How Your Race Affects The Messages You Get

October 5th, 2009 by Christian

Welcome back, dorks. We’ve processed the messaging habits of over a million people and are about to basically prove that, despite what you might’ve heard from the Obama campaign and organic cereal commercials, racism is alive and well. It would be awesome if the other major online dating players would go out on a limb and release their own race data, too. I can’t imagine they will: multi-million dollar enterprises rarely like to admit that the people paying them those millions act like turds. But being poor gives us a certain freedom. To alienate all our users. So there.

When I first started looking at first-contact attempts and who was writing who back, it was immediately obvious that the sender’s race was a huge factor. Here are just a handful of the numbers that illustrate that:

The takeaway here is that although race shouldn’t matter in messaging, it does. A lot.

. . .

First of all, how do we know that race shouldn’t matter? Are we just making some after-school-special assumption that “true love is colorblind?” more compatibility usually
means more replies
No, we’re not: we know race shouldn’t matter to replies because the races all match each other more or less evenly, and reply rate correlates to matching. That is, more compatibility generally means more replies.

On OkCupid you create your own unique matching system, and that means your better matches are people you actually want talk to. Below is a graph showing match percentages vs. reply rates for a random sample of 500,000 people.As you can see, in general, the better you match someone, the more likely you are to reply to a first message from them.

We can see this principle in action when we look at our trusty control, the Zodiac. Here are the match and reply rates side-by-side, with similar rates colored yellow. There’s no real need to inspect the numbers; just observe the similar colors.

  • Throughout this post, yellowish colors are short-hand for “neutral” and red and green indicate “strong preference.”

People of the various Zodiac signs match each other all at roughly the average rate, and, as we would expect, they reply to messages similarly. In general, the correlation between match percentage and reply rate means that whenever we compare the match/reply charts for a given breakdown of the population, they should look about the same. However, this, like so many other fine assumptions, totally breaks down when race gets involved:

Again, don’t bother squinting, just check out the colors. We’ll soon look very closely at these tables.

. . .

So here’s last week’s compatibility by race table (I explained how we can confidently measure “compatibility” in that post). This is a blow-up of the leftmost table above:

As you can see, the races all match each other roughly evenly: good news. It means all other things being equal, two people, of whatever race, should have the same chance to have a successful relationshp. But now let’s look at the table of how individuals actually reply to each other’s messages. First we’ll examine messages sent by men to women (I know our gay readers are interested in same-sex versions of these tables, there’s a link to them here and at the end of this post):

The numbers on the perimeter of the table are the weighted average rates for each column/row. Here’s what we can know:

  • Black women write back the most. Whether it’s due to talkativeness, loneliness, or a sense of plain decency, black women are by far the most likely to respond to a first contact attempt. In many cases, their response rate is one and a half times the average, and, overall, black women reply about a quarter more often that other women.
  • White men get more responses. Whatever it is, white males just get more replies from almost every group. We were careful to preselect our data pool so that physical attractiveness (as measured by our site picture-rating utility) was roughly even across all the race/gender slices. For guys, we did likewise with height.
  • White women prefer white men to the exclusion of everyone else—and Asian and Hispanic women prefer them even more exclusively. These three types of women only respond well to white men. More significantly, these groups’ reply rates to non-whites is terrible. Asian women write back non-white males at 21.9%, Hispanic women at 22.9%, and white women at 23.0%. It’s here where things get interesting, for white women in particular. If you look at the match-by-race table before this one, the “should-look-like” one, you see that white women have an above-average compatibility with almost every group. Yet they only reply well to guys who look like them. There’s more data on this towards the end of the post.

Let’s see what happens when it’s the women writing the messages to men.

  • Men don’t write black women back. Or rather, they write them back far less often than they should. Black women reply the most, yet get by far the fewest replies. Essentially every race—including other blacks—singles them out for the cold shoulder.
  • White guys are shitty, but fairly even-handed about it. The average reply rate of non-white males is 48.1%, while white guys’ is only 40.5%. Basically, they write back about 20% less often. It’s ironic that white guys are worst responders, because as we saw above they get the most replies. That has apparently made them very self-absorbed. It’s interesting that white males do manage to reply to Middle Eastern women. Is there some kind of emergent fetish there? As Middle Easterners are becoming America’s next racial bogeyman, maybe there’s some kind of forbidden fruit thing going on. (Perhaps a reader more up-to-date on his or her Post-Colonial Theory can step in here? Just kidding. Don’t.)
. . .

Finally, here are a couple tables that shed further light on our discussion. These are site-wide answers to a couple user-written match questions. They barely need any explanation: one comments on the other, really. Together they shed more light on the theory/practice schizophrenia of people’s racial attitudes.


. . .

It’s probably not just OkCupid users that are like this. I don’t want anyone walking away from all this thinking that OkCupid users exceptionally horrible people. It’s likely that any dating site (and indeed any collection of people) would exhibit messaging biases similar to what I’ve written up. Any dating site probably
has these biases
According to our internal metrics, at least, OkCupid’s users are better-educated, younger, and far more progressive than the norm, so I can imagine that many sites would actually have worse race stats. But like I said at the beginning, we’ll probably never know. See you next week.

For a further discussion of race and replies, the same-sex equivalents of this post’s data are here.

. . .

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1,084 Responses to “How Your Race Affects The Messages You Get”

  1. Taj Mahal

    Interesting article.. It validates some small scale experiments that I did on my own on Craigslist and horOrNot based on very similar hypothesis.

    I think based on this, OkC should add an optional column of desired race of partner to all the profiles. So that people who consciously know what they want, can state it, and save time for a lot of people. Thanks!

