Every person is attracted to different types of people—we have no real control over the people that we are attracted to. However, society can sometimes have some influence on the type of people we are attracted to. There are many people that claim that they are not attracted to certain people because of their race or their skin tone, but race and skin tone are not typically factors that actually should impact your level of attraction to someone. It’s not necessarily problematic to typically date one particular race or people of a certain skin tone, but if you completely find every member of a certain group unattractive, then that is likely indicative of a larger issue.
Not finding at least one person of a certain race or color attractive very obviously means you have some sort of bias. People like to defend only being attracted to people of particular races, ethnicities or skin tones by saying that it’s just a preference, but then when you ask the reasoning behind that preference, that’s when it starts to become obvious that their “preference” is problematic. To justify their preference, they’ll often use racial stereotypes, criticize features that don’t align with eurocentric beauty standards or just use derogatory language to describe peoples’ appearances. Doing all of these things to justify why you are not attracted to certain people means that your “preference” is rooted in colorism or racism.
A person should not have to belittle other groups of people to uplift the type of people that they are attracted to. If they do feel the need to do so, it’s because they believe that there is a social difference between the two groups of people that makes one more appealing than the other. When people who are only attracted to people with lighter skin tones are asked why they don’t like people with darker skin, they’ll usually say “because dark-skinned people are unattractive.” Their first instinct is to immediately insult people just because of the color of their skin in an attempt to uplift lighter-toned people, which shows that their preference is not innocent. It has malice behind it, and they do not just exclusively like lighter-toned people by coincidence, but because they have internalized anti-blackness that prevents them from finding people with more Afrocentric features attractive.
If someone solely dates members of a certain minority group, that can also be problematic as well, and it usually indicates that the person is fetishizing members of a certain race. It’s completely normal to find members of all racial groups attractive and want to date outside of your race, but if you exclusively only date one particular race that is not your own, it may be because you’ve fetishized them. We all probably know someone who only dates Black men, only date Asian women or exclusively dates members of some other racial group. This isn’t necessarily always a problem, but some of the peoples’ reasoning behind doing so is because of the stereotypes surrounding certain racial groups.
For instance, people will choose to date Asian women because people stereotype them as being subservient, and they find that sexually attractive. Other people will choose to date Black men because they believe that they will satisfy them sexually because of stereotypes surrounding their bodies. Being attracted to someone solely because of racist stereotypes means that you only see that person as a sexual object and don’t truly respect them for who they are. It’s not okay, and anyone that finds themselves doing this should do some introspection and change. Racism is not always blatant, sometimes the person is unaware that they even have a bias, but that doesn’t mean that the bias doesn’t harm people.
If you are someone who claims to have a preference, please take the time to ensure that your preference does not stem from colorism or racism. By having a preference that is rooted in colorism and racism, you are contributing to the continued oppression of marginalized groups, so unpack your bias.