Are you often attracted to people from a particular Race?

And does that make you a racist?

There are many sides to this conundrum. On the one hand, what we find attractive or not is a very personal thing that varies from person to person. So yes, one could find members from one race to be more attractive than the other but remember, attraction isn’t purely based on looks (although it is obviously a big part as it’s the first thing we see) but also on the person’s personality, the vibes the person emits.

So sometimes you could find yourself being attracted to a person from a race that you aren’t normally attracted to because of the person’s character. Moreover, one cannot simply say that they can never be attracted to people from a particular race because the reality is that you have not met (and can never meet) everyone from that particular race. There could be that one person from that particular race (that you don’t find attractive) that you could find attractive (be it on a physical level or personality wise) if you just had the occasion to meet the said person. Furthermore, if you find yourself attracted to people from a particular race, it could be that you are attracted to those people as individuals and not because they are from that particular race. In a world where racism and discrimination are always on the headlines, it is natural to question your own thoughts.

From personal experience, having been attracted lately to white men made me very worried that I somehow saw white men as being more desirable. There was a black man interested me, but somehow I was more attracted to the white man I had met. It made me worried to think that I could be so terribly superficial or be so influenced by western standards of beauty. I myself am of south Asian origin and while I don’t like to generalise, most south Asian communities from my experience are terribly against dating people who are off different backgrounds or races especially people of African descent. Martin Luther King, being one of my heroes, made me feel that that I was falling terribly short of his vision. I felt I was a terrible hypocrite, encouraging people not to judge based on race but then perhaps secretly judging myself.

But, when I thought about it more deeply, I realised that I was attracted to that particular white man because his experiences and thoughts were similar to mine. The afro-Caribbean man interested in me was rather different from me and while we shared some ideas in common, communication between us just wasn’t flowing smoothly because we didn’t have similar thoughts. I thought about my past attractions more deeply and I remembered that back when I was in school, I had a huge crush on the president of the student representative council. He was black Kenyan, had an American accent, extremely charismatic and confidence oozed out of him. In fact, one of my reasons for trying to join the student representative council was childishly to have an opportunity to talk to him.

Now I’m not saying I don’t have a racist or discriminatory bone in my body — I am human after all, we all are, but the science of attraction is complicated and one that I believe ultimately transcends matters of race and backgrounds.

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