when i'm around as thier "not racist" token.

that's it. maybe it's a bit of don't and won't but i do have good reason not to

Why would you think they were referring to your post, when they quoted mine?

because your post about having the right resons not to date someone came right after mine and i wasn't sure if parts of the last paragraph was referring to mine. and while i tried to figure that out a bunch of other eplies canme along talking about won't or haven't and my assumptions kinda snowballed from there when i was defending myself

...So, to defend your point against me when I was fairly clearly referring to someone else, you quoted a post from KittyCarey, who quoted a post by me. That totally makes sense.....

....


....

So, surely you can understand it if I'm over here going "what the fuck" and thinking "is it drugs? I think it's drugs."

I never fucking said I liked someone less or more because of the colour of their skin, I don't give a shit to be honest. All I was trying to say is that some people have different preferences.

People have different preferences because of reasons, which include "I don't like black people because I'm a big fucking racist." That they also don't like to appear racist is another point. Of course people don't like to appear to be things that their peers will perceive as socially unacceptable, that's why all racists have "black friends" or they go "it's just the way things are in my country" or they try to turn things around into some sort of bizarre reverse racism bullshit because "you're just intolerant of my racism because you hate white people."

Look, having a racist notion isn't the end of the world. Not being a racist isn't something that people are, it's something people do. It's not like you're born a racist, or not a racist. It's learned behavior, silly shit based on those stereotypes I was talking about either. Not being a racist isn't a badge you wear that makes it so, it's a continuous evolving behavior that you're doing to ensure you're treating your fellow men in a way that's based on merit and not some preconceived notion of lack of merit. If I seem a little vicious that's because an awful lot of people can be giant bigots without wanting to be. Just because it hurts our feelings when we think we're being assholes is beside the point. We're human beings, it's not exactly hard for us to be assholes without even trying.

I don't want people to go "I'm not going to be a racist, ever again!" because I'm not sure that's a doable sort of thing for most people. What I'd like is for people to sit back after the fact at some point and just think if they were acting towards someone because of something they did or because of something they expected them of them because of the color of their skin. Not to rationalize it but to look at it for what it actually is and maybe try to correct it. Like I said, even doing that you're going to find out there's a huge portion of the population you still don't want to have anything to do with. Humanity's just not that lovable. But at least you won't be the person you don't want to be, racist without even trying.

As for the racists who do want to be racist? Fuck 'em.

For anyone who's interested, there's an article here about these topics - particularly one black woman's experiences preferring white men.