A Question of Race...or....Racism Among Gay Men

"Have you ever gone Asian," says a voice to my right at a pristinely white tablet covered with pristinely white plates and napkins.

I do not respond. He says it a bit louder, and suddenly I'm drawn out of a moment of day dreaming. I am drawn back into the world of the living where myself and several friends are seated for an extravagant brunch after an evening of expensive cocktails and spirited dancing. I politely ask him to repeat the question as it has not registered in my brain as of yet, and then quickly answer, "yes." I am then asked to indulge them in recounting my experience, and then the conversation goes on to delve into the differences in men in the bedroom based on race. We discuss everything from African-Americans to Greek men, to Australians and Latino men. Some experiences being good and others bad, but generally, the conversation was quite interesting and actually invoked a lot of thought on the subject of race in general.

I cannot say that I ever really considered a man's race in deciding whether or not to go on a date with him, hang out with him, have sex with him, etc. It's just not something that generally enters my brain in any aspect of my life. I have been fortunate enough to have had a variety of friends of all different kinds of backgrounds from a very young age so that it doesn't even register into my consciousness that someone is different just because of the color of their skin. It is actually quite astounding that I didn't come out a little bit differently as several members of my extended family can be quite racist. It seems to be a fairly common ideology here in the Midwest with people raised in a certain generation. Nonetheless, I am glad I grew up the way I did. Ever the extreme idealist, I have continued to always try to treat everyone I meet as an equal, which in fact they are. The only exception being stupidity, you will lost points with me on that, but otherwise don't expect me to act differently or treat you any better or worse simply because you have a different background.

However, as a casual observer of the world, I have seen instances that would suggest that not every gay man is as..., let's say open-minded. It seems that there are a number of men who prefer or in fact go so far as to exclusively date one kind of man or one race of men. I realize that attraction is an innate thing. We cannot change who we are attracted to, but I find it hard to believe that such exclusivity is necessary. It seems that such filtration would weed out some of the best candidates who may in fact be right under our noses.

I have one friend who refuses to date African-American men entirely, another who generally won't give a white man the time of day, still another who tends to dwell in a Latino fantasy 90% of the time, and the list goes on. I have found that many African-American men (although I don't know that it is a majority) seem to prefer white men when cruising the Internet or out in gay bars, and quite often, Internet profiles from a number of people in general blatantly state a search for a specific race. But why is it so important? I really do not understand. No matter how you slice it, when you exclude someone because of their race, no matter what it is, isn't that racism.

Of course, when you add in the other factors that gay men use to weed out possible mate candidates, one could easily assume that as a group, we are actually quite picky, if not down right discriminating. There are men who won't date anyone above a certain age, a certain weight, who look exclusively for older men, or men with a certain income, who won't look at you twice if you associate with a certain crowd of people or hang out at certain establishments or are from a certain part of the country. You'd think that after years of being discriminated against because of our sexual orientation for so long that we would have a more enlightened outlook when choosing people to associate ourselves with.

I speak from the idealist perspective here. I realize the people have preferences, that certain things turn us on, and maybe one of those things for some people is the color of someone's skin. All I would ask is that we keep our minds open to whatever comes our way. Life is hard enough being gay, why make it harder by alienating anyone that could enrich out lives?