A sexy lady is a sexy lady

Dear Anna,

Is it wrong to have a preference for the ethnicity of people you're attracted to? I'm an African-American male but have loved Hispanic women since I started dating, and not in a fetishy way. I just find myself being pickier with non-Hispanic women than all others. I wonder if I'm cheating myself, or should I just go for what I'm attracted to? -Like It When She Calls Me Papi

Dear Papi,

As the famous filmmaker Woody Allen once said: "The heart wants what it wants." Of course, he said that partly as a justification for screwing his adopted daughter, so his adage should probably be taken with several grains of salt.

When it comes to having sexual preferences based on race or ethnicity, there are often lots of loaded assumptions and stereotypes at play, e.g. "the fiery Latina," the "submissive, demure Asian," the "virile black stud," the "white guy with gold teeth I'm dating to piss off my parents," etc. Even if one's racial preferences are seemingly positive, as yours seem to be, I do think we run into trouble when we reduce an entire race or ethnicity to, say, a wank bank object. Not that I think you're doing that-you're not just after sex-but it's still something to keep in mind.

And while I personally would love it if everyone's penis functioned as a miniature United Nations, I don't expect people to screw outside the Census box just because they feel like their vagina needs more diversity. In other words, we would all probably benefit from dating outside our usual comfort zones-it's not going to bring peace to the Middle East or anything, but it might help us better relate to people as individuals instead of lumping whole groups of people we've never met together.

Open your mind (and your jeans) to the idea that a hot lady is a hot lady, regardless of her skin color or whether she mocks your mild Trader Joe's salsa. But at the same time, don't police or censor your sexual desires because they may not be "politically correct." Plenty of good sex is not PC, Papi, but the key is to cultivate an awareness of where those proclivities may be coming from, and what they might mean in terms of how you treat your partners.

Again, it's totally fine to have preferences-I like girls who wear bowties and boys who are short and paunchy-and it's fine to pursue people who align with your desires, but don't close yourself off to dating potentially awesome ladies just because they aren't in a mariachi band or still regularly crying over Selena. (My Latin stereotypes haven't been updated since the '90s.)