"How" presumes that it would.

Well I married inter-racially and procreated, but before that I have had crushes on, fooled around with and broken the hearts of boys of many colours and cultures.

Everyone gets treated the same. I don't make concessions for cultural stuff - I prefer a system of mutual respect.

Of course this has estranged me from my Japanese in-laws who were fine with my independence - right up until I left with EM internationally. Retrospectively now of course they are thankful he wasn't here for the quakes, but I refused to sacrifice everything in the Japanese wife way to avoid rocking the boat.

I don't think it would. Everyone is different, and everyone has specific qualities that make them different. I am aware of my husband's evangelical Xian upbringing, and consequent hatred of organized religion, and that means I don't spend a lot of time burdening him with my (Jewish) religious beliefs. I have friends whose race is really important to them and we talk about racism, for example, more than I do with friends to whom it is a non-issue. For example, I also have friends whose race/religion etc. isn't the big thing -- their profession is.

I guess I tailor my behavior, in the sense of the topics we discuss and don't, and also in terms of my own sensitivity to experiences and backgrounds different from my own, to what matters to the people to whom I am close.

The only real difference I can think of in my dating career* is that I can flirt/talk dirty in Spanish, so if I'm interested in a bilingual woman, that can (and has) come into play.

Other than that, not at all.

*don't look at my career stats, please. I'm so far from HOF material.

It's never been an issue. If I like a person I like that person.

I know that The Book of Questions is dated, but this one really hits it for me.

I come from an interracial marriage. Most of my immediate family was interracial. I am in an interracial relationship now (very easy when you are interracial yourself).

The more interesting question for me would be how I would react if I was attracted to somebody of the exact same racial mix as I am, because that would actually be pretty weird when I think about it.

I asked an African-American woman out once. I was attracted (she was a co-worker) and really had no clue, and no chance. I asked her out to a Quincy Jones concert in that I thought that it was culturally hip to do so.

She declined, and was really out of my league.

So, yes. . .in that I wracked my brain to figure out what she might like to go to. I figured the Eagles* were out.

*yes I was into the eagles until they started playing stadiums and arenas. in clubs they were pretty cool to watch. hate 'em, now.

I don't know. I really don't. I hope that my behavior would be the same as when I'm attracted to same race.

When the mister and I first started being serious about each other, I thought he was black.

We met in a chat room that used an avatar program (ComicChat, it looked like newspaper comics) to chat rather than just plain text. The mister's avatar was of a black man, but he didn't know it. He was using an old black & white version of the character while I saw the colour version. It wasn't until he sent me a couple photos that I knew he was white.

My behaviour toward him didn't change. We were both deeply in like before we knew what the other looked like.

My behavior changes from one person to the next when I date people of my own race.

An interesting question...

My generation had some pretty firm lines drawn in the sand... I had little contact with anyone of another race until I was in High School, and inter-racial dating just didn't happen, at all, for anyone...

I would like to think that race would not have been an issue for me...

I am somewhat jealous of those of you for whom this was an option....

The world is a better place now...

Uh done. Thrice. Not much difference. If anything it was class. I'm poor catholic scots trash, pretty much everyone was above that.

My only anecdotal evidence is that Older Latin Professional Men and Younger Black Women seemed to pop up more in the "hey, you" index.

But I was also inexplicably attractive to all those Italian men so , yeah.

The only constant seems to be 2nd Generation Cubans of either gender keep finding me. I do not know why. I blame migration patterns to New Jersey.

I'm with jabberjaw!

Well I married inter-racially and procreated, but before that I have had crushes on, fooled around with and broken the hearts of boys of many colours and cultures.

FWIW, still breaking hearts. ;)

Oh you.

My wife is Puerto Rican, and she spent the first 30 or so years of her life in Puerto Rico. I'm about as white as you can get being 100% Dutch. I can honestly say that I've never thought of her in racial terms. When we were dating I wanted to learn more about her cultural background, but then she wanted to know about mine as well.

I think if you asked me this 20 or 25 years ago, I think I might have acted different, but now that I'm old and cranky, I just figure I'm me, and this his how I am.

I would like to say that it wouldn't change, and I hope that's true, but I can't be certain. I know now that I grew up blinkered by white privilege and that meant I was instilled with some subtle, silent stereotypical thinking that poisoned my worldview ever so slightly.

Every so often, I catch my hindbrain stereotyping someone based on race (or gender) in a seemingly innocuous, perfectly automatic way that almost makes it past the conscious, reflective part of my mind. It's certainly not a conscious choice that I've never dated outside my race, and it's largely attributable to the extremely low populations of other races and ethnicities in the New England towns where I did most of my dating... but I wonder if there was some unconscious racism at play, too, at least in my younger years.

I hope I've rooted out most of that unconscious, undesired privilege poisoning and that, if I were dating again, I wouldn't treat an other-ethnicity partner any differently than I would a same-ethnicity partner. But I can't be sure, and that's really sad.

I think it would be kind of weird for me to date someone who was Korean because I'm really not very Korean in a lot of ways. I'm not particularly fond of the food and not around it culturally at all. I think it has a lot more to do with culture than race because the second to last last date I was on was with a black guy who was about as middle class as you get. I'm fairly surrounded by red necks, who I can hang with if need be, but we're not dateably compatible for the most part. It's hard enough finding someone to be attracted to in the first place without limiting yourself.
Mostly I'm dealing with white guys who are struggling with the race thing and doing pretty poorly at it. The phrase "Hot Asian women" does nothing to help them and the stumbling questions trying to figure out how to ask what I am have reached a blockage with me where my quota for that question when it finally gets articulated has long been filled and if I'm just not in the mood, they aren't getting an answer. I have to be in a pretty expansive mood these days to deal with the "what are you" question and I am far from that mood these days.

I really don't know. People are people to me. However, if there were cultural differences, I'd be interested to learn new things. My XMr. V was Jewish; I found his religion (I was raised Catholic) to be very interesting. Truth is, I was more interested in Jewish customs than he was.

I really do pick these questions at random, but I love that this question came up the same week that this story appeared in the news. To those of you who think that this question is quaint I just want to say, as I have long said to my progressive friends, dismissing racism because "Oh, that's just the south" is one reason insane people are currently running our country.

Yeah, I've known enough racists who apparently didn't know they were racists, whose racism was subtle enough that it never dinged their radar until someone called them on it (and sometimes not even then), to be wary of my desire to say I don't think racist (or sexist or hetero-normative) thoughts.

I do sometimes, and it's unjust and irrational, and I'm grateful to be conscious of them so that they are just thoughts: just unwelcome prejudiced ideas that flicker through my head and never squeeze their way out into performative action or statement.

(And when I say "never," of course I mean "ideally never.")

I'd hope that this would make no difference, but I think it's one of those things that you need to experience to really know how you'd actually behave. I certainly don't have any issues relating to people of different ethnic brackgrounds and I've seen plenty of women that I thik are attractive but, not being on the market, I'm not really sure how I would actually react, to be honest.