How Your Race Affects The Messages You Get

October 5th, 2009 by Christian Rudder

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 other big websites 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 generating 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 respond less overall. 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 in turn get the most replies. That has apparently made them very self-absorbed.

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 surely not just OkCupid users that are like this. In fact, it’s any dating site (and indeed any collection of people) would likely 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.


(Addendum to original post)

Same-Sex Data for Race vs. Reply Rates

As promised, here are the same-sex versions of last week’s charts and tables. In general, they show that straights and gays share many of the same inclinations, but the prejudices of the latter are perhaps a bit less pronounced. I should say at the top that some of the sample sizes for the various race/gender slices presented here are rather small (for instance, OkCupid doesn’t have many lesbians of Indian descent), and that accounts, I think, for some of the scatter-shot nature of the color tables. Race preferences are not nearly as stark here as they are with the heterosexual data.

See for yourself:

Still, there are a few conclusions we can draw:

  • Blacks get fewer responses. We saw this with the straight data, too, and here it’s true of both gay and lesbian senders. Black gay men get over 20% fewer responses than non-blacks, which is about how straight black men fared. Black women, on the other hand, do relatively much better with gays than straights. While they’re still the least replied-to group, the discrepancy is much smaller in the lesbian community.
  • Whites respond by far the least to anyone.. Both white lesbians and white gay men write the fewest replies. In fact, across the two charts, whites respond about 15% less often than non-whites, and white gay men show a marked preference for other whites. On the other hand, gay white women don’t have the segregationist tendencies of their straight counterparts; they just dis everyone. Whereas last week we saw that straight white women strongly preferred other whites to the exclusion of other groups, lesbian whites respond to all 9 racial groups roughly evenly, and, in general, the lesbian community seems relatively colorblind. Only Indian lesbians receive a response rate far off the average, and as I said above, the sample size there is limited and the results might be skewed by chance.
  • Asian lesbians are in demand, and they’re picky about other races. Gay Asian females are replied to the most, and, among the well-represented groups, they have the most defined racial preferences: they respond very well to other Asians, Whites, Native Americans, and Middle Easterners, but very poorly to the other groups. Latin women also express a clear preference, for Whites and Asians.
  • Men prefer Middle Easterners. Gay men and straight men both respond best to Middle Easterners, and the preference is quite dramatic. I’d be interested to hear any theories why this is so.

As we did last week, we can see that all groups think, theoretically, that interracial relationships are acceptable, yet again whites are the least willing to have such a relationship themselves. This time it’s the men, not the women, who prefer most to keep to their own: it’s interesting that both in reply patterns and in their answers to these two match questions, the behavior of white straight women and white gay men are so closely parallel.

To our friends in the gay and lesbian communities: thanks for being patient and waiting for this data. We will do gay-centric articles in the future, I promise. Lately, since we’ve been dealing with complex and data-intensive subjects like race and reply rates, we’ve had to restrict ourselves to straight data in the primary post. We felt that adding a discussion of gay and lesbian trends alongside straight ones would triple the length of an already long and dense post and surely more than triple reader confusion. We will keep looking for ways to present the information you rightly expect; for now, it will be in addenda such as this one.

1,557 Responses to “How Your Race Affects The Messages You Get”

  1. Luc says:

    For the record, this report is not accusing anyone of being “racist.” Its trying to show how race is still a factor in US society and culture, and how it creates a subconscious “bias” in all sorts of behavior, including dating preferences.

  2. PerpetuallySingle says:

    People can’t really help what they find physically attractive, if they could then you could as easily ask gay people what they have against women. What you find physically attractive in another person is not something you choose.

    That’s not to say racism is dead, but I don’t think physical preferences are an indicator of such. I’ve always looked at physical attraction as being like the low level prerequisite classes in college, they don’t count for much in the big picture, but it’s something you have to get past before you can move on to the more interesting and important aspects of a person as a potential mate.

  3. amanda says:

    great study OK Cupid. This firmed up so many beliefs I already ahd. As a black woman I usually contact whoever my highest match is, but rarely get responses.

    I knew there was an underlying reason for it. Knew it all along.

    In fact I think that by knowing this, you should allow users to weed out which races they are not interested in dating and provided matches based on that response. I also told eHarmony the same thing.

    Basically it saves a lot of us a whole lot of wasted time, planting a seed that is not going to grow.

    Bias maybe, but worth it in the end.

  4. jcabana says:

    There are a lot of comments from people who are offended that OkCupid called them racists. Some state that dating preferences should be separated from racism, and one person even suggested a Venn diagram to see where racists overlapped non-racists with dating preferences. Others simply repeated stereotypes that make me cringe — I’m hoping they were trolls.

    A news flash for all these people: THERE ARE MANY TYPES OF RACISM. Take a moment and let that sink in.

    It amazes me that so many people think that racism is this clearly-defined, completely evil thing that either you have or you don’t have. I would venture to guess that 99% of the world’s population is racist in some way, shape or form. There’s nothing wrong with being a little bit racist. The problem comes in when people are in complete denial and fail to acknowledge or be aware of this truth.

