University of Virginia: Asian-Caucasian Relationships

University of VIrginia

Today I came across an interesting article in Campus Reform about a professor (Sylvia Chong) who cautioned Asians, particularly Asian females, from dating Caucasians. Naturally, she delved into the "intersectionality" aspect, which merely confuses things even more There was also a reference to capitalism as if that had anything to do with it.

As a white male who grew up with many Japanese-Americans, lived in Thailand for three years, and dated many Asian/Asian-American women in my bachelor days, I have some definite thoughts here. First and foremost, these white male-Asian female relationships exist mostly because there is a mutual attraction between the two. There is nothing wrong with that. They exist among other groups. As for exploitive relationships, I don't think this pairing is any worse than any other pairing including couples of the same ethnicity. In every race, there are men who treat their women well or badly.

I also think, given our history, we should be very careful in advising one group of people they should not marry or have relationships with any other group. Everyone in every society should be free to choose their partners. In some parts of the world, this is not possible. In addition, in many Asian countries today, women who have relationships with Caucasian men are looked down upon. Even when I was in the US Army in Germany in the 1960s, Germans looked down on women who socialized with GIs.

These are prejudices we need to move past.