jadanzzy

Last weekend, Amy and I listened to an episode of NPR's Invisibilia called A Very Offensive Rom-Com.

It centered around a “woke” Chinese American woman's romantic/sexual quest to find love. While looking for that love, she realized she was only engaging white men. And that led her on a quest to understand the cause of her (subconscious?) selection bias.

I do recommend you listen to the episode before continuing on...

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Okay, ready?

While well done (as Invisibilia usually is), the episode left both of us unsatisfied because we had so many questions to which there were no answers given to us in the episode, mostly around the subject's childhood and the level of exposure to her ethnic culture. Based on anecdotal, personal experience, I have my own unverified assumptions as to why some minority Americans who are raised by their biological, minority parents are only attracted to white Americans.

• Maybe they didn't spend a lot of time with their ethnic group growing up as kids.
• Maybe they grew up in very white, homogenous schools in very white, homogenous towns.
• Maybe they went to very predominantly white colleges/universities, after spending their childhood in very white, homogeous K-12 schools.
• Maybe their minority parents didn't want them focusing on their ethnic culture so as to be successful in a largely white America.
• Maybe they weren't exposed enough to any native ethnic media where the romantic characters looked like them.
• Maybe their minority parents are highly educated, white collar professionals, thus increasing the chance that they're surrounded by white colleagues, friends, and children.

What do you think?