  2. Jessie Maims

    I don’t know what you’re expecting to get out of the black women here, Just Saying… are they supposed to say to themselves that it’s just the way of the world/human nature that they’re unpopular with the vast majority of men and seen as masculine (according to dude on the Internet) due to their skin color/hair texture (it’s strange that you mention it as a deciding factor, because the vast majority of black women regularly, permanently straighten their curly hair. They haven’t seen it since childhood, and nor has anyone else, so how does it become a deciding factor when assessing the attractiveness of adult women, unless it’s some kind of consideration regarding the characteristics of potential offspring, or something?) and resign themselves to weekends on the couch with demolished pints of Haagen Dazs strewn hither and thither? You can posit your theory on the preferences of others, but asking the very people who are most adversely affected by them to internalize their categorical rejection and see themselves as naturally aesthetically inferior (which IS what you’re suggesting) is a fool’s errand. OTOH, I also believe that imploring men who aren’t attracted to black women to change deeply ingrained preferences that don’t currently disadvantage or inconvenience the men who hold them in any way is an equally Sisyphusian feat.

    Also, if darkness is masculine and masculine characteristics are most attractive in males, how do you explain the extremely high rejection rate of the darkest men (Indian and black men) here among all types of women? In fact, the “male fail scale” is almost completely in order of darkest to lightest. While you’re at it, explain Sammy Sosa… I’ll open up that line of questioning… can ANYONE explain that s*** to me? But, I digress.

    Additionally, I don’t think there’s a preference for white women among the world’s non-white men. I think there’s a preference for women that reflect the appearance of the given population who have a slightly whiter appearance than average (which usually doesn’t include the unique hair and eye colors — which could easily be mimicked if the groups in question demanded that they be present, WAY more easily than the painful, expensive, permanent changes to eye and nose shape that are common among Asian starlets — but usually includes some of the finer features, larger bust sizes, paler skin and slightly more pronounced chins) and I think it’s more nurture than nature. Except for a few rare cases, in majority non-white countries, the men within the population see their Maggie Qs and Aishwarya Rais as superior or equal to white women in desirability and attractiveness. Seeing whitER people of color as more attractive doesn’t necessarily mean they want to go all the way to there. Japanese men, for instance, prefer women with much rounder faces, smaller button noses and more slender hips than those that are seen in white women – but they do like double eye lids, and… uncharacteristically pneumatic figures. In Africa, the most popular female starlets are quintessentially African looking… they could’ve looked long and hard for the equivalent of a Halle Berry, Beyonce, or Thandie Newton and thrown a movie contract at her, but they didn’t. Instead, they have the likes of Genevieve Nnaji and Stephanie Okereke — women of average complexion for the region who have the type of hair and features that are generally associated with and common among sub-Saharan Africans. Just admit that you don’t know all that much about what goes on in non-white countries, it’s okay, a lot of people in the industrialized West don’t. Generally, the less likely a group is to have (or live in an area with) women with varied hair and eye colors within it, the less likely they are to give a damn about it when assessing attractiveness. I will concede that where ever she goes, a blond/blue white woman will fulfill a niche (the ubiquity of which I attribute to a fantastic PR campaign/supply & demand issues and nothing else) and find quite a few ardent admirers, but that cannot be confused with the kind of widespread popularity that would surpass that of the local women, and would be more akin to the position of East Asian women in the U.S. or black women in Germany.

  3. D

    I’d be interested to see if some of the middle eastern discrepancy isn’t from some middle eastern men listing their race as White. Most racial breakdowns don’t include an exclusive middle eastern category so they might not think to look for it. Conversely, it might be a strategy to get more responses from women who tend to perfer white men to middle eastern men. That this trend is backed up in the gay listing might support this. I’m not sure how exactly you test, but you could try surveying IP location to race and see if you have a large number of self listed white males writing from Middle Eastern countries (if the international breakdown is really that large. Or maybe if you had another variably that highly predicted middle eastern descent (say Muslim in religion) you could see if you have a statistically unexpected result among “white” males.

  4. Blk lady in Canada

    I’ve recently moved to Canada with my job. I gotta say Asian woman are worse than Black men for dating out here. They have white-worship real bad. I work with one Asian lady who totally changes around white men—she lights up and gets real flirty. White men are a total status symbol for Asian women. Funny thing is you don’t hear white women bitching about their men dating them. If anything, from what I can tell, they seem to think its funny. I think this is because white men that date Asian women are usually the less desirable white men, the ones that have…hmmm, how can I say this nicely…masculinity issues. Wheras black men that date out have made it and they are looking for a status symbol—like all of a sudden a black woman isn’t good enough for them any more.

    Although Canada is avery multicultrual place, I’ve only seen two kinds of men dating black women—black men and white men. I haven’t seen any sisters with any other kind of man. Black women seem to do better up here than they do in the US. Its not that uncommon to see a black woman with a white guy. If black women are slim and pretty, the white men seem opened to dating us. One thing black women have going for them is if they do date a white man, the quality of white men that date black women is much higher than the quality of white men that date Asian women.

  5. Former okcupid black female dater

    Yep. That pretty much sums it up.

  6. David

    I think I might have a somewhat unique perspective. I’m a black man in Japan.

    For most of my life I ‘only’ dated black women and actually had little to no interest in ‘any’ women of any other race. It wasn’t a decision per se, I was just so into black women, that is who I pursued. Then I moved to the Bay Area, California and had my first date with a white woman, I was 24. Frankly it was strange at first, but I liked her, and we connected. I then tried to open up and date all races (asian, etc.) and I’m glad I did. I feel like a more well rounded person because of my dating variety.

