Issa Rae's Book Said Black Women Should Marry Asian Men, and People Are Angry About It Now
Actress Issa Rae drew backlash Monday for three-year-old comments she made about why educated black women should exclusively date and marry Asian men.
Rae, 33, expressed the sentiment in an excerpt from her 2015 memoir The Misadventures of Awkward Black. "This is why I propose that black women and Asian men join forces in love, marriage and procreation," Rae wrote. "Educated black women what better intellectual match for you than an Asian man? And I'm not talking about Filipino's, they're like the Blacks of Asians. I'm talking Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, et cetera."
Added Rae, "So black women, after college, maybe it's a good idea to settle in Los Angeles or anywhere else where Koreatown is a hotspot."
Rae questioned why women wouldn't want to "marry and reproduce with men who are classified as intelligent and hard workers." She suggested Asian men were "frequently emasculated in the media."
Social media users became outraged for the first time Monday. The criticism resulted in some people calling for a boycott against the Golden Globe nominee via Twitter, while others stood by the actress.
Rae has discussed black women in the dating world before, and was asked about that particular excerpt by The Nightly Show's Larry Wilmore in 2015. She shared her own dating experiences as a black woman who graduated from Stanford University with a degree in African and African-American studies. Rae debated whether to attend business school or law school before rising to prominence on HBO's Insecure.
"I say that black women and Asian men are at the bottom of the dating totem pole," Rae told Wilmore at the time. "It's true—ask around. Go to Match.com, go to anywhere, and you'll see the 'least chosen' is Raquonda and Lee."
Rae continued, "This is speaking from my own college experience: My girlfriends and I would find that the pool of guys was so limited. They knew that they were a catch. They knew that they were educated. They weren't in jail, [and] they didn't have kids. So they were like: 'We have options'...That made it unappealing. It felt isolated."
-
-