    This isn’t the only source of statistics reflecting these trends. Freakonomics performed similar dating site analyses and came to similar conclusions. Since whites are held up as “normal” or as an aspirational standard in beauty, romance and cohabitation, it’s not surprising that people of all different races would favor them. Since portrayals of blacks in the media tend to be either stereotyped or downright negative, it’s not surprising that less people would respond to black women and black men.

    This data simply serves as a reflection of how our subtle (and often subconscious) internal prejudices play out in the real world. These prejudices and preconceived notions can lead us in specific dating directions. None of this means that if you are white and prefer to date white people, that also means you will be attending a cross-burning later in the week. If you’re a minority that prefers to date whites, this doesn’ t mean you need a serious reprogramming/intervention. But if you think it doesn’t reflect A FORM of racism, you’re kidding yourself.

  5. Harmony says:

    @ JeremyR

    Somehow I doubt this is true.

    Do you know that statistics can be twisted around to benefit the one citing them(YOU)?

    Probably not.

  6. Kate says:

    I do not find red headed men attractive, nor dark skinned black men. That’s not racist, its just a personal preference. Looks are important to me, as it is fundamental to sexual attraction. I am a white woman btw. I know it’s very PC to say looks are not important, but I think its bull.

  7. Justin says:

    I totally prefer asian girls. As a white dude these graphs support the idea my chances are good, since white guys dont respond to asian girls since they are racist! YAH! MY TIME TO SHINE!

  8. Jennifer says:

    The one major flaw in this article is that they did not take into account the CONTENT of messages. Oh, and they took it a bit far to say that this is based in racism. I think most people just have physical characteristics they generally prefer, but we’re also looking for signs of intelligence. I’m more likely to respond to the guys who send thoughtful messages written in proper English than I am to respond to messages along the lines of “hey baby u is fine!” (And I feel kinda bad ’cause I haven’t responded to any in months- even though I flagged a few for follow up.) Any female with an OKC account can go look at her inbox and see how the quality of incoming messages breaks down by race. Yes, there are idiots of all colors, but is it really evenly distributed? Not in my inbox.

  9. Silent Male says:

    I think this entire discussion is so far off the kilter that its hard to believe that rational people can hold some of these opinions.

    People cannot help who they are attracted to. If an Asian woman looks at a white guy (to pick one example), she does not say to herself, “He is white. I must now initiate attraction procedures”. Neither does a white woman who looks at an Indian guy (to pick another), say to herself, “He is Indian. Must initiate rejection procedures.”.

    If the argument that being gay is a matter of biology, and not social conditioning, is valid, then why isn’t the argument that being attracted to a certain set of physical features, and being repulsed by others, also a matter of biology ?

    I am a straight Indian guy. I am not interested in other men. Following the hyper-stupid “logic” that seems to be rife on this blog, maybe someone would want to call me a socially conditioned homophobe !

    Get over it. Not everything with a racial correlation is racist, just as not everything with a gender correlation is homo/heterophobe. Our hormones decide what find attractive, and what arouses us. Not some giant social conspiracy out to get coloured people.

    I am Indian. At the bottom of the dating totem pole, I have a greater justification for mixing racism with this. But I don’t, because it makes no sense, and because it is simply retarded to confuse attraction with xenophobia / racism.

  10. del_taco says:

    In regards to these findings, I think that it is an interesting theory and trend, but I can say from my personal experiences on this site, that 90% or more of the women that pop into my “Quiver” (the ones that I consider sending messages to) are white. There may be another race in there from time to time, but almost always all three are white. If someone of a different race comes up, I do not immediately say, “I don’t want anything to do with them” and click that I am not interested, I will give their profile a look over and see if I like it or find them attractive, and I decide whether or not I want to send a message in that way.
    The same theory applies to me when it comes to responding to messages I receive: I decide that solely on the person’s profile as well. If I like the profile and think they are attractive (I will admit that looks have something to do with it as well; looks as in if I think she is cute or what have you, not involving the race of the person). Race has nothing to do with whether or not I reply.

  11. Paul says:

    Is a wink counted as a sent message?

  12. Patrick says:

    I can’t imagine the sample size being all that large, but I’d really like to know how women responded to biracial men. Just in general. I’m extremely proud of my heritages but at the same time, I can’t help but wonder if I should choose one or the other.

  13. Joe says:

    This is just a minor, tangential note, but one factor skewing the response numbers might be that a lot of guys will write differently to girls of the same cultural/ethnic background as themselves — oftentimes in ways that would probably make them less likely to get replies. Other complicating factors might include people turning to online dating to find a ‘match’ of a certain cultural/ethnic background that’s uncommon in their daily life; I remember reading an article written by an anonymous CEO of a matchmaker service somewhere who stated that black men overwhelmingly avoid using the internet to find black women to date because “If I want to date a black woman I can do that normally, without using your service and without trying very hard”.

    I think the broad conclusions drawn here make sense — just saying that delving into the details will produce further complications. It’s a fascinating topic, and I’m glad someone’s putting the data out there.

