I’m a Black man in the Pacific Northwest, and I’ve been thinking about interracial dating, especially Black men dating Asian women. I want to be clear: I’m not here to attack Asian people, Asian women, Black women, white people, or anyone else. I’m asking because I’m genuinely trying to understand the conversation better.
I’ve dated Asian women before, including a Vietnamese woman I still think highly of because she was mature, open-minded, and not racist. I was young then and my intentions were different then. I was offered to marry an Asian woman but I declined; The person of interest behaved one way in front of her parents, another way around her friends and a different way around my friends, and overall she treated me like I was an experiment. I side eyed her a lot. She was 4 years older than me. My interest is not based on stereotypes or fetishizing. I’m attracted to different kinds of women, and I try to see people as individuals. But when I search Reddit or read comments online, I often see people joking or implying that Asian women prefer white men over Black men, or that Black men should not even bother. Sometimes it feels like there is a quiet racial hierarchy being reinforced, where whiteness is treated as the safest or most accepted option, and Black men are treated as undesirable, threatening, or socially costly. That makes me wonder: where is the real conversation about this?
For Black men who are open to dating Asian women, how do you deal with the possibility of racist family members, cultural pressure, or being seen as a “problem” before someone even knows you? And for those who have been in these relationships, was it worth it? Did the woman actually stand with you, or did you end up carrying the emotional weight alone?
I also wonder about the Asian women who may be open to dating Black men but feel pressure from family, community, or stereotypes. I have read that Asian parents instruct and or educate their children early off to not date Black people. So I wonder when I see this type of couple out and about; even though it’s rare in my location…Is there real support for those couples? Or do people mostly avoid talking about it because it is uncomfortable?
I know some Black people believe we should only date within our own race. I do not personally believe that is the only answer. At the same time, I understand why some people feel exhausted by interracial dating when racism, stereotypes, and family disapproval are involved.
So my question is: Black people, where are we on this conversation? Should Black men who are interested in Asian women just accept the risk and deal with the issues as they come? Or is it sometimes wiser to avoid situations where racism from family, community, or society may become a constant burden? And for thought, is this something to be combating as a narrative, for those who may need the backup and support?
I’m not looking for hate toward any group. I’m looking for honest experiences, advice, and perspective — especially from Black men who have dated Asian women, Black women who have observed this dynamic, and people who have dealt with racist families in interracial relationships.
Main question: How do Black men navigate dating Asian women when racism, family pressure, stereotypes, and social judgment may be part of the relationship? Should we keep an open heart, or protect our peace?
Hello, I had a hard time reading your post. May I give specific feedback about your writing? If you don’t want that, completely fine, just ignore this comment :)
The questions are: How do Black men/Asian women couples manage the pressure of conservative family views or racist stereotypes, and was it worth it?
Black men in the PNW who have dated Asian women: What is your experience with navigating cultural differences and family opposition?
So yeah I am not black, but you said elsewhere that that kind of opinion is still fine.
And also, if you want, you do not have to bring ethnicity into it at all, in my opinion. This can just be handled like any kind of “family disapproval”. Of course some people are sensitive to racism based issues, but I think it’s not actually that relevant in this question/situation.
In my personal opinion, people value family, and “approval of other humans” in general entirely too much. I understand that family is an important survival mechanism of our species and thus ingrained in our psyche to care about, but in some situations, family bonds are just a straight detriment to one’s life.
For example, if your family causes(/d) huge emotional pain and trauma, which prevents you from properly functioning in society, even if there is the potential safety net of “my family takes care of me while I’m in trouble” (i.e. idk, losing your home and needing a place to sleep) severely loses its value if the result is more pain and dysfunction accompanying it.
This is just to illustrate my general thinking.
Now with regards to situations you mentioned, I would just say “fuck em”. In my opinion, there’s no need to associate with a family that’s not even yours. If your partner insists on it, I would find another partner. With my current partner (who is also Asian), neither she nor I have contact to our families, so it’s not an issue anyway, but in general, there should ideally never be any “requirements” to be fulfilled. If I say no to my partner on something, that’s it, same as when she does it, that’s it for me.
Maybe I’m just extremely lucky or I’m very tolerant, but I think you should have a partner that you like as a human in general, whose whole set of worldviews align with your own. If a partner were to try to force me to interact with their racist family, I fundamentally disagree with that and I would dislike that person so much as to not be able to be with them.
I generally don’t think you can change humans very much, so all of this kind of “attempting to conform to a set of expectations” is moot and shouldn’t be done.
So to summarize this, I think family ties are not that important, and having to confront annoying situations is not necessary, as a loving partner that cares about you would not force that on you. This kind of attitude might leave you without a partner, but it also leaves you free to get a partner who you’re actually compatible with and don’t need to care about stupid family views.
You have a semi-unique situation and circumstances. Ideally, you and your spouse are starting a new family from scratch. I love my family. I come from a family that invests into one another. When one steps, most of us steps in that direction as well. We have a touch of the American individual–Independence scattered throughout but it’s helpful with questions like the one I have presented. I was once married to a Mexican, whom I met and loved her in America. Her roots are in Mexico and her mother “hated” Black people. Her father was a man of honor and decent judgements. I was not his first son-in-law. When I stood my ground and stopped paying my then mother-in-law attention, she desired more of my attention for good and laughed a good laugh when I came around. Sooner than later the in laws had Black friends of their own.
I’m not on a mission to save or change the world, nothing like that. I am just happy my family is understanding and not racist. We’re loving and compassionate towards our community and neighbors. However, we or some of us do occasionally use the spooky myth of being the black boogeyman to scare crazy people off. 😜
Take care. Best of luck to your family.
I okay with you making an opinion. I know I’m perfect. If you care to help, I would appreciate it.
So I’m personally really struggling because there are no paragraphs. The text itself is completely fine, I think. But when paragraphs are missing, I’m just unable to focus on the text for long and extract meaning from it.
Usually, you try to group closely related sentences together in a paragraph. It’s a bit of an art but uuuusually relatively obvious. So for example, when I start reading your post, the first group I could identify was the “preamble of stating your intention”, which is
Then it continues with some personal experiences, each of which deserve its own paragraph:
Then it gets hard for me, because it seems you make a generic statement about your preferences/thoughts:
Which sounds like a separate set of statements which should stand apart from the rest, because then you go into another section about online discourse, but you start with a “But”, which sounds like the statements are related. I did not understand at first what you liking women in a certain way has to do with online discourse that says asian women like white men over black men.
I think I understand now after taking this long time dissecting it, but that’s kinda what I mean, I had to do that dissecting now which I would have to do much less/none of if the statements were nicely grouped by paragraphs.
I hope that was clear :)
I will offer you my opinion about the actual content in another comment.
I take me my anger out in odd ways too. Thanks for stopping by and reminding me that I’m not perfect. I didn’t read your post and it was fun just skimming over it all together. Freedom of expression. No sweat and like you, I don’t care.
I can’t tell if this is intentional and based or just typo. Either way, thanks for the chuckle.
not was supposed to be included but you still got the desired impact…a laugh.