Increased interracial dating serves, for some, as strong, heartwarming evidence for the existence of a post-racial world. With a significant jump in the percentage of newlywed couples in interracial marriages--from 3.2% in 1980 to about 15% in 2010--it's hard to believe that race-based restrictions on marriage were only completely invalidated in 1967.



Others, however, are quick to point out the race and gender imbalances behind interracial dating. My Chinese-American ex-boyfriend once pointed out an Asian woman and a white man locking hands as they left a store together in Times Square. "I'd like that more," he whispered to me as he shook his head, barely hiding his disdain for the young couple, "but you never see it the other way around. No Asian man is considered attractive enough to be in that kind of relationship."



While I certainly don't think interracial couples deserve to be looked down upon with disdain or bad mojo from curious onlookers, my former lover may have been on to something. According to a Pew report on intermarriage in the United States, "gender patterns in intermarriage vary widely"; in 2010, 36% of Asian female newlyweds married outside of their race, compared to just 17% of Asian males. Additionally, 24% of black male newlyweds married outside of their race, compared to a paltry 9% of black females. If interracial love is really an indicator of a post-racial atmosphere, why do such stark gender patterns emerge within interracial marriage? What can we infer about the value placed on Asian men and black women in this country?



While Asian women in this country have been hypersexualized, exoticized, and painted as docile, submissive creatures, Asian men are consistently portrayed by the media as accented, effeminate boys whose value lies in calculators and your occasional, well-choreographed kung-fu scene. Along the same vein, black women are portrayed as aggressive, loud, and masculine. Could these deep-rooted racial stereotypes, coupled with traditional, heteronormative gender expectations of relationships, be partly responsible for the gender imbalances in interracial relationships? Do these depictions quietly affect who we choose to view as sexually appealing?



Cheerios recently released a commercial starring a black father, white mother, and their young bi-racial daughter as members of your average, honey-roasted-carbs-loving family. I applaud the company for defending their bold depiction of a biracial family after bigoted viewers decided to air their opinions en masse via YouTube and Reddit, but I will also posit that Cheerios' depiction wasn't interracial enough. Until depictions of Asian men and black women in interracial relationships become more commonplace in our media, I refuse to believe that interracial love can be a sign of post-racial bliss.



