Daniel Hong’s piece came off as inflammatory. At the same time, I agreed with many of its points.

The following is long, but try to suffer through it and honestly think about its points.

It often boils down to this:

White men enjoy a “halo effect” due to western global domination in economics, entertainment, etc., derived from the lands and resources (which their ancestors stole from indigenous peoples). Some then exploit this power in unequal relationships.

Consequently, the positions of Asian females, Asian-American females, and white men are radically different.

1) In Asia: Some women see Hollywood movies and the power of western nations. Those countries come to represent more wealth, modernity, more “space” to simply live, and a less competitive environment, etc.

Rather than being attracted to the man himself, she is attracted to what he represents. Even if in reality, he is someone who would beat his wife, a drug user, and an overall degenerate, it is difficult to separate fiction from reality.

2) For some Asian-American women: Often they are raised in white-dominated environments. That’s also all they’ve been exposed to in the media. Every main character in a book, every politician, every model in a magazine, every movie star they’ve ever seen has been a white man.

I remember reading a study of this little black girl in a psychology text. She had been raised in an all-white environment. Her teacher noticed that she would wash her hands over and over in school. The teacher asked her why she did that, and the child responded words to the effect that “lighter skin was better.”

People like this don’t outgrow their self-hate; they internalize it as they grow older. For them dating a white man is a way of fitting in, of belonging, with their larger society. Never underestimate the human desire to be “part of the group.” People are social pack animals.

3) For loser white men who obsess over Asian girls: It’s an easy way to get a woman, who in a perfectly equal world, would be far out of their league.

We’ve all met the dungeons and dragons-playing/math club member/computer geek/shy engineer/anime freaks who stalk Asian girls on the internet and on school campuses across the nation. You can even meet some at your local Asian church in the States.

They’ve accepted their loser status in their own society; they have no choice.

But instinctively, they understand they have a better chance in a less-powerful society, where not who they are, but what they represent, becomes the defining factor.

They can utilize the “halo effect,” which doesn’t work on white girls (because they’re white themselves and will see him for who he is), to get girls who fantasize about the west or about fitting in with larger American society.

For the truly f*cked up among those guys, they don’t have the ability to relate to women as real individuals, and Asian females represent a “safe object” for them to approach.

More extreme examples of relationships characterized by unequal societal power would be a 14 year-old girl willingly dating a 35 year-old man, or a girl from a poor country (like some in Southeast Asia or Eastern Europe) willingly traveling as a mail-order bride to a more developed nation.

Think about this: In most cases in Asia, the couple don’t even speak the same language well, let alone share the same culture. Yet modern psychologists believe that healthy human relationships are based on similarities, like both being Christian, or outdoorsy folk, or deadheads.

What do such pairs have in common? Typically they lack even the ability to carry on a proper conversation, let alone find out whether they agree that Beethoven is superior to Mozart.

Yes, there are exceptions to the rule and I’m not against interracial relationships per se, just against those that are based on power inequalities, fetishes, stereotypes, and self-hatred.