February 19, 2010 at 2:10 pm

KS says:

In college, I was never aware of race – especially when it came to dating. It seemed that everyone was much more race-neutral, and often what Greek house you were in mattered much more than the color of your skin. As an Indian girl with two previous Asian boyfriends, anecdotally I saw no issue with race.

That has since changed – I’m 25 now, have lived in 3 major cities, and find that more and more I am growing increasingly aware of race. When living on the East Coast, I lauded California as perhaps more race-neutral, but having returned to Los Angeles, am finding that is not the case here either. I really appreciated this article because it quantifies (and validates) my frustration not only with online dating, but with finding a date in bars.

But I must admit, I too am an offender. I’m in the 77% of Indian women who don’t strongly prefer to date someone of my own race – in fact, I strongly prefer not to, which has limited my dating pool. My preference (apparently along with every other chick and her mom) have also narrowed to mostly being interested in white males. (Despite what my prior dating history might indicate.)

Accordingly – two things struck me as interesting:

1. Intra-race hate. I’m guilty of it – but it STILL intriguing to me that on the whole Indian Men don’t respond to Indian Women, or Hispanic Women to Hispanic Men, etc etc. The data suggests that people are not tied to their own race, but still have narrow, limited desires when looking at other races (read: white.)