‘Casual Racism’ in Dating: So Now Sex is Political Too?

The latest up and coming psychological disorder? It’s called “shame attraction.”

The idea is that if you aren’t attracted to a given person for whatever reason, you should be shamed for it. Everyone is supposed to be attracted to everyone else, and failure to be attracted to someone is an example of some kind of evil. [source: Tom Knighton]

Some refer to it as “casual racism.” It means if you’re white and you prefer a white person as a sexual/romantic partner, you’re a racist. Apparently, some social justice warriors, according to these articles, are starting to complain about the inherent racism in people’s sexual preferences.

It seems laughable and absurd. Yet the error implied in the absurdity is now a widespread one in our culture, particularly our government, schools and academic culture. The error is that everything is political. This includes sex.

The premise is wrong, but the logic is correct. If you accept the premise that it’s automatically and always wrong to be “discriminatory,” then it logically follows you should not discriminate in the area of love any more than anywhere else. If you reject the faulty premise, then you’re free to act on your own judgment, trying to make your sexual-romantic life as rational, fun and life-affirming as you can.

It’s all rooted in the ideology of self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice is everywhere. The politics of self-sacrifice depends on a population of people who feel guilty. Guilt-ridden people are far easier to rule. We’ve already got most people feeling guilty about making money, succeeding, or earning any kind of accomplishment. It’s now fashionable for white people to apologize to nonwhite people for being white, and for heterosexual white males to feel the most ashamed of all. We’ve reached a point where most of us are taught to think our virtue resides in our racial or genetic make-up, rather than in our self-made character and accomplishments.

The next — and final — logical stopping point? Sex and romance. If it’s politically correct only to have certain thoughts, say certain things, or choose careers that support the reigning political orthodoxy — leftism, socialism, environmentalism — then it logically follows that it’s politically correct to only love someone for the sake of the community. If the purpose of life is sacrifice, and if individualism is racist and therefore evil, then why have individualism in your personal life, either? Hollywood celebrities and others constantly lecture us on the virtue of self-sacrifice, perhaps hoping to quiet the roar of their own inner feelings of guilt and self-loathing. I wonder how many of them are prepared to choose romantic or sexual partners based on the color-coded and socially based standards of political correctness?

Sex and romance are the most self-interested emotions and motivations we have. They are inherently selfish values, in the best sense of the term “selfish”, meaning: self-worth, self-esteem, self-responsibility and self-actualization. When you love someone, it’s the manifestation of your deepest and most personal desires, physical and emotional. (If not, your relationship is surely a flop.) These personal desires are not subject to political correctness. For better or worse, those desires are your own. Politics should have nothing whatsoever to do with them, in fact. And yet, some are claiming, they do. Sure, they’re on the marginal side of the spectrum. But they’re actually the more consistent ones, if you buy into everything else they’re ramming down our throats.