excuses racists use (particularly with dating)

[sophie]

... right.

Which is why I have *repeatedly* stated here that simply not finding me attractive (or something along those lines) is perfectly acceptable. If I took offense to every rejection I got I'd have suicided by now. I get tons of rejections, the vast majority of which don't bother me.

It's just I've found out of the race-related rejections I've got, 99% of them are coming from white women.

...so call them rasist asshats and move on

dont really see what the problem is here. people are rasist? you live in texas, what do you expect?

 

[Narz]

... right.

Which is why I have *repeatedly* stated here that simply not finding me attractive (or something along those lines) is perfectly acceptable. If I took offense to every rejection I got I'd have suicided by now. I get tons of rejections, the vast majority of which don't bother me.

It's just I've found out of the race-related rejections I've got, 99% of them are coming from white women.

edit: to add to this, this is a very unique minority experience. I mentioned a black friend I have, and she has the same problem with white guys that I do with white girls. Lots of minorities do. Maybe downtown was right and thus far you all have thoroughly proved I owe him an apology.

It's that I explicitly state they say "I don't like you because you're not white" (not necessarily a verbatim quote but it's always race some way or another) and I'm supposed to take these very excluding racial statements in a non-racist way. Again, they aren't saying something along the lines of "you're too low on the hotness scale for me" more like "not white, gross".

Women trying to date online tend to be really, really shallow. Look at all the ads that say "must be over 6' tall". That pisses me off & I am over 6feet.

I find online dating really irritating in general. You're probably better off trying to meet women IRL. That way you can start noticing shallow behavior right off the bat.

Dating sucks honestly, I hate it, I hate having to filter women & of course they will filter me 10 times as hard. But its a skillset & may as well practice it. Its hard to learn as much just online since you are only reading text from these women & they can waste much more of your time.

Maybe just be grateful for the ones so shallow to reject you on such grounds, it disqualifies them right off the bat. You should try to view yourself as the chooser, not as the one waiting to be choosen. It feels intellectually dishonest at first because realistically women are the choosers 99% of the time but alot of what it takes to be in that 1% (of men who are the choosers) is to see yourself that way & work hard at meeting lots of women to filter thru & not get sad at ones who are lame, be sad for them, but just for a moment & then move on.

I have alot of advantages I admit, I'm tall, white, live in NYC with a large selection to choose from but I'm also lower-income & have plenty of my own insecurities & needinesses with women that I had to/have to overcome.

 

[LucyDuke]

Which is why I have *repeatedly* stated here that simply not finding me attractive (or something along those lines) is perfectly acceptable.

That's the truth. Why they're dressing it in a creepy excuse is an interesting question, but mostly they just don't find you attractive!

 

[caketastydelish]

It would genuinely make me feel better about the world if you're right, but I don't see how you'd know you are.

 

[Narz]

Well she is a girl. And girls have to reject alot more guys than the reverse so they tend to come up with all sorts of lame 'softeners' to reject guys with (this is understandable since males have the potential to do crazy things when scorned, women are not dangerous in the same way, they will break your heart but not usually your bones). Rejecting someone based on race feels less personal than rejecting them as an individual.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

Lots of people discriminate based on ethnicity. Many Kurdish women aren't marrying outsiders, for example. It's just what it is. I'm not sure it's worse to be be discriminated based on ethnicity than for personal reasons such as obesity, ugliness or mental handicaps.

edit - slow x-post

 

[Domen]

I was joking about Indian harems moving to Greece, but when it comes to this:

and I highly doubt many of their "girlfriends" (more like prisoners of war which got raped) did either.

Alexander was a supporter of cross-cultural marriages (not rapes), read about it. He wanted his soldiers to marry Persians, perhaps to strengthen his freshly created empire by breeding a "race" of people who identify with both parts of his realm, Greece and Persia. As for India - he did not enslave anyone there, he defeated king Porus but allowed him to keep power over his kingdom in reward for brave resistance. Of course he died too early to consolidate his empire.

Hernan Cortez was like Alexander - he embraced American culture (not that of the Triple Alliance, but that of his Mexican allies from the anti-Aztec coalition, who provided 100,000 warriors as reinforcements for his siege of Tenochtitlan). Those were Spanish governors who came after Cortez was removed - not Cortez himself - who treated the locals as subhumans. Cortez wanted to be seen as a Mexican tlatoani, and as a successor of the dethroned Aztec Emperor.

