Readers Respond
Last week’s question was from a young man with a particular “type.” He wrote: “I’m a straight white dude and recent college grad who has very progressive beliefs and is looking for a committed partner who, in time, can equitably raise a family with me. I have almost zero honest-to-goodness physical preferences. I’ve dated women of various shapes and sizes, various skin, hair and eye colors, etc., and have been attracted to all of them. Here’s what’s controversial among my friends: I want to prioritize dating women of color. I’m after a cross-cultural relationship. I believe very strongly that one of the main ways to combat racism is through relationships. Part of me thinks that I will always be somewhat disappointed if what ends up becoming one of the most important relationships in my life is with another white person. If someone is a woman of color, that checks a box for me in a real way. … Here’s my question: Despite my well-meaning antiracist principles, is this preference (as friends have suggested) wrong, insensitive or somehow itself racist?”
In his response, the Ethicist noted: “Your devotion to self-improvement is impressive. Like a dish of quinoa and kale that you may once have forced down and now actively enjoy, a woman of color could, you think, raise your game, supplying something like antiracist roughage. You’d be using your erotic ecumenism to level up. Where your shallower classmates have hookups, your dates would be teach-ins. … Treating a relationship like a seminar can lead to trouble: What happens when you’ve finished your fieldwork, read through the syllabus and are ready for a new instructor? If the model is, instead, a healthful dietary regimen, will you allow yourself cheat days? … Play, rather than work, may sometimes be the better approach in the romantic realm. Although you’re not objectifying your hypothetical partner, you are, just a little, instrumentalizing her. That’s not to say you aren’t entitled to pursue this campaign of strenuous self-optimizing. Just be transparent about your box-checking ambitions. Perhaps some prospects will be grateful for your offer to put your privileges at their disposal while you embark on your journey of uplift. But — how to put this? — I suspect that most would rather be your honey bun than your grain bowl.” (Reread the full question and answer here.)
⬥
As a Brown woman, I find the letter writer’s vision of antiracism entirely misguided. It both objectifies and instrumentalizes any hypothetical partner. Any self-respecting woman of color, thus approached about this agenda, would decline to participate. Failure to understand this is a clear indication that he has a lot of work to do before jumping to the unwarranted conclusion that he knows what the work is. His lecture about the merits of his plan is, in itself, a huge red flag. Of course he can date whomever he wishes. But his self-centered focus on personal improvement is incredibly offensive, as is his idea that this kind of partnership would be, on his part, a charitable act. — Rebecca
⬥
Karl Marx criticized the capitalist system in large part because it objectifies human relations. Within capitalism, people aren’t appreciated for their intrinsically unique individual worth, and their value is reduced to the roles that they play in the system, as workers, but also as business owners, whose humanity is also diminished. Similarly, the letter writer speaks as if he’s filling a role in some academic virtue industrial complex, where signaling, and signaling only, determines worth. I would think that any dating target of his should run far, far away. — Michael
⬥
I think that the letter writer’s mission is noble. I was born in the South to a white father and a Hispanic mother with an accent. I always felt out of place at a homogeneous white school. I had very curly hair and a “tan” year round. Not to mention the horror when a friend called my house and couldn’t understand my mom when she picked up the phone. I married a white woman of European ancestry to ensure my children would have nice, straight hair and fair skin. I achieved my mission, but now that I’m older, I wouldn’t have done the same thing. My advice to the letter writer: prioritize finding a partner you loves and one you can share a life with in peace. — J