    Since that time, I’ve had girlfriends of all colors, but my main criteria is now intellect and raw attraction, the race thing is at the bottom of the list, if not meaningless (of course cultural concerns can pop up, but that’s a longer post).

    Regarding my life in Japan, I find the dating situation fascinating. In New York, where I’m from, most of the asian women I’ve known as friends have told me they are primarily interested in dating white men. After that, latin/spanish, after that black, after that asian. Yes, asian men were consistently at the bottom of their list. I’ve even had a fair amount of asian women in NYC tell me that they don’t find asian men attractive–which frankly blows my mind that one could say such a thing about their own ethnic brothers. And these weren’t just gold digging, fresh off the boat types, many of these women have their own money, were raised to respect their own (korean, japanese, chinese) culture. Nevertheless, in NYC, asian women overwhelmingly prefer white men. I’m not an asian man, but this situation sickens me. It’s led me to the point where I don’t even want to date an asian/white/spanish/etc. woman unless I can somehow confirm that she is also open to dating the men of her own race.

    Now…in Japan…

    Surprise: It’s pretty much the same. Though it’s true that racial stereotypes have less impact in Japan and you’re far more likely to see a beautiful, intelligent Japanese woman with a non-Japanese/non-white man in Japan than in the U.S., when dating non-Japanese men, the preference is still for white men. Again, don’t get me wrong, black men do just fine in Japan in dating, as do other non-white men, but the sheer numbers of Japanese women that prefer white men is staggeringly obvious.

    I say all this because I’m always amused by what my white guy friends always say to me. Similar to another white guy who posted earlier, many white guys seem to think black guys have it made when it comes to dating. And, for some reason, they really seem to think asian women prefer black guys (which is hilariously wrong). As for black men’s dating options based purely on race… In the right environment, yes, black guys with little social grace or intellect can do ok. But take the same graceless, non-charismatic type of guy and make him white, and that guy will generally have more options and success in all the countries I’ve been to (U.S., UK, Japan, France).

    I will be honest and say that once I realized this state of affairs, I was a bit taken aback and a little resentful. But then I thought about it more and realized that I’m in the sweet spot. White guys have to weed out all these women who are focused the fact that their are white, I don’t. Now, YES, there are tons of women similarly just focused on the fact that a guy is black, but somehow, because I’m in the minority in terms of the dating pool, I feel my job of weeding out those types is a bit easier. So I enjoy my status as a smaller group on women’s overall radar, because at the end of the day I’m looking for a rare and special woman anyway.

    Happy Valentine’s Day to the rainbow of you all!

  7. J

    I don’t think the high rate or response by white men to Middle Eastern women is necessarily about a fetish (thought it may be). There are many other possibilities. It may be that the more conservative cultural background means ME women have a less flirty or sexualized approach in their profiles and first messages, and this may stand out as being more “real” or “down to earth” or friend-like to guys getting lots of messages. Or, it may be simply curiosity about people from a culture that is constantly in the news, and less of a sexual fetish thing.

    I’m a female atheist of partial Middle Eastern descent (and primarily ME cultural upbringing in the home). I’m married to a white guy (with possible partial Asian ancestry) now, but in the early 2000s I played around with some dating-type sites because my white college roommates were on them looking for men and new friends.

    I did some really weird and totally a-sexual stuff with my profiles and got tons of responses (mostly from white guys). Many more responses than my very white roommates. Nothing in my profiles gave away race or even looks. My impression is that lots and lots of guys are intrigued by creative girls and slightly mysterious girls that don’t make their sexuality part of their public persona or identity. The ME background, even when race isn’t clearly indicated, may nevertheless correlate with women culturally inclined to portray themselves in this way.

    In the Mid East, girls are typically encouraged to develop their personalities around education, arts, and intellect (in liberal families) or homemaking (in conservative families). Even in a very progressive liberal family transplanted to the West, the focus is a huge contrast from the Barbie, Make-up and Cheer-leading culture most other Western girls grow up with. This is likely to create pretty significant differences in how women from the two backgrounds interact with men, even online.

  8. Tori

    In browsing some of the comments, it appears that 99.99% of the users here don’t know the definition of the word racism. Racial prejudice and racial hatred are both racism, plain and simple. In fact, racial prejudice is worse than racial hatred. Imagine you’re walking down the street, and someone yells out at you, “Hey racial expletive!”. You’d probably look at that person like they were crazy, then continue on with your day. Now imagine applying for a job (or setting up an online dating profile), and the employer tosses your application in the garbage immediately after you exit his office. Not having a job screws up your life; someone being an idiot and yelling something at you from afar doesn’t. For some, remaining single their entire lives screws up their life too. Of course, that’s a drastic idiom, but you get the point.

    Having a preference is normal, yes, but is it good for mankind? Ever hear the word “tolerance” thrown around by politicans and social activists on tv? They were emphasizing the importance of learning to love. Just because we have all been brainwashed to think that Becky and Brad are gorgeous, versus Ming and Tyrone, doesn’t mean that we are justified in that way of thinking. We owe it to ourselves, our future love lifes, and the peace of the nation(s) to progress and at least *try* to find beauty in others.

    Let’s quit defending our bigotry and start sending messages! (to Asian guys and Black women, apparently)

  9. Raj Pabani

    This is a wonderful writuep. Thanks. Having used a number of dating websites I’ve noticed these issues. It’s sad, but true. I’m a math guy so having some actual numbers back up my experiences is nice to have. Your post made me feel better actually. The worst part of this sort of behavior is that minorities like me are left thinking there is something wrong with me. Did I do something wrong? Is it my fault? Should I work out more? Dress better?

