Even in this age of tolerance and racial integration, interracial dating remains a popular topic. New York has always prided itself on being especially tolerant, and while few openly raise an eyebrow or raise a fist at the sight of interracial couples, new questions and tensions are constantly emerging. Among the Asian communities, interracial dating is constantly argued and debated between Asian men who claim that Asian women who date only white men are sellouts, and Asian women who shout that it is a personal preference that has nothing to do with race, and that furthermore, it is of no one's business. Another hot topic seems to be the one of why there exists a large group of white men who seem to exclusively date Asian females (Professional Asian Daters they're called). The men who don't exclusively date Asians blame the ones who do of being geisha-girl hunters who desire to meet a girl who will pamper and fulfill them, as is the myth contained in the typical Asian girl stereotype. The men who do exclusively date Asian women are convinced that it has nothing to do with race, creed or color, but simply love. Tempers are constantly flaring and no one can seem to agree on a set of rules for this game of interracial dating.

Where is this trend of interracial dating coming from? I used to believe that it was simply a matter of demographics, especially at top colleges. In New York and at many of our colleges, Asians simply have a larger than national average demographic presence, and logically this would add to the activity of interracial dating. As much as this made sense, I refused to believe it and accept it as the only truth. I decided to run a little experiment to find out what, if any, were the other factors involved. I went straight for the personal ads and placed two in my local Westchester newspaper, and two in a New York City publication. In both publications I placed one ad posing as an Asian female and one posing as a white female. Besides this discrepancy, the ads were identical down to the wording. I was 31, slim and petite, college educated, and loved the typical walks on the beach, the outdoors, the arts, and fine dining. Well guess what? My two ads Asian ads attracted 211 e-mail responses whereas the other two ads attracted only 17. Explain that. According to Christine, a 38 year-old successful Asian professional, who also decided to enter the personals game, being Asian is definitely a selling point. But, while being Asian attracts many more men, she notes that in her experiences, a majority of them "were looking for their own personal Filipino sex tour or Korean massage." I myself, in my little experiment, noted that so many of the responses I got seemed to be form letters: responses they probably sent out to EVERY Asian female in the personals. Some of them were genuinely sweet, but some of them were disgusting. I got 9 responses from men describing what their "Asian fetish" fantasies were. Nasty. One of them actually elicited a nasty response from me. Even though I had lied in my ads for the sake of experimentation, I felt that I needed to respond just to tell this guy off. Women all around the world deserved it.

The fact is, even in this new century, Asian women, no matter how successful (look at all the Asian newscasters, judges, professors and businesswomen. Hell, my own mom is Managing Director of a Fortune 500 company), are still viewed as "nice girls who go out of their way to cater to men like Japanese geishas," says Joanna, 22 and Chinese. She adds, "still, I tend to date white guys but it's hard to find ones that have absolutely no prejudices and who have completely pure intentions." Susan, 36 and Korean, who has also tried out personal ads, gets insulted that "all men seem to be focused on looks, looks, looks." "They all want to know what I look like, and are not interested until I tell them. It really bothers me but how can I not mention that I'm Asian when I post a personals ad? I feel like it would be really dishonest not to mention my ethnicity. Being Asian is a selling point though and anything you can do to hype yourself up gives you an advantage in the competitive world of dating."

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There are loads of white guys driving around in penis enhancing cars but for some reason, we don't think of that as being particularly white. What we end up doing is comparing all Asian men to just the upper percentile of white men. It gives the white guys a distinct advantage

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My friend Jess, 20 and Japanese, just broke up with her white boyfriend. The boyfriend before him was white as was the boyfriend before him. Asian women like Jess are dating white men in increasing numbers, leaving many Asian men and white woman pouting on the sidelines. "In California, American-born Asians are more likely to marry outside their own group than any other race- in some Asian ethnic groups, the interracial marriage rate is as high as 80 percent. And when they do marry, their partners are most likely to be white," notes Joan Walsh in her San Francisco Examiner article on dating in the SF Bay area. Numbers obviously don't tell the whole story though because if they did, just as many Asian men would be involved with white women as Asian women with white men. According to San Francisco County marriage records, four times as many Asian women as Asian men were marrying whites.