Dare To Ask Talk And News About Our Differences
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I’m a white man who has dated black women fairly often. I have not noticed anyone walking up to me and making any rude comments about such relationships, and usually strangers who strike up a conversation when I’m with a date of another race are polite. As for negative reactions, I have had one white male friend in his 50s comment in a discussion on dating (I was not involved in a relationship at that time) that he did not think interracial dating was as likely to work out in the long term. He had apparently tried dating non-white women himself and concluded their backgrounds were too different. I think the differences in background are probably larger for his generation than mine. This one seems to be more a pragmatic objection than a racist one. And there was one time I kissed a black woman in public and had a child yell, ‘Ewww, gross!’ But I figure a kid at that age would probably have similar objections to any public display of affection.
Do some people give less overt displays of disapproval? Probably there may be a few who gawk, but I haven’t noticed. I’m usually paying more attention to my date than others’ reactions. This is Atlanta, though, and interracial dating is common enough here that not many people are outright shocked to see a white man with a black woman.
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Name : Matt, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Christian, Age : 25, City : Oxford, State : GA, Country : United States, Occupation : Engineer, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,Since the Jews do not often intermarry with non-Jewish people, they are to some extent an ethnic group as well as a religion. I’ve met Jewish men with both straight hair and curly hair, but curly hair is a bit more common among Jews than other Caucasian groups. It’s my understanding that their hair simply grows that way, and it’s not that they make any particular effort to curl it. Curly hair is common in other Semites such as Arabs.
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Name : Matt, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Christian, Age : 25, City : Oxford, State : GA, Country : United States, Occupation : Engineer, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,Some men may be so egotistical they think every straight woman wants to go to bed with them. I suspect most of them somehow expect that you will have sex with them to prove you’re not a lesbian. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that they’re ‘not smart enough to get the nookie.’ Trying to use insults as a seduction technique kind of proves that.
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Name : Matt, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Christian, Age : 25, City : Oxford, State : GA, Country : United States, Occupation : Engineer, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,I grew up in the Atlanta area, then went to Cleveland to attend college. My overall impression is that the Midwest is quite similar to the South in its character – the biggest differences being that Cleveland has more Italians, Polish, and snow. There’s also a lot of playing a card game I’d never heard of called Eucher, and of course the accents are different, but there seems to be more similarities than differences. The people in the Midwest seem quite friendly and cheerful, and for the most part practical. The phrase ‘culturally backward’ doesn’t come to mind, but then again, I did spend most of my time there in college. If it weren’t for the cold winters and late springs, I could easily have wound up settling there permanently.
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Name : Matt, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Christian, Age : 25, City : Oxford, State : GA, Country : United States, Occupation : Engineer, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,Something that’s noisy will often sound more powerful, and sometimes actually be more powerful. And if guys own anything mechanized – power tools, cars, motorcycles, you name it – they usually believe that the more power, the better.
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Name : Matt, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Christian, Age : 25, City : Oxford, State : GA, Country : United States, Occupation : Engineer, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,Many male teenagers seem to regard not having gotten laid as some sort of failure. There’s a widespread ‘Everyone’s doing it’ perception – no doubt fueled by a fair number of those who aren’t pretending they are – which makes guys think that it’s expected that they have had sex. And I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s also partly to assert that they are not gay, given that in many high schools accusing a boy of homosexuality is a common taunt.
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Name : Matt, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Christian, Age : 25, City : Oxford, State : GA, Country : United States, Occupation : Engineer, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,While there are some people who do decide, ‘I think I’m going to go join an extremist religious sect because I need some fanaticism in my life,’ fringe groups usually go looking for members instead of the other way around. These groups heavily push their own members to recruit new members, and in some cases conceal just how extreme they are until the recruit has bought into their belief system. As for why they stay, it can either be the sense of belonging and meaning, not to mention support, they get from these groups, or fear of the consequences of leaving.
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Name : Matt, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Christian, Age : 25, City : Oxford, State : GA, Country : United States, Occupation : Engineer, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,No sex, including ‘foreplay.’ I am a ‘sort-of Fundementalist’ Christian who believes the right thing to do is to save sex until marriage. So while I sometimes feel like I’m missing out, and sometimes wish I had somewhat different religious beliefs (hey, I might as well be honest here…), on the whole I believe it will be worthwhile in the long run. It may not be the easiest choice but I intend to stick with it.
