The heart wants what it wants (and doesn’t want what it doesn’t want)

This morning on Jezebel.com, I saw this article by Jazmine Hughes, a typical clickbait story about wow, she is black and her boyfriend is white and it MATTERS A GREAT DEAL, because OTHER PEOPLE HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THAT, yadda yadda yadda.

As sure as mushrooms follow rain, commenters spoke up about their own interracial relationships. A commenter said that he was a black man dating a Korean woman, and also mentioned that his family wasn’t happy that he wouldn’t date a black woman. Then this so-and-so put in his two cents (which is just about what this opinion is worth):

Attention, people: dating is different from living next to, working next to, hiring, and being friends with.

When you date, you are looking for someone whom you want to have sexual contact with...and you don’t get to decide what kinds of people float your boat that way.

I am not sexually attracted to black men. Or to Asian men. Or to men with really brown skin.

Never have been, and never will be. 

That does not mean I won’t accept them in other areas of my life. But when it comes to sex (theoretically, of course – I’m still married after all), I have to listen to what “down there” says.

If I were single, I would know that I would be missing out on some good guys. But trying to force myself to want someone would be even worse – for myself and for him.

I can no more change who attracts me and who doesn’t any more than I can change my aversion to garlic and onions. And I don’t see why I or anyone else should have to, either.

Long story short: if you don’t want to date outside your race, that doesn’t make you a racist. If you don’t want to date inside your race, that doesn’t make you self-hating. 

It just makes you human...which is, really, the only true race.