Like Goes with Like

"And they are a perfect match for us... Okay, what I mean is one woman is white and the other just happens to be of the African-American persuasion."

— John Hamilton of 7th Heaven, who is black, to his white roommate

If there's a love triangle with a man and woman of the same minority race and another person who's white, the people of the same race will be meant to be together. Differs from a Token Minority Couple in that there the only races that matter are white and non-white but this is about the two people matching.

White women always like black men and white men want Asian women but sometimes couples are just happier with someone who's the same race, nationality, or even religion. It might be a conscious choice of the characters saying that they feel obligated to be together because they're both the same. They might feel entitled to be together but a white person tries to keep them apart but fails and so we see the strength of their relationship. To emphasize the difference between the white person trying to keep them apart and the black people, the white one is probably blonde. It might be done as a black-on-black Token Minority Couple as the Token Black Friend making a Beta Couple with another black person.

This is one trope we can partially blame The Hays Code for. Prior to the code, interracial pairs (particularly Black/White) had been done before (not perfectly, but done nonetheless), but the Hays Code forbade any form of interracial relationships until 1956.

The belief of white going with white will be found under Where da White Women At?. The belief of blacks belonging together will be found here.

Contrast Maligned Mixed Marriage.

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Examples

Comic Books

• In The Walking Dead, Michonne is only attracted to black men. She has a hard time because, while she clearly craves love and affection, there are very few to go around at any given time.

Comic Strips

• In The Phantom, the first two female members of the Jungle Patrol, one a native Bangallan and one a white settler, both fantasise about learning the true identity of the Unknown Commander and starting a relationship with him. Both imagine the Unknown Commander as sharing their skin tone. (In reality, the Unknown Commander is that Phantom himself, so he's white. And taken.)

Films — Animated

• In The Princess and the Frog, black Tiana gets together with dark-skinned Prince Naveen, even though her friend Charlotte, who is white, was interested in him.

Films — Live-Action

• Obsessed tells the story of office temp Lisa who falls in love with her boss Derek Charles (a black man) and attempts to seduce him and break up him and his wife Sharon (also black) by claiming that she had an affair with him.
• In Save the Last Dance a black female character criticizes the white girl for falling in love with a black youth with a bright future. She says she hates how white girls always take the decent black men, leaving black girls with the black men that are criminals and gang members.
• In Shanghai Noon Chon Wang ends up with Princess Pei-Pei, who are both from China, while Roy O'Bannon ends up with Falling Leaves, who are both from... America (although he's white and she's Native). Averted in Shanghai Knights, where Roy and Falling Leaves have broken up and he develops an attraction to Wang's sister Lin.
• Deconstructed in The World of Suzie Wong. The White Male Lead falls for a Hong Kong prostitute but also gets courted by a wealthy English banker's daughter. The latter is shocked when she finds out about the other pairing and believes she is the 'right' one for him. She even gets her father to blackmail him into dating her. But at the end of the day, Robert loves Suzie and no one else.
• Inverted in Sayonara (in contrast to the book, which played it straight). Lloyd Gruver is an American Ace Pilot with an all-American fiance Eileen. But he falls in love with a Japanese theatre performer called Hana-ogi and, despite several hardships, they become a couple. Eileen meanwhile has Maybe Ever After with a male Japanese performer. Marlon Brando in fact refused to do the film unless the ending was changed to have Gruver and Hana-ogi end up together. It was also the first Hollywood film to have a kiss between a white man and an Asian woman.
• Margarita with a Straw: Laila and Khanum are both disabled women from South Asia. It turns out they also have a mutual attraction (however this was a surprise for Laila), starting a relationship.
• Java Head is about a white British merchant in the 1800s showing up after a year abroad with a Chinese princess as his wife. He also has an Unlucky Childhood Friend who's white and becomes significantly less unlucky when the Chinese wife kills herself to allow the two to be together.

Literature

• Subverted in Cyrils Woodland Quest. The protagonist Cyril is a red squirrel looking for a mate. At the end of his quest to find one, he comes across three daughters - one of whom is a red squirrel like him, the second is blonde and the third is grey. The red squirrel refuses to get married, and Cyril finds the blonde unpleasant. He makes a connection with the grey and chooses her - which is a big deal, as there is Fantastic Racism between red and grey squirrels in this universe.
• Subverted in Harry Potter— friends Lee Jordan (black) and Fred and George Weasley (white) all seem infatuated with Angelina Johnson (black), but Lee is the one she never apparently dates (Word of God says she marries George).
  • Played straight with Harry and Ginny. Neither his relationship with Cho (Chinese) nor her relationship with Dean (Black) works out, and they marry each other.
• A fantasy universe example: In Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Fynn, the Prum captain of the Loki Familia, is a person who works to restore his race's pride. Because of this he naturally prefers dating another Prum instead of Tiona, an Amazon who is utterly smitten with him. He eventually decides to propose to Lilly, the only other Prum in the cast, who rejects him in favor of Bell, a human. He then tries to have a duel with Bell (who is badly outmatched) to settle it, but is forced to flee from Tiona's advances before he can do so.

