Although some shudder at the thought, a widespread research theory holds that we are attracted to people who are similar to our parents or ourselves.Before you quickly glance at your romantic partner and close this tab or stash this paper under something, keep reading.
We crave familiarity and want to feel understood. It’s human nature, and honestly not as bad as it sounds. Assortative mating means that people are more attracted to those with similar backgrounds, similar phenotypes, and approval from our families. These partners may also be found close to our hometowns — and predominantly monoracial demographics support the idea that our future partners will probably look a whole lot like us.
However, America is becoming far more diverse, truly living up to our “melting-pot” nickname. In 1967, Loving v. Virginia struck down laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Since then, the multiracial population has been growing at an exponential rate. According to the 2010 census, the population reporting multiple racial backgrounds grew by 32 percent from 2000 to 2010, compared with those who reported a single race, which grew by 9.2 percent.
My class recently took an anonymous survey on interracial relationships. The survey asked, “Would you date someone who is black? Reside with them? Marry them? Have children?” The same questions were then repeated, but asked about Asian and Asian-Americans. Respondents could respond with, “I have,” “I would,” “I wouldn’t, but others can,” and “I don’t think anyone should do this.” My professor created the survey based on her research paper on the same subject.
Our class is by no means a representative sample of any significant population, let alone of Dartmouth itself. Not only was this not a simple random sample, but a very biased and small-sized voluntary sample, as the very course in question is centered around the growth of multicultural America. Also, there was an instance where the question-answering was not blind (“Hey, dude, what did you put?”) and an instance in which someone accidentally chose the wrong button on the clicker (“Whoops, I did not mean to say that I’ve been married before. My bad.”) A statistician would have had a heart attack.
However, those two outliers aside, this does not mean that the data we gathered in the survey had no significance. I was honestly surprised to see that, when asked on whether or not they would date black and Asian individuals (these questions separately asked), some people (about 40 percent of the class) stated that they “wouldn’t, but others could.” We experienced the winnowing effect to a small extent: as the questions showed the relationship becoming more serious, more people said that they “wouldn’t, but others could.”
Is this racist? I honestly do not think so, but that doesn’t mean that this phenomenon does not have a significant effect on minorities in America — specifically on their sense of self-esteem. You’re probably familiar with the term “Yellow fever,” used to describe the fetishization of Asians and something which my own friends have admitted to having, as if it were an actual disease. Well, it is. But I doubt they have it. Either way, you should not be proud of fetishizing a race.
Thankfully, no one said that people shouldn’t be romantically involved with black or Asian individuals. I’m also impressed with my peers’ honesty, as it would be very easy to just lie and choose “I would.” There would have been no consequences to doing so. Because of this, I’m assuming that they genuinely had no racist intent behind their preferences. After all, everyone has preferences, and you can’t choose who you think is attractive or not — right?
However, liking someone in a platonic manner is very different from romantic interest — something that is out of your control. If race stands between you and a potential pal, well, that would be a different story, and probably a racist one.
It’s not a pretty reality, but it’s not a malicious one, either. People could easily hide their racism by simply answering dishonestly, but I have faith in Dartmouth undergrads. Further, mnorities unfortunately have other issues to worry about (i.e. discrimination from the police and workforce, lack of representation in the government and media, hate crimes and so on). And, personally, I have other things to worry about than my race, like whether or not I will scare potential suitors off with my at-best questionable sense of humor and rats’ nest of a dorm room.
