Transcript

AZITA CHELLAPPOO:

Investigating philosophy. Aren’t preferences outside of our control?

Someone might feel that despite any kinds of advantages in looking at the effects, somebody might feel a little uncomfortable with someone being called racist when they don’t have any racist intentions themselves or sort of stereotypical beliefs or racist feelings. And they might be uncomfortable with this idea that sexual and romantic preferences can be morally objectionable in this way maybe because they’re outside of an individual’s control and maybe because they’re not associated with any particular sort of stereotypes or racist beliefs. How would you respond to this?

ROBIN ZHENG:

Yeah, so the first thing I would say is that I am also uncomfortable with the idea of calling somebody racist if they have a racial fetish and that really what I want to do is take that whole side of the question out of the picture. So I’m just not interested in evaluating, Are you a racist person or not? Are you a good person or not? That’s not what matters here. What matters is the effects of the kind of person that you are on others.

And so what I would say there is that, yes, you can’t control certain basic feelings or desires that you have. But you can definitely control how you respond to those feelings and desires. So there’s a big difference between somebody who has a racial fetish and they sort of embrace it, and they say, yeah, I have yellow fever, and I’m proud of it.

And there are some people who are like that, as opposed to someone who notices that they have this kind of preference, and then they ask themselves, Why do I have this preference? Is it a good thing? Is it something that I want to pursue? Am I OK with only dating people from a certain race, or should I think about what I really want in a relationship, and does race really make a difference to that?

And if not, maybe should I just try dating people who aren’t my initial top choice just to see what might happen and see if a relationship develops anyway? Those are two very different kinds of responses to one’s sexual preferences. And I do think that those responses are under our control.

Also, I think that, again, moving away from just what individuals do, we should be thinking a lot more about these big structural issues. So the fact that residential neighbourhoods are segregated by race and that there are big racial gaps in terms of who gets certain jobs or gets to go to a certain college, all of that kind of big-picture structural racial stratification is also making it difficult for people to break out of certain racial preferences that they have. And so any efforts that we can direct towards changing that environment is also something that’s under our control and that we can be held responsible for.

AZITA CHELLAPPOO:

Thank you so much, Robin, for joining us. That was a really, really interesting discussion.

ROBIN ZHENG:

Thanks, Azita, for having me. I really enjoyed it.