  10. Thanks for putting out these raw numbers. We needed to go public with these numbers. They are educational, enlightening.

  11. Carlos A. Brizuela

    This is something that I have observed throughout the years.

    For men in majority non-white countries, white women are attractive because they are seen as ‘exotic’. For women in majority non-white countries, white men are attractive because they are seen as ’superior’. Most Hispanic women, given the choice of men of equal emotional and economic attributes and what they idealize in their profiles, will most likely choose the European-looking male. Most Hispanic men in South American countries will be attracted to white women (exotic factor), but are open to women of any other group that shows some interest, men will look at hips, legs, buttocks, breast…

    Now, white women in the town where I’m at, seem to be more inclined towards black men. Many of these women refuse to engage in a conversation with non-blacks. Equally, black males have a bigger inclination towards white women in my area. This also could be due to the fact that black women that take care of themselves physically of this area tend to leave this area for the bigger cities.

    Overall, I do agree with this study. (That and the picture thing explains why nobody has made first contact with me and why nobody has replied to my messages even when they were well written.)

  12. Kenya

    I think a lot of people that are making comments are missing the point of the post. Lots of people think that the blog is ragging on people for not being interested in dating outside their race or trying to make white people feel guilty for dating their own but I don’t that that was the most interesting point of the post. If the statistics told us that everyone prefers their own kind that would not be that surprising. It would seem to bare out what we all thought anyway. However, what the numbers show not that everyone prefers their own but everyone prefers Whites regardless of their own race. As a Black woman I have no problem with the fact that White men prefer to date White women and vice versa my problem is that Black men prefer to date White women even when according to the numbers White women by and large won’t have them.

  13. SHekon

    This is to DAVID : Black man in Japan

    Race does not matter much if you got the skills/personality and looks.

    I am a dark skinned Asian dude and my trip to Japan/Skorea/China was a sexual orgy feast – I picked up/intimated more women here in 4 months than say in 1 year in NYC. I hardly speak any of their languages – just few common words.

    Humans are all THE SAME – the more you travel in the world, the more people you meet, the less differences become.

    Women are same everywhere – if you can connect to them properly, attraction does not care about race/ethnicity.

    Besides, dark skinned guys have a good reputation of being you know “”long”"
    - just brush against the lady from your groins with the most innocent indifference on your next date and tell me what happens. Act as if she is at fault – she responsible for this “touching” Be playful – see what happens

    BTW – Nothing is better in this world than being deep “inside” a woman who 1 date ago said she is not into “dark males”.

    HEHE -

  14. J

    1. The wacky ME data

    Okay, so, looking at the gay data, you see a similar thing with white guys interested in potential gay ME dates. This suggests it isn’t a result of women interacting in a culturally different way, but some sort of curiosity or fetishization of ME people on the part of white guys.

    D’s point is also really good. ME people *ARE* technically white, and every other form in the country we have to fill out counts us as white. Many 100% ME people easily pass for white. The idea that men pick the descriptor, of two accurate descriptors, they think will get them chicks sounds about right. That that descriptor is “white” rather than ME is shown by your own data. And as D points out, if you have a lot of ME men doing this, or a lot of Bosnian or Albanian Muslim men, they will be responding disproportionally to Muslim women, who are disproportionally of ME background.

    However… throwing this explanation into question somewhat is the ME women have a really high rate of reply across the board. Specifically we are in the top two reply scores for ALL races of men. For some, like whites, Indians, Native Americans, and Hispanics (Native Americans and Hispanics are massively unlikely to be Muslim) we are far away the top. With NA you could say the sample size is too small. You can’t say that about Hispanics; Hispanics seem to disprove D’s hypothesis.

    If there is a fetish or curiosity, most races might have it because, since 9/11, for better or worse, ME people have been a news staple. Maybe there are hidden Muslims across the races (likely in explaining the high Indian response rate, unlikely in explaining the high Hispanic re. rate)? Or maybe there is some cultural way ME women present themselves outside of their photos that men like? Or maybe we look better than our ratings and your attractiveness controls are off somehow?

    Possibly as men go through the photos to rate, they see ME women as part of a group associated with evil, and for psychological reasons this leads men to perceive them as ugly and rate them down. But when they are individually saying hi, and what school they go to, and how much they like your taste in music or your pet kitten, the evil cultural associations fall away (”oh this one is nice”) and the photos are perceived on direct attractiveness, like most everyone else’s. In other words, the perception at a distance might be tainted with negative group associations, showing up in the attractiveness ratings, but the perception one-on-one might not be. You would show this as a weirdly higher race reply rate, when really the root cause is a weirdly lower race attractiveness rating.

    This could also explain the gay white men reply rate to gay ME men. Mainstream Americans are depicted most at odds with Middle Easterners in the media (for whatever reasons). When two groups come into conflict, evolutionarily it is the men from each group that have to go physically fight each other. Evolutionarily you’d expect the men from two groups whose cultures are perceived as being at odds to subconsciously dehumanize or degrade the men from the other group so they are psychologically prepared to do violence if needed. Whites are the largest American racial groups; for them the us-them psychological dynamic with Middle Easterners might be especially strong. This might again cause some psychological thing that impacts attractiveness when judging from a mass of photos at a distance. With a few friendly words on an individual level this would fall away very, very quickly because humans (excepting a few sociopaths who tend to become politicians and corporate leaders) tend toward being a friendly cooperative species whenever possible.

    Sure this is a complicated way to explain what is maybe more likely to be curiosity, or a fetish, but interesting data could have an interesting explanation.