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Name : Matt, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Christian, Age : 25, City : Oxford, State : GA, Country : United States, Occupation : Engineer, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,Different people look to different sources to define right and wrong. Is it wrong because some holy book forbids it? I can’t think of any that forbid dating or marriage across racial lines off the top of my head, although quite a few warn against becoming married to someone of another religion. Is it wrong because it will cause others to suffer? Kind of a stretch in my opinion; the closest you could get there is an arguement about society not being accepting of mixed-race children, in which case the wrongness could just as easily be blamed on the racism of others. I personally have dated both black women and white women, and my personal experience is that common values and beliefs are far more important considerations to making a relationship work than race is.
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Name : Matt, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Christian, Age : 25, City : Oxford, State : GA, Country : United States, Occupation : Engineer, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,Most articles, if they use the term ‘white’ to refer to an ethnic group, do not capitalize it either. I think they’re simply following common rules of grammar. ‘Caucasian’ and ‘Asian’ tend to be capitalized because the Caucascus Mountains and Asia are proper nouns. Latin, being a proper noun, is also supposed to be capitalized, so its derivative Lation is, too. Even ‘the Middle East’ is usually capitalized when refering to a specific location. And ‘African American’ is supposed to be capitalized, too. However, black and white – and red, brown, or yellow, although those have fallen out of favor for ethnic references – are simply colors, and so they are not capitalized.
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Name : Matt, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Christian, Age : 25, City : Oxford, State : GA, Country : United States, Occupation : Engineer, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,As a ‘sort-of-fundamentalist’ Christian, I believe monogamy is mandated by my religion. While it certainly is nice if I can find out why certain requirements exist, I believe in sticking with rules like that, even if I don’t fully understand the reason. Sure, ‘human nature’ definitely does give me urges to behave otherwise, but I’m not one to equivocate ‘it’s natural’ with ‘it’s right.’ Sometimes religion is about overcoming nature rather than following it.
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Name : Matt, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Christian, Age : 25, City : Oxford, State : GA, Country : United States, Occupation : Engineer, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,The names you listed are all of Arabic origin. If I met a white person with one of the names you mentioned, I would assume he either was from a Muslim family or at least partly Arab.
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Name : Matt, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Christian, Age : 25, City : Oxford, State : GA, Country : United States, Occupation : Engineer, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,I think this comes from the differing origins of different ethnic terms. Specific place names are proper nouns, and usually capitalized, such as the Caucasus Mountians, Africa, or the Middle East. Same goes for languages such as Latin. So, the ethnic terms we derive from those words – Caucasian, African-American, Middle Eastern, and Latino / Latina – are capitalized too. On the other hand, black and white – and red or yellow, although those have fallen out of favor – are simply colors. Colors on their own are not capitalized, so they are not used for ethnic terms either.
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Name : Matt, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Christian, Age : 25, City : Oxford, State : GA, Country : United States, Occupation : Engineer, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,I am 24, but have managed to maintain a credit rating good enough that I was able to buy a house within a year of getting my first job. Ok, so some of the cash for the down payment was a gift from my parents, but my credit rating was good enough that I didn’t get gouged on the interest rate. My parents managed to teach me good money management principles – pay off your credit cards as soon as the bill comes in, and if you can’t afford to pay cash for something besides a house, you can’t afford it. I’ve mostly stuck to those rules, except for financing a truck when I had landed my first job out of college and the K-car that had got me through college was about to fall apart. However, we either learn through instruction or experience, and people my age are usually lacking the latter. If their parents didn’t teach good money management principles, they may take some time to learn them. If they ever do.
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Name : Matt, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Christian, Age : 25, City : Oxford, State : GA, Country : United States, Occupation : Engineer, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,One important thing to remember is that measurements do not come with pre-attached explanations. There are often quite a few theories it is possible to devise to explain a particular measurement. In the case of the measured difference in IQ between black and white people in America (BTW, the average difference is 15 points, not 25, or at least was in 1994), there is no shortage of ways people can fit this measurement into their own theories about races. Someone who believes in racial superiority can easily claim this is because of genetics. People more concerned about social inequality can take these results and argue that the difference is due to unequal schools, poverty, or any number of other purely social factors. Others can argue that IQ tests are culturally biased towards white people. And if you just had those measurements to go on, they can fit easily into any of those theories. I tend to favor the ‘blame social inequality’ theory, as I’ve done some tutoring at mostly black inner city public schools before. The school where I tutored really didn’t seem like a good place to develop intelligence to its full potential. The bottom line is, measurements can be interpreted in many ways. About the only way I could see of settling the genes vs environment controversy conclusively would be to have a group adopt a large number of children from a wide variety of races at birth, and raise them all in a carefully controlled environment where the idea of people being divided into distinct races is kept out. That would be pretty difficult to pull off, to say the least.
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Name : Matt, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Christian, Age : 25, City : Oxford, State : GA, Country : United States, Occupation : Engineer, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,
