This is a great point. There were a couple of other things I can’t remember if are backed by research–the IR rates among groups for instance–but I’m absolutely sure you are right on this.

There is just too big of a group of people who IR date because it makes them feel good about themselves, and then chuck it when it comes time to make a life-long commitment.

In fact, this is one of the reasons why people tend to react so irrationally to constructive, thoughtful approaches to the IR issue such as your own. Building a good IR relationship is hard. And it’s even harder if you are an unintentionally fetish based relationship. If it’s intentionally, both parties probably don’t care. But I would say most are trying their based at making their racist relationship into a good, lifelong one, and we can certainly see how that would be frustrating.

What do most people do when they have a major, nearly unsolvable obstacle at the center of their life? They project, they lash out, they blame others.

I think that’s what’s occurring most cases. I’m not justifying it–if you are irrationally lashing out and attacking people who are working constructively on the issue, that’s unacceptable.

But if we want to actually impact change, I think we need to understand and be able to attack this dynamic.

I would ask you to add one more group to your taxonomy:
It is vital to have a fifth strategy–to destroy the institutions that create the disparity. The disparity is a symptom, not a problem unto itself.

If tomorrow, the disparity was completely obliterated by a mass marriage ceremony, it wouldn’t fix all of the problems.

That is where we need to break into media, reclaim our literature, and change the sexist/racist imagery. Shawn Wong’s book did more than any desired couplings ever could.

Throughout history, successful civilized societies evolved a set of rules and customs to control the lesser instincts of men as well as women. Required commitment to lifelong marriage and unwillingness to have premarital sex were two of the primary rules that women enforced on men. Those rules encouraged men to invest in their families and children, since they couldn’t easily run off and have more children. In recent years, the rules for both men and women have been greatly loosened. Men and women are now free to make choices based on instinctual, irrational, evolutionarily obsolete emotions and “chemistry.” I believe this leads to a situation where “bad boys” will have increasing success over “good guys” in the dating arena. I also believe that in the long-run, I believe this is bad for women, men, children and society as a whole.

1) As I mentioned in the “bright side of AF/WM” thread, there’s evidence to show that there’s a spectrum of men, with the “conscientious”, “provider,” “intelligent” men on the low-testosterone side and the “bad boy,” “player,” aggressive men on the high-testosterone side. (Some citations about this spectrum are in that thread.)

Asian men tend to fall on the low-testosterone “provider” side of the male spectrum. In the past, this was a good thing. Over the last several decades, however, feminism, the pill and economic independence have given women (of all races) the freedom to choose men from the high-testosterone “player” side of the male spectrum. This is one factor reducing Asian male attractiveness.

2) At the same time, as feminism has increased, white women have become less attractive as wife candidates to white men. Asian women tend to still have stronger families and values and are thus are seen as better, more faithful wife candidates. This means that a large number of white men (larger than the number of Asian men) are now competing for a relatively small number of Asian women. Even if the average white man is not more attractive, because of sheer numbers, there will be enough attractive white men to make the competition much more difficult for Asian men.

3) As Dialectic stated, there is some aspect of colonialism. Women are naturally attracted to power and as long as white men are in power, that will generally benefit white men. However, I think this impact is much less than the first two influences.

As far as I’m concerned, the problem isn’t with Asian men. In fact, by most statistics Asian men are generally overrepresented in their contributions to society. Statistically, they also have more stable families. Objectively, these traits should be more highly valued by women and society than they are.

The problem is with modern American women of all races who put a higher value on emotional attraction (which is irrational and relatively short-lived) than they put on a man’s ability to provide for a strong family and contribute to society in the long-term. The increase in divorce, single motherhood and other evidence of family decline over the last 30-40 years indicate to me that women in general are choosing the wrong men more often. I see feminism, the pill, the sexual revolution and the resulting social forces causing the vast majority of problems that Asian men face in the dating and marriage arena.

Great “summation / synthesis” piece, D.

Finally, it would be more accurate to say that, while the root cause of the disparity is colonialism/ white patriarchy, that created enough of a disruption inside and outside the community that now it is being caused by both others and ourselves.

It’s like getting a rich kid to value money as much as the poor kids. The other day my less well off friend was telling me I should not take the toll roads because there are ways to get where I want to go for free. But I being better off financially would never think twice about the tolls I am paying. I can not see what the big deal is. And with that I can not truly see this situation as my less well off friend sees it. Going with the same line of thought an AM and AF will always have a hard time seeing things eye to eye.

I think that this is all fine. But the most important thing is to realize that asians are not the one to create this disparity, it was generated by others. And the root of this different treatment is of course, racism.