    2. Controling for subculture

    I’m wondering to what extent subculture plays a role in this racial data, and to what extent it would be possible to control. For example, from mid teens through early 20s, I hated country, western, R&B, pop, most rap, and hiphop. I liked “alternative”, rock, techno, and classical. I wasn’t attracted to guys of any race that were into the former, and was more attracted to guys that were into the latter. I was attracted to Lenny Kravitz for example, and would have dated a black guy with a similar sense of style and subculture. That’s not easy to find where I went to school though. As it was I dated whites and Asians (my HS and uni also happened to have super low diversity, whites and Asians were the two largest ethnic groups).

    At any rate my statistical point is, I wonder to what extent the trappings of subculture are impacting the data separate from race? At dating age, I’d honestly likely have passed on a message from black guy standing in front of a gangsta rap poster, but replied to the same black guy standing in front of a Jimi Hendrix or Bob Marley or RATM poster. If it were possible to control for signs of subculture in clothes and in photo background, you might see a substantial amount of the race differences disappear… or you might not. More realistically than sorting through a zillion photos and giving a subjective subcultural categorization, maybe if you have searchable fields for what music people like, you could use the categories record companies or Amazon.com uses to classify music, and use those categories as an approximate subcultural control.

    3. Controlling for physical attractiveness

    You say, “We were careful to preselect our data pool so that physical attractiveness (as measured by our site picture-rating utility) was roughly even across all the race/gender slices. For guys, we did likewise with height.”

    I’d be interested in the details of how you did this. Attractiveness is such a massive influence that even small differences could throw the numbers out of whack. And there could be weird effects to account for. For example, if the mean of one race centers around a two and the mean of another around a four (plausible because diets vary so much by culture, and nutrients impact affects symmetry, while sugars and calories impact skin and weight), then possibly reviewers start thinking “this photo is a 4/5 for an X girl”, where X is a lower-averaging race, but if they were thinking more in overall terms maybe they’d be saying the photo is a 3/5. And then you go in using the number as a four and not a three, when really the four came about because the viewer was somehow (subconsciously?) adjusting for race to some degree. And then it looks like men should be replying to race X girls at a higher rate than they are, when really it is the attractiveness ratings that throw things off.

    I’d also be interested to know how your rating system works, in terms of how photos are presented for rating, or if people get to search by race and then rate. If you have men of some group disproportionally rating women of some group, they might throw off the attractiveness scores in some way that indicates their personal preferences but not the overall average preference.

    So for example, if black men disproportionally rate the profiles of black woman, a black female “4/5″ may be not what white guys consider 4/5, while many black women whom white guys consider 4/5 might exist but be labeled a 3/5 just because a group with different preferences is disproportionally doing the rating. And then when you select your sample, this would throw things off.

    Going to height, if men from one race are shorter than average, controlling for height as a number field might not be enough. Possibly people will take their history of seeing someone from that race, and perceive the person in the photo as shorter than they actually are. A number is a number, it might not wipe out a history of learned perception that people approach a photo with. Meeting the person in person might lead to a very different result. To control for height’s impact on racial perception fully on the internet you probably have to do more, like expecting a certain amount of reply reduction based on a race’s average height.

    4. Controlling for effects of being the largest group around

    I’d also be interested in data in non-white majority countries or areas, because I would bet a LOT of the weird numbers you are getting for whites–especially the high numbers of whites you are getting that wouldn’t marry interracially–is somehow linked to the fact that their population is so much higher. I’d bet in Japan or Korea, the whites living there are massively open to interracial dating, while the Asians there are probably far more against it than American whites. If so, it may be due just to what kinds of people you see day in day out, or to the relative adventurousness of people from immigrant families vs. more sedentary families.

    Similarly, Obama’s paternal grandfather–a Kenyan that never moved from Kenya–is reported to have been very upset his son was marrying a white woman. Her highly transient white parents, on the other hand, weren’t so concerned with the husband’s race. IIRC the paternal grandfather sent them an angry letter about watering down the Obama gene pool with white genes, and rather than conspiring with him on the racial purity issue to break the couple up, they dismissed the letter. You therefore seem to get the same thing happening in Africa. I’d bet in any country or region with a well-established and geographically stable racial majority, that majority will be enormously more against interracial marriage than the racial minorities and immigrants in that area.

  15. The one thing that isn’t addressed here is attractiveness. For a woman to respond to a man – even if he is the same race – we have to be attracted to him (and vice versa). For women some of the disqualifiers might have nothing to do with race but instead with the man’s age, race, height, weight, what he states he is into or looking for, or how he comes off in his email. Don’t be shocked that many men (that a woman might be interested in) say something stupid, disrespectful, or juvenile and it turns the woman off completely.

    So it may appear that she is rejecting him because of his race, in reality it is because he presented himself as boring or a man of lower status or intellect. Not sure how the statistics might be adjusted to account for this intangible, but it is a very real component to getting a response from a woman.

    However, I agree completely that the vast majority of single White males prefer to marry and have children with White females, just as Black women prefer to marry and have children with Black males. What I have seen though is by the time a White male is ready to marry the second time, he is more likely to pick the woman that meets HIS needs vs. the woman that meets the expectations of his family,f friends or society. And that my fellow Sistahs, is when you are likely to be approached by a successful, handsome, confident White male that tells you he has secretly admired the beauty of strength of Black women his entire life, but was too afraid to approach or be with one for fear of what his circle of influence would have to say about it.

    That is why you see so many White guys in their 40s with Black women. They have reached the age where they really could give less than a dayum about what people think while they are at home cuddling with their foxy brown sugar and creating caramel colored babies that they adore.

