From the get-go I want you to know that I acknowledge that this is an unpopular opinion, but it is a strong one of mine that I would like to voice. Please don't get offended if my opinions differ from yours, that's life, deal with it!

I'm sure you've noticed, either within yourself, someone close to you, or someone not so close to you but who you pay attention to their love life anyway for whatever reason, that they tend to date certain types of people. And no, I'm not talking about the idea of having a "type," which I tend to disagree with fundamentally because if you lined up all my exes I don't think they would look similar enough to support the idea. I'm actually talking about race here.

For example, I tend to date white people, but I have dated people of other races, and I will probably continue to as well. I just tend to be more attracted to people who fit my racial category than anyone else, and that's okay. I'm not averse to dating people of other races, I just haven't found myself attracted to people who fit those racial categories. In these cases, I'm not dating that specific person because I am not attracted to that specific person, not because I'm not attracted to people of their race.

Where this kind of situation becomes not okay and does turn into racism is when someone is attracted to someone of a certain race but specifically won't date them because of it. I knew a couple of people like this in high school and in college and whether they realized it or not, they were being blatantly racist for no apparent reason. Hence, I have inserted the keyword "necessarily" into the title of this article. Does it make sense now?

How about on the flip-side. If someone tends to only date one race or is mostly attracted to people of a single race, it doesn't mean they're racist in that respect either. They may be in the same boat as the first side. Anyway, in some situations, people do fetishize a certain race or fetishize being with someone of that race, especially if it differs from their own. Seeing as there seems to be a fetish for everything nowadays, we shouldn't be surprised necessarily, but that also doesn't excuse it from being racist.

Another important factor in these ideas is who you are exposed to most. If you are a white person in a majorly white neighborhood or state or whatever size area and you stay in that general area for most of your life, you're more likely to end up being attracted to, dating, and probably marrying someone of your same race just because those are the people you interact with. No racism needs to exist for the outcome to be the same.

We need to learn to separate a person from his or her race. Race does not define a person unless they want it to. But a person's race isn't the only thing someone else will be attracted to. Get it out of your heads that it is.