Live-Action TV

• The Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Snitch" has an African man married to a couple of African women and a white one. At the end of the episode, it's just him and his black wife.
• 7th Heaven:
  • One episode has Matt's best friend and roommate, who is black, try to pair up him and Matt with a couple of women in the building and it's obvious that he'll be with the black one and Matt will be with the white one.
  • Another episode has Simon's friend Nigel say that there's a desirable girl in his class who could have picked anyone to be her boyfriend and she picked him. Come to find out that she's black like him.
• Season 8 of Degrassi has an episode where Connor, who's black, helps get KC and Clare, who are white, together. In gratitude, the writers give him a black girl as an admirer. It's like when Liberty (black) is rejected by Sean, but in the end, she finds out that his black friend likes her.
• In Heroes, Hiro Nakamura is transported to feudal Japan where he meets and falls in love with the beautiful Yaeko. He also meets his hero Takezo Kensei who is in love with Yaeko as well. Hiro's Japanese hero turns out to be a white Englishman. Yaeko falls in love with Hiro, not Kensei.
• On Glee, Asian Tina leaves white Artie for also-Asian Mike between seasons one and two. This led to some flanderization since in the first season, their race was purely incidental, but from the second season on, both characters and their relationship became a never-ending Margaret Cho punchline. Fortunately, the other interracial love triangles on the show don't make a big deal out of race, such as blonde Brittany breaking up with Artie to go back to Hispanic Santana, or black Mercedes choosing white Sam over black Shane.
• Subverted in Disney Channel show The Jersey, where Coleman (who's black) and Theo (who's white) date a white girl and a black girl, respectively.
• Normal People has Marianne picking up a new boyfriend once Connell runs into her at Trinity. They're both white Irish, and the boyfriend Gareth is Anglo-Indian. Of course they're the Official Couple and he's the Romantic False Lead. She gets another of those in Jamie, who's white, but he sticks around much longer.
• Party of Five - Charlie (white) briefly has a relationship with Grace (black) while he is separated from Kirsten (white). Guess what happens.
• In the Supernatural episode ''Crossroad Blues'' (S02, Ep08), the crossroad demon takes the form of a beautiful black woman when summoned by the famous blues musician Robert Johnson, but when the white Dean Winchester summons the crossroad demon, she takes a beautiful white woman as a vessel.
• On Seinfeld, Kramer and Mickey double-date two women, but can't decide who should date which woman. Kramer finds out that the parents of one of the women are little people, so he says Mickey (a little person) should date her because "they have more in common", while he dates the other woman. As Mickey is a Serial Spouse (and rather proud of it), he rushes into a Fourth-Date Marriage with his woman incredibly quickly. Subverted when the bride walks down the altar and whispers to Kramer that she wanted him all along, while Kramer's date is so in love with Mickey that she can't bear to watch him marry someone else and runs out of the church in tears.
• On Scream Queens (2015) Zayday (black) is courted by Earl Grey - the only black member of the Dickie Dollar Scholars. It's later revealed that Boone fancies her too, and he's white. But since Boone is one of the killers, Earl Grey is obviously presented as the 'right' one for Zayday. Doesn't stop Boone from killing him though.
• Scrubs:
  • Subverted when it comes to the JD/Molly/Kylie love triangle (JD and Molly are white, Kylie is black). JD is sort of seeing Kylie but the old flame Molly comes back into town, and he's very tempted to make a pass at her. He chooses not to and goes to Kylie. But of course when she finds out he blew her off to hang out with Molly, they split up.
  • A Season 2 episode had JD and Turk flirting with a waitress called Jenny, and wondering which of them she likes better. She's black, so she turns out to prefer Turk.
• Agent Carter's second season introduces a black love interest Jason Wilkes for Peggy. This creates a love triangle between them and the white Daniel Sousa. Peggy ultimately chooses Sousa.
• Veronica Mars:
  • Lilly (white) was in a Love Triangle with Logan (white) and Weevil (Hispanic). Although Lilly wasn't overly infatuated with Logan (she was cheating on them both with his dad), Logan was her boyfriend; Weevil was her "side fling" that she even kept secret from Veronica.
  • More blatantly, in Season 2, Wallace (black) is in a love triangle with Jackie (black) and Jane (white). He chooses Jackie over Jane.
• Friends Season 2 features a love triangle when the white Ross starts dating the Asian Julie just as Rachel realises her feelings for him. Since Rachel is white, she and Ross become the show's Official Couple.
• At the end of Russell T Davies's first run on Doctor Who, Mickey Smith, introduced as the boyfriend of the white Rose Tyler, and Martha Jones, last seen in a relationship with a white doctor, have unexpectedly got married off-screen, despite never having shared a scene before.

Music

• Del tha Funkee Homosapien's song "Dark-Skinned Girls" expresses his preference for black women lyrically and at great length.