  16. LOL

    Deborah. I find nothing remotley flattering about obviously WEAK White males who were too afraid to marry and go after Black women when they were younger, suddenly hitting middle age and then wanting to “cross the color lines”. Frankly, those kinds of White men can keep it moving. No decent Black woman is going to be with a weak man who allows others to make life decisions for them. And then when he starts getting old decides he wants to live his life the way he wants to. Pssh! I have to laugh. Plus White people don’t age all that well to try and pull that.

    Like someone mentioned, these people who are being extra picky and prejudice about the race they want to date (while they are young) are going to get a nice real hard dose of karma. They’ll end up with those superficial qualities they wanted in a mate, end up in a bad relationship for some years, and then start getting old and suddenly want to expand thier dating horizons to people of color. I say let thier arses grow old and miserable ALONE.

    THUS why like you said, many of these White males will end up divorced (b/c they didn;t marry for quality) and then try to get some attractive decent Black woman on thier second go round. Not this one and none of my attractive Black friends either.

    At the end of the day the cowards can stay with thier own b/c they do not DESERVE a Black woman. They deserve to miss out and stay with thier plain vanilla chicks b/c they were to weak and cowardly to go for what they wanted.

    I will say White women have a lot more balls than White men. They seem unphased by what others think of thier choices in men of other races. Good for them!

  17. To Blk Lady in Canada:

    there are many asian females who seek white males because they feel white males are superior in the social hierarchy and yes they do get carried away and make fools out of themselves by doing so. and yes, there are white douchebags with yellow fever and think that anything asian is exotic. HOWEVER there are also many asian females who are with white males because their personalities/hobbies are just compatible with each other’s. also, it’s untrue that white males who go for asian females are the less desirable white males. to say that wld be immature, stupid and reek of resentment.

    i’m an asian female who was married to a black-hispanic and have dated white males. and no, i don’t feel that white males are superior to men of other ethnicities and no, i don’t feel superior when i’m involved with a white male. i’m proud of my heritage and would never try to pass off as caucasian by association.

  18. Excuse me LOL, but nowhere in my post did I say nor imply that such a choice was “flattering” to anyone. I am merely pointing out what I have observed over and over again. And the bottom line is that EVERY man when young (and most women too) are influenced by others – whether it be parents, friends, grandparents, their church or society in general.

    We are ALL influenced by what we see in the media and know to be “approved” of behavior, attire or looks. What other reason would Black women have for getting their hair relaxed so it looks straight like White women’s hair? What other reason would Black, Asian and Latina women have for dying their hair blonde so it looks like White women’s hair? What other reason would White folks rained around Blacks have for trying to “talk black” and wear cornrows?

    We are all influenced by our environment and are a product of said environment. Which is why young White males choose to date and marry White females – it’s what is expected of them. Though they may wildly attracted to women of other races, they will typically choose to MARRY a woman that is as White as they are. At least for the first marriage, just like I said.

  19. Jerry

    I don’t get why racial preferences in dating and marriage is OK (perfectly legal), but racial preferences in employment is not OK (it’s illegal). Marriage is just as much a job offer as any normal job offer. There’s a demand, and there’s a supply. If you work for a wealthy employer, your mental and economic health is more secure. Same thing happens if you marry a wealthy mate. Sometimes work and love isn’t just about the money, but other things. OK, so why make racial discrimination illegal in employment practices, if it’s so popular in dating and marriage? Let’s say a white woman wants a really strong black man as a husband, and she thinks black men are genetically predisposed to be strong and fit. Why can’t that same woman start a business where she prefers to hire black men where strength and fitness is important?

    Why is it controversial if someone refuses to vote for someone because they are non-white, too? It’s just another racial preference.

    It seems that most people think racial preferences are OK. Therefore, the civil rights act of 1964 should be abolished.

  20. RC

    Could it be that most black women are not that attractive? I am a black woman and I’ve never been turned down by a man of any race, but I think it has to do with me being better looking than almost all other black women in my area as well as many of the white women. Before my husband and I married a family member told me he would never marry me because he was white and I was black. However he proposed to and married me just a few months after I turned 18 (legal age to marry in my state) and we have been happily married ever since. And contrary to what another commenter said, he is a VERY good looking white male, I’m not a “last resort”.

  21. FYI

    I’ve come to the conclusion that ASIAN MALES are the absolute LEAST desirable male in the racial hierarchy. I’m saying this being a straight Asian male who has been single for many MANY years. I have approached ladies in person, I have used dating sites, I have allowed others to set me up. I have observed other couples. I have read and read and READ countless stories like the one on this site. So this is all REAL full-on personal experience. If you’re male, Asian, and living in the US- you most certainly will have a very tiny, almost infinitesimal, pool of potential mates from which to choose. Heck, we can hardly even get lucky with our OWN race, as most Asian females are just NOT interested. Again, this is from personal experience (ex. I have 2 sisters who would never consider dating an Asian male). Sometimes I just want to pack it all up and move to another country but I’m afraid this might be a universal thing. I believe the ugly truth is that we’re just not that masculine or bold or strong or rugged. Of course I don’t speak for all Asian men, but there is a “common looking” Asian guy. And most of us are skinny, lanky, with not much facial or body hair. Plus we tend to be introverted and reserved- not necessarily good traits for picking up the ladies. Women always say they like men with confidence. Well that’s hard to get here in America when you’re an Asian man.

  22. The Bottom Line

    The moral of the story is that online is really for NON-BLACK WOMEN and WHITE MEN. If you don’t fall in those categories, you are better off spending your time meeting people elsewhere.

