The Old School Lunch

Today I got a chance to speak with Dan Savage. Dan kindly gave me a chance to potentially (I say “potentially” because at the time of this writing it is unknown whether i’ll appear on the final cut of his podcast) talk about something that came up on one of his podcasts. Namely, it was in one episode that he and a “Science expert” started to talk about pheromones which somehow led to how “Euroasian guys are so fucking hot” and how “race mixing” and such is so great for the world (”because mutts are healthier than regular dogs we know that…”). Dan used all of this as backup to defend those people who say that they naturally like Black guys or Asian women. That these people shouldn’t get shit for their what is in actuality a racial fetish (assuming they aren’t of that race) but instead they should be somewhat applauded as they’re going to, you know, date their racial “polar opposite” and push the world into the (hold hands) brown and beige future. I had a few issues with this. Namely:

-Racially fetishizing mixed folks (mixed people are beautiful!). Because they certainly don’t get that enough already.
-The tired idea that mixed folks are biologically superior and are going to save the world and by suggestion get rid of racism.
-People aren’t fucked up about race.

One of my favorite all time things about Dan is that during an old column of his awhile ago, he said (in response to the popularity of Black-On-White porn, “people are all fucked up about race.” I agree with this. I don’t think there’s a person in the world who isn’t fucked in the head about racial stereotypes to some degree. To argue that folks are somehow naturally…biologically predetermined to marry someone of a different race is absolutely ridiculous. That’s what’s fucked up.

So to varying degrees of success, I tried to convey this to Dan in my “interview” with him when he called today. I think it was a bad sign when he opened with “So what did I do wrong” or something like “What did I say that was so bad.” OK.

I made the mistake of getting into mixed race health issues like blood diseases. I tried to use that to point out that stereotypes of mixed folks as inherently healthy are bad but he hit me with “what does that have to do with dating?”

Dan was cordial throughout the entire conversation (and by cordial I mean basically letting me know that I was being too sensitive) but it was obvious that neither of us were comfortable and he wanted to end it. He smacked me at the end with something to the effect of, “well I guess folks are more sensitive to race issues than originally thought.”