Professional Wrestling

• Played for Laughs on the (unsanctioned) Ring of Honor A Night Of Hoopla where Machismo King Jay Lethal proposed to Miss ElizabethMaria Kanellis, who accepted once he did it "right" only to be carried off by Mike Bennett.
• Subverted with the love triangle between Alicia Fox (black), Cedric Alexander (black) and Noam Dar (white). Although Alicia was initially with Cedric, he dumped her and she moved onto the latter.
• A nonromantic example in the 2015 Divas Revolution storyline. Three stables were formed in the women's division. Team Bella's formation made sense since the Bella Twins were sisters and Alicia Fox had joined them out of pragmatism. Sasha Banks joined Naomi and Tamina Snuka to form Team BAD - rather than the other stable of Charlotte Flair, Paige and Becky Lynch in Team PCB. Notably Sasha had no kayfabe connection to Naomi or Tamina, but she was black and so was Naomi (Tamina also being Samoan and related to Naomi by marriage), while PCB were all white.

Theatre

• Played for Drama in most versions of West Side Story. Maria is Puerto Rican, and her brother expects her to start seeing their also Puerto Rican friend Chino. She falls for the white Tony, and since this is based on Romeo and Juliet, it doesn't end well.

Web Comics

• Dumbing of Age:
  • Joe tries to hook his friend Danny (white) with Sarah (black), whom he essentially picked arbitrarily from a crowd. Danny declines interest since he hadn't gotten over his recent breakup. Joe claims that Danny's just racist. Shortly thereafter, Danny meets Amber (white), and has a thought-bubble vision of Joe calling him a racist again. When Joe actually meets Amber, he's more concerned with the fact that she just happens to look uncannily similar to Danny's ex.
  • When Joyce meets Jacob (black), the first thing she says is that he should meet her roommate (Sarah, see above) and they'd be perfect together. When pressed for details, she realizes she hasn't much to say.
  • Amusingly, when Sarah meets Jacob later, she's annoyed that Joyce didn't introduce them earlier—when a guy's that hot, she apparently doesn't care if the matchmaking is because of this trope.
• On the December 5, 2014, page of Dasien, prison fugitive Gizmo Bug declares his love for Goldie, who had just stolen a jade statuette.
  Dasien: I had a feeling that you were the one behind Goldie's flight pack, you green twit!
  Gizmo Bug: Another correct deduction from the Blonde Bombshell! And I would be more upset by your insults had I not formed such an amorous alliance with a Golden Goddess!
  Goldie: *tee-hee* You have such a way with words, Gizzy!

Video Games

• Dragon Age: Inquisition:
  • Solas, an Elf mage, can only be romanced by a female Elf Inquisitor. Notably, he is the only potential romance option in the game who is limited to a single race.

Web Videos

• In The Nostalgia Chick's "Fifty Shades of Green/Booze Your Own Adventure" series, they note that their two main sources for this project, Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey, have a white couple in a Love Triangle with an "Ethnic Third Wheel". For their own book, they make this character Indian, partly because they're Indophiles and also because the Necronomicon could have conceivably ended up in India.

Western Animation

• South Park: This is thoroughly explored in "Cartman Finds Love" when a new girl comes to the school and is the only black female student (in the same year as the main characters anyway). She and Kyle share a mutual crush but Cartman insists on pushing her together with Tolkien since Tolkien and the black girl, Nichole, are the only ones at the school of their race and opposite genders. At the end of the episode, Kyle ends up alone since Nichole is with Tolkien. Cartman even points out that the only two Asian and two Latino students in the school are dating as proof, but it turns out that Cartman had been responsible for them getting together as well. Then it's played for laughs when Cartman's cupid sets him up with someone "like" him, an ugly and fat girl with halitosis.
• Daria: Mack and Jodie, who are two of the few African-American students at Lawndale High, are dating each other. While they do like each other, they also feel the social pressure to be good role models for the local black community. It is not clear how much of their relationship is due to one and how much to the other.
• On Total Drama, Duncan (white) was with Courtney (Hispanic) but cheats on her with Gwen (also white), with whom he ends up when Courtney finds out and dumps him. Particularly egregious because Courtney then falls for Alejandro, the only other Hispanic character on the show. (Though to be fair, he's only interested in Asian Heather, who ultimately rejects him (for the season, anyway)).
• On Danny Phantom, Danny (white) has a longstanding infatuation with Paulina (Hispanic) and a brief relationship with Valerie (black), but ultimately winds up with his white friend Sam.
• In Season 3 of As Told by Ginger Ginger and Darren are dating - Ginger is white and Darren is black. Darren instead falls for the black Simone, and Ginger for the white Orion. Subverted as of the Distant Finale where Darren and Ginger are revealed to have married and had children.
• In Big Mouth, Missy Foreman-Greenwald, (black)^note Technically, she's mulatto, but she was still black-passing. dated Nick, Andrew, and Lars, (all white), throughout the first three seasons of the series. She also had a poster of Nathan Fillion on her wall, whom she had a celeb crush on. In Season 4, she had an arc, where she started to explore her racial identity as an African-American woman, where she learned how to get more in touch with her cultural roots. During this time, she found a new infatuation with DeVon (black) and started going out with him, as this felt more fitting for her. DeVon had also broken up with Devin (white) around this time in the season too so that he could go out with Missy and at the end of the episode where they got together, Missy locked her Nathan Fillion poster away in the closet, signifying that both of them had ditched their white love interests permanently.

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