  23. Kingsley R.

    Man, I was wasting my money on Match, JDate and all these other sites. I guess I will go back to the bar scene. :) The data suggests and pretty much confimed what I thought that in the end people prefer to date their own race. It’s fucked up but that is basically the situation. As a Black male mostly to White women. I sent out alot of emails on OKC but I receive sometimes little or no response from White woman and this are matches at 70-90 percent and still no response. But what is scary is that I probably receive more email than most for a Black guy. I am handsome, educated and open minded but that appears to have little to do with being an acceptable date on most these website. It is so interesting to see data in black and white it is concrete and hard to refute. Thanks.

  24. MST

    Hmm . . . I keep on hearing about how men of other races don’t find black women desirable, but I was married to a white Jewish guy for twenty years and divorced amicably. I have been on a few dating sites where I indicate that I am open to interracial dating, and get quite a few replies from white men. I am not sure that I want to get married again, but if I do I will be open to marrying a man of another race. People are people, no matter what color they are.

  25. MST

    Forgot to add: I too have noticed the WM/AF thing and it really is prevalent in big cities. I have seen Asian women who can hardly speak English flirting with white men. I find this rather strange.

    I would be willing to date an Asian man because they seem well-mannered and intelligent,. I don’t like big-mouthed, aggressive men. But they don’t seem to be interested in black women at all. Too bad.

  26. JNLC

    I am a 24yo black woman and 98% of the guys that write me on OKC are WHITE and in age range of 19-35. I personally would like to think it is because they read my profile and were not only attracted to me physically but liked what my personality seems to be from what they read.

    However, lets be honest, not matter how great you are, on an online dating site, no guy of any race will write you (no matter YOUR race) if your pictures don’t catch his attention. In fact, he might not even bother to read your profile.

    For the record, every white guy I’ve had a substantial conversation with say they feel like most black women ARE NOT attracted to white men. And that’s why its rare, at least for them, to approach one. But for the ones that do, they feel like a black woman takes care of her man, in the sense of how she makes him feel physically, mentally, and emotionally, better than any other race they have dated.

    As far as the physical attractiveness of a black woman, could it be the way most carry themselves???? Loud, obnoxious, and rude in many cases. What guy of any race would want to deal with that.

  27. OmnuNero

    I wouldn’t let this study put any Asian male / Black female in a slump. I completely agree with the article but remember the the primary age group for this dating site is pretty young… I’m not sure the exact numbers but around the 20s. I believe to 20s-30s, race is still somewhat of a novelty to relationships and dating. People are shallow to an extent and they either changes with time or it doesn’t. Rather than keeping focus on race, focus on improving things you can change. Self confidence and such.

  28. mary

    been happily married to my white knight for 12 years now. Im black, he’s white. We don’t care what anyone else thinks not that we have faced any opposition, and certain men who are scared well all i can say is, is it worth being alone because your embarrased? if these people really care about you then why wouldn’t they want you to be happy inlove? they going to help pay your bills? keep you warm? share memories with you? protect you? love you back?.

    i rest my case :)

  29. Lilith_Eve

    I am a 25 year old black female. I’ve gone to predominately white schools up through the 12th grade. Black males paid little or no attention to me throughout my teenage years. My first boyfriend (at age 18) as a result was white.

    I have yet to figure out why most black men pay me no mind. I’ve only been in one serious relationship with a black man that ended when I was 23. We broke up because I was growing and changing while he refused to.

    However I’ve started to notice a pattern in the white men that approach me. They seem to fit into one of three categories;

    A: they’re looking for some coffee to drip their cream into, I’m just a chocolate fantasy to them and not to be taken seriously as a lover, girlfriend or potential wife.

    B: I’m the safe black girl. I’m educated, well spoken but happen to have dark skin so category A still applies but doesn’t rule

    C: they’re crazy as fuck. I’m not sure what it is about me that appeals to white men with personality disorders but they seem to flock to me

    I’m trying to expand my dating horizons, but it’s incredibly difficult. Especially when you live in a place like KY. Lots of republicans, rednecks and racists here. The few black men that do show interest in me I have no interest in (ie: broke, uneducated or simply unmotivated) And hardly any of the other races that do reside here are interested in mixing it up.

    It’s quite frustrating trying to date as a black woman. Both on and offline.

  30. For the FYI dude

    Please don’t despair, FYI dude! I’m a white woman who has no trouble getting dates from quality men, and I’m very happy to now have an Asian-American boyfriend who I adore (and yes – I guess you can say he has the typical “Asian” physique). It’s possible I’m in the minority, but I actually prefer NON-white men (all else equal). Obviously race isn’t a first-order concern (I don’t rule out white men), but I happen to think mixed-race couples are extra hot and their children incredibly beautiful.

    P.S. I live in the San Francisco bay area where I think more white women are warming up to the idea of dating Asian men, especially given the large number of Asian women/ White men pairings that need to be balanced out.

    So get some confidence, FYI dude – race might not be within your control, but the confidence to go after women is! :)

  31. Jessie Maims

    FYI – “Sometimes I just want to pack it all up and move to another country but I’m afraid this might be a universal thing. I believe the ugly truth is that we’re just not that masculine or bold or strong or rugged.”

    It’s not universal. In parts of Europe and South America, Asian guys are seen either as just normal guys or guys with additional “masculinity points”, in some cases. The U.S. is not the be-all end-all of humanity, nor anything approximating an accurate microcosm of the world. And my word, man, open a history book and pick your chin up. But I do understand the propensity to get stuck in a self-perpetuating cycle of devaluing yourself because others do, then under-performing as a result of your low confidence and the very real difference in reception. I think that’s why some of the messages from black males, in particular are so… disproportionately lacking in tact.

    a) they have NO idea what they’re up against as far as the type of messages that other guys are sending
    b) differing cultural norms
    c) the low response rate for even a Kingsley-esque approach naturally breeds a “low time investment dating spam” strategy, which looks even worse next to the polished, personalized approaches from other men that have been informed of what works and encouraged to keep trying by sporadic successes – in saying this, I’m not indicting individual women who reject individual guys, I’m just hypothesizing about what it means in the aggregate and how it plays out…

    The Bottom Line – “If you don’t fall in those categories, you are better off spending your time meeting people elsewhere.”

