Racist gender myths drove many interracial relationship preferences in both directions.

Evidence

Jack Johnson’s earlier “heartaches” with two Black women had caused him to date primarily White women. Johnson loathed that “no matter how colored women feel toward a man, they don’t spoil him and pamper him and build up his ego.” White women did, and thus they were superior partners, in Johnson’s version of gender racism. In actuality, some White women refused to build up their man’s ego, while some Black women catered to their man’s ego. But by 1909, the gender racism of the submissive White woman and the hard Black woman was attracting patriarchal Black men to White women—just as the gender racism of the weak Black man being unable to handle the hard Black woman had attracted some Black women to the strong White man; and just as the gender racism of hypersexual Black people, embodied in the large penis or buttocks, attracted some White people to Black people; and just as the assimilationist belief that the Whiter and straighter the skin and hair, the more beautiful a person was, attracted Black people to (light and) White people. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 784

Categorization

• XREF: Extends Kendi’s core inversion: racist ideas (gender racism, colorism) operate here as preferences that led people to act — but note these ideas are presented as shaping attraction, a case where ideas seem to precede the (personal) policy of marrying interracially. Useful for the reader’s stated test of whether ideas ever precede policy.
• DEFINE: Shows the assimilationist position operating in the intimate sphere: the belief that Whiter skin and straighter hair are more beautiful is a textbook assimilationist idea.
• QUESTION: Kendi frames interracial attractions as being ‘based in racist ideas’ in some cases but not others — how would one ever determine which? Worth chasing.