My last post on Asian/White couples seemed to offend a few people, so in a bid to understand why, I am issuing a challenge to any readers of this blog, not because I really believe my position is infallible, but because I do want to genuinely know if the offense I have caused is justified. If you can fulfill any of the following, I will issue a public apology for what I wrote on this blog:Pull a quote from that post and copy it into my comment section below on this post and explain how it shows any of the following accusations leveled against me - all of which can be found in the comments section of my last post - are accurate:
a) That the post was a direct response to TheKoreans article on the subject in America, and that I talked with authority about the situation in America. Please bear in mind that I wrote this:
"This post will not be a direct response as such because I do not live and have never lived in America and I don't know what it is like there, but some of the things I bring up here will at least have some relevance to the subject."
"My expertise is with Korea, so I am going to look at the question from the point of view of living in Korea."
b) That I wrote that Asian men are not attractive to women. And I will make this one even easier for you; you don't need to find anything that says I thought all Asian men are unattractive to women, just some.
c) That I personally think White men are more attractive than Asian men.
d) That I think ALL Korean women prefer Western men. And again I will make this easy for you, find the part where I said more Korean women prefer White men over Korean men.
e) That I do not think that unjustified racism, stereotyping, Western media favouritism to caucasians, etc, plays a significant role in the issue. You will have to explain away the following quotes from the post:
On TheKorean's conclusion: "deep-seated racism and cultural stereotyping which consciously and unconsciously affects people's choices. Actually, I agree that this could be a considerable factor"
"Let me first acknowledge, however, that it probably is true that society puts the white man on top of the social status pyramid and because status is a major influence on a woman's taste in a man, this is of course a big element to the whole thing"
"With this in mind then there is most probably an effect on the mind of Asian women by society, stereotypes and racism even when it comes to Asian men, I am certainly not denying it."
"So while a form of racism and stereotyping exists that harms an Asian man's chances of bagging a White Western woman, this is certainly not the whole story"
f) That I spoke for mixed race couples and silenced them in the process. I never suggested I knew anything more than a few POSSIBLE problems for a mixed Asian man and Western woman couples that were perhaps not faced by a White man Asian woman couples, like my wife and I. I never spoke for anyone else and admitted the existence many exceptions. Another quote to prove this:
"This seems a little bit more of a problematic relationship and despite the fact there are many success stories, here are some of the problems I foresee for such couples, which are not insurmountable, but definitely make things more difficult"
I am not sure how this involves silencing their views, as was claimed in my comments section. Also see this link on the disparity of divorce rates in Asian/White relationships, from which I pull this quote:
"White wife/Asian husband couples are 59% more likely to divorce by the 10th year of marriage than White wife/White husband couples, whereas Asian wife/White husband couples show only 4% greater likelihood of divorce than White wife/White husband couples over the same period.[9]Social enterprise research by the Columbia Business School (2005–2007) concluded that while East Asian women statistically prefer East Asian men for marriage, they show no discrimination against White men, causing Asian women/White men pairings to consistently become the prevalent form of interracial dating & marriage in the United States.[6]"
g) Point to where I implied White women couldn't possibly be interested in Asian men.
h) Point to where I implied that it was strange for a White woman to be interested in an Asian man.
i) Point to where I wrote all women don't like short men or that all women like big/tall men.
j) Point to where I wrote Asian men were less "manly". I merely wrote that they TEND to be not as big, and again not all of them (this is a fact).
k) Point to where I implied my wife's discussion with her Japanese friend on the subject was the opinion of all Asian women.
l) Point to where I said all Asian women were smaller, slimmer, or more feminine than Western women. I said "arguably" they tend to be, which may be wrong, but I am entitled to my opinion.
As you can see there are a number of accusations I feel are completely unjustified and that I simply didn't write. Some of them are so laughably misconstrued as to make me wonder what they were actually reading and makes me think that this was an important subject to write about.
In attempt to educate me, Roboseyo posted a number of links which included 4 posts (start here) from the blog "I'm no Picasso" on the effect stereotypes and racism have on Western women with Korean men in Korea, especially relevant to when they are in a Western crowd of people. I read them all (obviously not quickly enough for the blogger in question), but I already knew what they were going to say and I knew that I would agree whole-heartedly.
If she or Roboseyo think I don't understand the general ignorance, prejudice, and unbelievable stupidity of many Westerners when it comes to their behavior around an Asian/White couple, they are severely wrong because boy did I receive enough of it in England when I lived there with my wife, which I have written about several times on this blog. And this leads me to my last challenge, and by far the most important one, because even if I did believe what I am accused to believe in (which I don't, let's just clarify that again) they would make me nothing more than a little ignorant perhaps, but not a monster nor especially immoral. This is what really matters:
m) Point to the part of the post where I wrote that we should discriminate against couples we meet, treat them differently at all, or judge them upon anything other than their own individual character. Point to where I said we should ridicule their choices or assume anything about their relationship.
Just because I believe that patterns of behavior and appearance do exist in different populations of people, and this can have some explanatory power sometimes, I would never say that means we can judge individuals on this. This is a distinction worth noting. Upon seeing any couple, whether they are inter-racial or not, I would advocate assuming nothing more than they like each other and treating them like any other couple you happen to lay your eyes on or interact with. Why would I condone anything else, considering I myself am in an inter-racial relationship and my wife and I have been the victim of people's prejudices?
It is worth restating the aim of my post and that was to say that the issue of why there are more Asian women with White men than White women with Asian men is more complicated than mere prejudice (and Western prejudice at that, which appears to be the sole explanation for all matters inter-racial these days) and the language I used in the post clearly points to a speculative approach, considering all the possibilities. It was never intended to be a direct response to the situation in America, just a perspective from Korea, as I explicitly stated.
It appears as if merely exploring other possibilities, and denying prejudice is the sole cause, is offensive in itself. The ironic thing is that my post may have exposed a different kind of stereotype, a new one, where relations between races can only be explained by Western culture's prejudices, which is then taboo to criticize (I believe this is a very popular line of thought at the moment). And once again, I think much of it can be, but not everything and I think one has the responsibility to point this out and most of all be honest and have an open mind to other explanations until they are proven to be wrong.
If you see everything as a sign of prejudice, how can you be without prejudice yourself?
And Finally
As speculative as my post was a regular commenter on my blog pointed out in my comments section that there is indeed quite a lot of compelling evidence for many of my speculations. I thank him for his intellectual rigour in the search for truth and teaching me a lesson in searching for more supporting evidence, even when I am just throwing out ideas. I am linking a couple of his sources, that he used in his excellent explanation below (please see my comment section on my last post for his full comment):
http://www.targetmap.com/ThumbnailsReports/5744_THUMB_IPAD.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_United_States#Asian_and_White
http://thethreewisemonkeys.com/2012/06/26/who-do-you-love-korean-ethnocentrism-international-couples-and-the-dating-dilemma/
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2012/02/17/james-taranto-takes-on-hypergamy/
And just to show , once more, that I do believe stereotypes and media representation of races is a key factor, here is a little nugget to show that too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotic_capital#Race