 

[Hygro]

Yes, it's racist.

Yes, if they were just not attracted to you it would be cooler b/c not racist if they were just upfront.

Yes, it might be a racist cover for some to soften the blow of their rejection for when they aren't feeling it.

Yeah, that last part isn't inspired by racism, even if it's racist.

You probably won't get this excuse much in Seattle, but the numbers responding affirmative might be the same If you move, let us know.

 

[Domen]

As Owen wrote, you live in Texas and look Hispanic-like. Mexican connotations. What do you expect?

Their "I was raised this way by my traditional parents" = "Mexicans hands off Texas, we remember Alamo".

Up north there might be less anti-Mexican prejudice and you will pass as Jewish or Persian.

Don't say you are "Middle Eastern" cuz Americans want to "make a big glass crater out of the f... Middle East."

Say you are Mizrahi Jewish or something, that's not a lie. Socially construct your race to meet expectations.

 

[jackelgull]

As for India - he did not enslave anyone there, he defeated king Porus but allowed him to keep power over his kingdom in reward for brave resistance.

The myth that Alexander defeated India is complete nonsense. Alexander didn't actually win at that famous battle that supposedly won him India, he had a draw there. Afterwards, in the terms of peace, king Porous had been so impressed by Alexander the Great that he allowed the man to limp out of India with his armies unmolested. The tribute Alexander paid to Porous may have helped soften any hard feelings. Simply put, the campaign into India wasn't a victory, it was a defeat analogous to Napolean's defeat in Russia.

 

[Domen]

Well it's posdible that Greek sources changed the story a bit.

The same was probably the result of Alexander's inconclusive campaign against Scythians.

I'm talking here about his battle fought at the Jaxartes River.

Remember that battle between Hittites and Egyptians that both sides claimed to have won?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kadesh

The battle of Plowce 1331 was also claimed a victory by both Poland and Teutonic Knights.

 

[The_J]

Hey, this here is about a gender fight, not about a historical fight ^^.

My experience of this forum is that most of the people here are white guys are willing to date minority girls, so a lot this criticism wouldn't apply to most of you.

Most guys here would probably date anything female with 2 legs. Including chicken ^^.

white people in general have such an enormous advantage in the dating pool (minorities are willing to date whites at a ratio far more than whites are willing to date minorities, meanwhile whites are also willing to date each other)

I'm not sure that's valid. Nearly all inclusive groups have prejudices against outsiders.
Think e.g. of the strict orthodox jews, as one example. Probably applies to some nutters in all the groups.


On the main topic: I'm really suprised about your main answer.
Because it's one of the hardest excuses there are (besides "you're ugly").
Maybe you should try another dating site, there seems to be something wrong there.
Or as Narz said, rather check IRL.
And in a better/more open environment maybe. Some environments are more multicultural and open, some aren't, and that'll influence your success.


And most important: Embrace the people who accept you, forget about the ones who reject you. Else that'll have a strong impact on your mood, and you really don't want that.

 

[Farm Boy]

Lucy is probably right.

Not that I ever had much selection this way, but I was never particularly into black girls. Knew some cool ones during the appropriate years, but just wasn't intrigued. I didn't owe anyone effort to change my tastes, though it may have been in my interest to.

That's the level admission you were looking for in the OP, right? I mean, I wasn't exactly socially apt and physically amazing enough to be beating people off with a stick, so maybe it doesn't matter, but that's there. Asian girls don't usually "do it for me" either, and that's supposed to be a nerdy white boy fetish I think.

 

[IglooDame]

Lucy is probably right.

Not that I ever had much selection this way, but I was never particularly into black girls. Knew some cool ones during the appropriate years, but just wasn't intrigued. I didn't owe anyone effort to change my tastes, though it may have been in my interest to.

That's the level admission you were looking for in the OP, right? I mean, I wasn't exactly socially apt and physically amazing enough to be beating people off with a stick, so maybe it doesn't matter, but that's there. Asian girls don't usually "do it for me" either, and that's supposed to be a nerdy white boy fetish I think.

Lucy is indeed typically correct. And ditto to the rest. Is finding darker skin tone to be unattractive defined as racism? By the letter of it, yes. But the implication is that racism is not always evil, then, because certainly everyone who isn't 50-50 bisexual isn't evil, and everyone with a fetish or repulsion to any particular body type isn't evil (or everyone in CFC IS evil).

