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(I guess this comment may be somewhat low-effort and/or more suited to the Wednesday Wellness thread, but in light of recent discussion I feel that it may still be appropriate for this thread.)
Are racial sexual preferences natural and mentally healthy, or racist, unnatural, and mentally unhealthy? Is a white man who finds himself afflicted with "jungle fever", an Indian woman who feels a desire to become "bleached", or a black man who has succumbed to "yellow fever" suffering from a delusion that has been inflicted upon him by stereotypes in the media (both pornographic and non-porn)?* Or are these preferences inherent and natural? Is a person obligated to find sexually attractive all people who share the same general category of sex/gender, weight, and figure? Or is attraction permitted to hinge on such minor attributes as skin/nipple color, hair texture, and lip size?
*For example, perhaps the aforementioned black man suffering from "yellow fever" actually just finds skinny, demure-seeming women attractive, but has been brainwashed into thinking that the women who fit that role are overwhelmingly East Asian, and there's no use looking for them elsewhere. Maybe the Indian woman thinks that only white men are capable of building attractive levels of muscle, with few exceptions. Et cetera.
I don't think anyone is obliged to find anyone else attractive but at the same time we should be willing to look critically at the preferences and beliefs we do have. When we're talking about racial preferences I think the natural investigation is to ask what that racial preference is rooted in. Is there some trait you find attractive that you think people of a certain race have that people of other races don't? My impression is these discussions tend to flatten substantial intra-racial variation in the traits in question and engage in a lot of racial essentialism.
So, let’s take black women — and my sense is that the plight of black women is the primary subtext of your comment.
I have met, interacted with, worked alongside, and befriended numerous black women over the course of my life. I think I have about as much intimate exposure to black women, black culture, etc., as any other white American who has lived in a large diverse city and attended public schools in a non-wealthy area. My perceptions of them are not informed by stereotypes and media portrayals, but by direct and repeated interpersonal contact.
I would never deny that there are attractive, feminine, intelligent, pleasant, and sexually-appealing black women. I’ve met several myself, I’ve flirted with them, I’ve even kissed a few. Like most men of any race, I prefer mixed and/or lighter-skinned black women with gracile features and smooth hair, rather than dark-skinned heavily African-looking women with heavy features and kinky/poofy hair. That’s not to say I’ve never seen or met attractive dark-skinned, non-mixed black women — I think most men would agree that, for example, Simone Biles is a very attractive woman — but they’re fewer and farther between.
That being said, it simply is verifiably true that rates of obesity are significantly higher among black women than they are among white women, and that’s to say nothing of Asian women. Average differences in temperament (whether you want to identify them as culturally-informed, or genetic, or some combination of the two) are well-documented, and so are average differences in physical build, and even more subtle things like smell. Black women smell different from white women. Their skin feels different. It’s understandable that someone whose primary romantic/sexual experience is with white women might find intimate contact with black women to be unfamiliar, slightly disconcerting, and just less familiar.
Furthermore, when it comes to the relatively small segment of black women who are genuinely hot, feminine, intelligent, and able to perform middle-class respectability, they generally seem to find themselves catapulted into high-status roles which give them the pick of the litter of nearly all high-status black men, plus some portion of high-status non-black men. Those women are highly unlikely to come into contact with lower-status white guys like me — both because they are unlikely to share the cultural hobbies which would put them into everyday casual interaction with me, and also because they’re too busy being wined and dined by wealthier men than I.
So, for the average white guy, the odds of regularly encountering the kinds of black women who may interest him are quite low, and the probability of both him and her being xenophilic enough to overcome significant cultural differences and fall for each other is even lower. It’s not primarily because they are stereotyping each other; rather, they are fairly accurately perceiving each other, and deciding that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.
Perhaps but my understanding is the Big Five does not co vary by race
I can't imagine that this is possibly the case, though I have no trouble believing that it's often insisted upon and that a lot of work has gone into plausibly maintaining the position.
E.g., SSAs are known to be more self-confident (i.e. lower neuroticism) cross-culturally, and inasmuch as 'openness' is at least partly a proxy for intelligence...
Self esteem and narcissism are also higher with them too, so much of social science is questionable so who knows
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