    But… these groups will face the same stigma/difficulties offline, as well, in addition to being restricted by their immediate surroundings and social circles, which, even in this day and age, are still mostly de facto segregated. I think online dating can occupy a useful place in a non-white man/black woman’s arsenal, but only as a supplement to RL mingling, by NO means in lieu of it. No, you can’t date by minimizing the WOW window for an hour a day, too. It’s not fair, but it’s true, at least for now.

    MST – “I have been on a few dating sites where I indicate that I am open to interracial dating, and get quite a few replies from white men.”

    Yes, you get replies. Virtually all women get replies, and they may seem like quite a few to you. But other races of women (in a certain age range, of a certain size, caveat, caveat) get REPLIES – epic amounts of mail, in comparison. There’s a reason that guys have a skewed idea of the gender ratio on just about every dating site known to man, even the ones with almost perfect parity. It’s because as the looks post shows, they’re all noticing and messaging the same 6 girls. If you’re a black female, chances are, you’re probably not one of the chosen few (however, the likelihood of this varies widely by region)

    RC – But… if you married almost minutes past 18 to a guy you’d been seeing for a while, odds are that you haven’t had a long and storied dating history that involved a lot of opportunities for men to turn you down… I could be wrong, though.

    OmnuNero – If anything, older people are MORE conservative about similarity among partners, partly because of generational effects and partly because people as they age are more likely to be interested in LTRs and sharing cultural touchstones. While a white guy may definitely see white women and say, Latinas as equally attractive, he’s probably more likely to see white women as the most compatible. Race may indeed be a novelty among youth, but not in the way that you mean. There may be an implicit assumption (backed by the reality of marriage stats) that when it comes time to get serious, everyone’s going back home to get a spouse – which is probably one of the reasons that women are less receptive to the prospect of IR than men, overall. Also, I’d posit that many of the people who are adversely affected by dating disparities are fine the way they are and it’s the society that they’re in that’s not, and there’s not much they individually can do about that. But that conclusion may actually be more disheartening than the possibility that there’s a flaw somewhere that can be fixed and make people see you (rhetorical “you”) as an equal, even if that flaw is that not being seen as equal makes you sad/mad/insecure sometimes.

    Jerry – I really hope you’re getting Swiftian up in here, cause otherwise I’m going to have to remove some keys from my forehead.

  32. Marc

    When I really think about these posts, I think about this. Not many women, if any, have ever really paid much attention to me as far as a romantic relationship is concerned. As for you has written me first, I have been written to, mainly by Black women. I used to have a profile here, then deleted it because I was getting nowhere. I am giving it another try. As far as my preferences, I have none. And I think it is sad that some people don’t think that way. One would think that this is a site that would cater to a more open-minded, more educated crowd, but apparently, not really.

  33. KS

    In college, I was never aware of race – especially when it came to dating. It seemed that everyone was much more race-neutral, and often what Greek house you were in mattered much more than the color of your skin. As an Indian girl with two previous Asian boyfriends, anecdotally I saw no issue with race.

    That has since changed – I’m 25 now, have lived in 3 major cities, and find that more and more I am growing increasingly aware of race. When living on the East Coast, I lauded California as perhaps more race-neutral, but having returned to Los Angeles, am finding that is not the case here either. I really appreciated this article because it quantifies (and validates) my frustration not only with online dating, but with finding a date in bars.

    But I must admit, I too am an offender. I’m in the 77% of Indian women who don’t strongly prefer to date someone of my own race – in fact, I strongly prefer not to, which has limited my dating pool. My preference (apparently along with every other chick and her mom) have also narrowed to mostly being interested in white males. (Despite what my prior dating history might indicate.)

    Accordingly – two things struck me as interesting:

    1. Intra-race hate. I’m guilty of it – but it STILL intriguing to me that on the whole Indian Men don’t respond to Indian Women, or Hispanic Women to Hispanic Men, etc etc. The data suggests that people are not tied to their own race, but still have narrow, limited desires when looking at other races (read: white.)

    2. I’m curious about the absolute number of messages here. I absolutely get that “White guys are shitty, but fairly even-handed about it” – but given they are “in-demand” is their response percentage somehow dragged down by the sheer volume of messages they receive? I would imagine there is some steady-state number of messages you actually send out in a given week regardless of race, and if white men are inundated with messages, this would drag their average response down.

    On the whole – great article. Much like most of this blog. I love nothing more than a bunch of right-brained people trying to make a science out of love. (Honestly.)

    And P.S. – Christian – If you are single, I would totally date you for your statistically inquisitive mind alone.

  34. asianwiththoughts

    I am a 20 year old asian male and I just wanted to agree with all the people who point out that asian women prefer white males above all else. My sister has only been asked out by asian guys before but she refuses to date them and instead waits forever for that white guy to come along and ask her out. All through high school, most of the asian girls I knew would only want to date white guys (it definitely is a status symbol) I think they do not want to look to ethnic, too “fobby”, so they date only white guys. I feel like white girls are a lot more open to dating asian males than a significant percentage of asian females.

    I realize how the world is biased against my type (asian males) and black females, but the sooner we accept it and move on, the better we’ll be.