Taking the Easy Way Out: blame it on the Asian factor

by Julia Oh
Posted 3/22/04

The following article originally appeared on Modelminority.com in October 2002. It has been reprinted with minor changes with the author's consent for the purpose of this article.

A few months ago, I met up with my college friend June* whom I hadn't seen in over a year. After about half an hour of catching up on our respective careers, how our parents and siblings were doing, and how our friends were doing, our conversation reached an awkward pause. That's when we knew it was time to move onto the burning question. June asked me first,

"So, are you seeing anyone?"

I gave her a bitter smile. I quickly recounted the story of how I had just broken up with a guy last month. I was introduced to him by a friend at a party. On the surface, he was everything I wanted: good-looking, intelligent, had steady job, and he knew how to enjoy life. After a couple months of treating me like I was the queen, I was hooked. It wasn't very long after that, however, that he stopped returning my phone calls, and stopped doing the nice things he used to do. When I asked him what was wrong, the answer he gave me was, "Nothing. Just been busy, that's all. I'll call you when things are less busy."

"Here's my time to back off," I told myself, "Guys hate nagging and they hate whining."

The call never came, and no less than a week later, I discovered that he was seeing someone else.

"So that's my story. Same old, same old," my once again single-and-disgruntled selftold June. "And you?" I asked.
"I'm seeing someone."
"That's great."
"Yeah, he's really good to me. I met him at work."
"Really? I'm happy for you."

And I was. Afterall, I knew better than anyone what misfortune she'd been through in the dating game. She was the type of girl who'd bend over backwards for her man, and whether it was because of this or not, she'd been burned badly several times. The last guy I had heard about broke up with her soon after she helped him pay back his credit card loans. He swore that he hadn't used her, but the end result made little difference.

"He's white,"
she said, brining my attention back. The look of confusion on my face must have been obvious. If there was one thing clear about our preference in men throughout college, it was that our man was Asian. Afterall, they understood us better, often shared the same values and interests as us, and above everything, we were most attracted to them. In our tireless quest for "Mr. Right", we would scope out the Asian clubs and the Asian parties. It wasn't that either of us was adamantly against dating outside our race, we just felt that things would be much less complicated if we stayed within our own.

"Really? White guy, huh?" I said somewhat cynically.
"Yea, I'm sick of Asian guys not treating me right," she said.
And that was when my look of confusion changed to that of disappointment.
"I don't think it has anything to do with them being Asian," I said almost defensively. I thought about the countless times we exchanged the phrase, "Screw men, they're not worth it," but "Screw Asian men," was definitely never something that came out of either of our mouths. I knew that throughout our college days, June's relationship problems, much like mine, had to do with the type of men we dated. We both had a case of "asshole syndrome". We were drawn to the party-hard, in-your-face, bad-boy types, and as we were young and naïve, we didn't stop to think that maybe those type of guys weren't looking for a serious relationship, let alone true love. We had to learn it the hard way...or at least, I did. And so after an hour or so of further conversation, my parting words to June were, Cont..