TanookiTom
Member
Well, Japan is an incredibly racist country with a very naive view of a lot of ethnic groups. While you can make the case that it's really not their fault because the country is so homogenous, the fact remains. (Also, they are so homogenous by their own volition, not some inviolable law of nature.)
In a nutshell, yes: I would definitely recommend making a conscious choice to be open to dating people outside your race, but as you said it's a fine line. Just as someone wouldn't like to hear that you are unlikely to date them because of their race, no one wants to get to the 3rd date and find out you're sticking around because you've never been with an Asian person before either. I think in being in new areas, though, your tastes naturally evolve.
Ok, maybe we're starting to mix some things here (and it's also my fault). I think living in a homogenous society, such as Japan's for example, is not an excuse for being racist, Because we live in a globalized world and Japanese have access to all the information necessary to not be racist (I don't wanna focus on Japanese here exclusively, it's obviously the same for all countries).
BUT I think you have very little control when it comes to what you are attracted to. So yes, saying "people of this or that ethnicity are ugly/stupid/rapists/whatever" is definitely racist - I think we don't even have to discuss this.
Saying you are not attracted to a certain ethnicity because you discovered that you are not attracted to certain physical traits. I just think this can't outright be called racism. Sure when we're talking about saying that all people of X ethnicity look like this or that, then I can see the relation to racism.
And I find dating people you don't find attractive in order of hoping to finding them attractive one day to be very unrealistic and improbable.
You're assuming that dating within ones own race is the natural default and that people need to learn to be attracted to people different than them, when that too can have societal origin.
No, this is yet another assumption you are making. All I am saying is that in homogenous societies, this is just the likely case. If you don't even meet people from other ethnicities, you can't date them (or even feel attracted to them IRL).
Surely this is different in countries like the U.S. where many ethnicities live together in many places. I would never say that dating people of your same ethnicity is the natural default in such areas of the world.
In the example of Japanese society: it's very homogeneous indeed, but there is also a culture of looking down at dating foreigners that is pervasive. Many people will ingrain this growing up and will find foreigners unattractive later on.
I made some comments on that above.