 

[nc-1701]

edit: I would actually probably have a lot of these girls accepting me (or rejecting me for a non-racial reason) if I simply didn't explicitly state in my profile that I'm middle eastern rather than white. If I wrote that I'm Italian or Greek they'd all easily believe me, but I'd rather date non-racist reasonable people (even if they're few and far between) rather than that.

This can be empirically tested! And you might even get to lay a racist or two

Well the "raised that way" is a weird friggin' comment. Do you really get that often?

Would you really want to date someone who chooses their partner based on what their family thinks or "the way they were raised" anyway? When someone blames a behavior on "the way I was raised" what they're basically saying is that they are still a child.

It is weird and honestly it does push past a lot of the side excuses being made in this thread. I will honestly make one last point, but at the same time I am conceding that this is pretty messed up. But coming from a dating site so you really shouldn't expect discourse on a higher level than on HALO.

When you say you're Middle Eastern, could these girls be seeing that as raised in the Middle East? Throw in a little bit of ignorance and they could easily assume lots of things about your personality that are likely not true and may well be directly counter to how they were raised. If the statement instead were something like "I don't date FOBs, I was raised American and I need an American man" how would you respond to that?


All this aside there obviously is some racism in the dating world and the majority of it lands on non-white men. I imagine Asian men get hit the hardest, but that's just a guess.

 

[Traitorfish]

What's weird to me is that the excuse "I'm old fashioned" basically breaks down as an acknowledgement than their attitudes are those of a very racist period, but that this is somehow separate from their inner being. "I'm not racist, I just think racist thoughts and do racist things". It's barely an excuse at all. JR says that it might just be an inarticulate brush off, but I can't imagine that anyone would choose this particular option unless they were pretty cool with racism to start with.

If somebody was really worried about being seen as a racist, let alone actually being one, I think they'd come up with a better excuse. I think these people are quite happy to be racists and quite happy for that people know they're racist, they just don't want to be accountable for it.

 

[NovaKart]

I think there's nothing wrong with being attracted to certain ethnicities and not others but saying "that's how I was raised" or " I'm old fashioned" makes it sound more like a value judgement than a simple preference.

 

[EgonSpengler]

A black woman my age whom I'm internet friends with said she's tried to date some white guys and when they brought her home, the guy's parents would always be horrified with this same "we're not racist but we're just old fashioned" nonsense.

[...]

The real question is how can we come up with an effective way of calling these people out whenever they casually use the "not racist, I was just raised that way" line without sounding snarky like a jerk, that way you can actually say it and they may actually listen and think about it.

If I ever heard "I'm just old-fashioned", I would think "Just how old are you, anyway?" It's been 50 years since that kind of naked, undisguised racism has been widely accepted. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? came out in 1967. Jungle Fever was 1991. People kind of rolled their eyes when Save the Last Dance came out, and that was almost 15 years ago. [Edit: In the United States...] You'd need to be 70 years old to have been raised in an era when dating outside your race was scandalous. If someone today is uncomfortable dating outside their race, they may as well wear a three-corner hat and use pay-phones.

 

[Farm Boy]

In all fairness, dating conservative men of traditionally patriarchal cultures doesn't always wind up fun. There may be a degree of risk averseness going on. It's so easy to round file from the internet.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

If I ever heard "I'm just old-fashioned", I would think "Just how old are you, anyway?" It's been 50 years since that kind of naked, undisguised racism has been widely accepted. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? came out in 1967. Jungle Fever was 1991. People kind of rolled their eyes when Save the Last Dance came out, and that was almost 15 years ago. [Edit: In the United States...] You'd need to be 70 years old to have been raised in an era when dating outside your race was scandalous. If someone today is uncomfortable dating outside their race, they may as well wear a three-corner hat and use pay-phones.

I'm not 70 and my parents would have had a cow if I had told them when I was dating black girls. I know, because they did have a cow when my brother married a Japanese girl and another when my sister moved in with a Mexican guy. They had a cow when I married a white girl, because she was of Italian descent. It may be fifty years since naked undisguised racism was widely accepted, but people still practiced it at home for decades after.

The good news is that confining bigotry to houses and getting it off the streets allowed my generation enough fresh air to make progress. Hopefully this "I can't date you because I was raised by bigots" nonsense will die out in a few generations if we can just keep progressing.