  14. Marco says:

    I’d have to agree with “Silent Male” here – this metric is fairly retarded. People reply to whom they’re attracted to. I am sure some folks do that (to a degree) based upon race. For instance, I’m a white male, and while I will date ANY RACE, I happen to be more attracted to some than others. But what it always boils down to is – would I be attracted to this person sexually (1st – because the 1st thing I see is what you look like), and then after reading the profile – would I be interested in this person’s personality type?

    That being said, if an Asian female likes Black guys, and she only responds to them – that’s her perogative, and doesn’t make her racist. Also – I don’t think cultural & social things are being taken into account here. I happen to LOVE Indian women – but by and large most Indian women I have met won’t have anything to do with white guys, but even less so if the white guy is tattooed or anything different than preppy. I have talked to many Indian women about this, and by and large they say this is due to pressures put upon them by family (cultural) or by society. This doesn’t necessarily make them racist.

    Maybe if you removed the whole race but from the site, people might not focus on it as much. Then they’d be filtering matches based more upon compatibility.

  15. Nick says:

    i think the charts show the opposite of racism. i think it shows that there is more diversity in dating since people arent staying within thier own nationalities. Yes, race is a factor but it shouldnt be called racism. if a girl dosent like a guy because he’s short, is that has evil as racism? its a preference and i think its a good thing that people are dating outside of thier races!

  16. Bowie Grant says:

    This is SO incredibly validating it’s not even funny. Everyone who is all upset, get over yourselves. Why would OKCupid make this up. Wake up and smell the coffee. Racism / Preference, whatever you wanna call it, it DOES have an effect. Now I know for a fact I’m not crazy….the numbers don’t lie.

    Thank you, OKCupid for your bravery.

  17. Jay says:

    Yeah, it affects a lot of things. ALl the musicians in Anchorage were leaving the Native Alaskan fiddler alone by himself – so we talked. And then, it is read, or more like hallucinated, into other things. My friend and I were going past an unattended plate of food at the school cafeteria cashier line. A guy came up to us and got hostile, blurting, “Oh, you hate black people huh? I should fight you now, but I’m too nice.” What a fuckwit – yeah, we could really tell what color he was by looking at this unattended plate of meatloaf and potatoes. Assholes come in all colors – and he was a huge crappy one.

  18. Sharazel says:

    Don’t you all see what this leads to, this “many definitions” of racism? It allows you to paint almost anyone (or at least, anyone white) as a racist, since if they don’t meet one definition, you can always find another. Fine, let’s grant that having racial preferences for ANY REASON in dating is racist. Then, I’d have to say, it’s not always wrong to be racist. It’s fine! Dilute the meaning! Let it mean all sorts of things beyond its true definition of judging an individual on the basis of race. And in the end, people won’t care if they’re called racists anymore. That’s probably for the best anyway. It’s like when people are called anti-semitic for opposing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Israel. It just doesn’t have the impact it used to. So, go ahead, call people racists. Blunt your own weapons by overuse. Just don’t come crying to us when ACTUAL, vile racists are more active in their hatred because nobody cares about your accusations anymore.

  19. Frank says:

    This obviously isn’t a scholarly journal, so you obviously have some license to make claims without the kind of rigorous justification one would expect from an academic publication. But. Particularly when dealing with a potentially inflammatory issue like race, and especially considering that much of your audience in this forum will likely not have a great deal of expertise in social science research, it would be extremely well-advised to be careful about the kinds of broad and not very well substantiated claims you’re making here, the tenor of the rhetoric you use to make them, and how you justify them.

    But let’s be charitable. Perhaps we should take your post’s title — “Your race affects whether people write you back” — to be the (more limited) claim you’re properly making. To be sure, this one seems convincing face value—it’s certainly in agreement with anecdotal accounts, and your data seem to support this claim completely.

    However, it’s clear that you don’t restrain yourself in the body of your post nearly as much as you do in its title. Aside from the general accusatory (if playful) tone of your post, your central claim here is that “Racism is alive and well.” This claim is extremely problematic. For starters, you haven’t defined your terms. What precisely do you mean by ‘racism’ in this context? Why should we consider what may merely amount to aesthetic preferences (which one could argue are overwhelmingly conditioned by acculturation), to be ‘racism’? Perhaps we should, but you haven’t even attempted a justification.

    More problems: you rely on a pair of poorly designed user-written survey questions to substantiate what you call “theory/practice schizophrenia”, and which appears (perhaps I am wrong, but it hardly seems outlandish to interpret it this way) to be an accusation of hypocrisy. That’s a leap. Don’t get me wrong—again, perhaps you’re right–but it’s still a leap. Moreover, we know (I know) very little about how representative your sample (of okc users / all okc users) is. Indeed, we don’t even know what it represents — are these users worldwide? In the US? None of these questions are answered.

    My point, in short, is the following. These data are interesting, and this was certainly a thought-provoking post, but as a matter of policy, I think, you should make damn sure you know what you’re talking about when you talk about race. *Especially* when you start calling people racists. And that, in effect, is what you’ve done here. Perhaps you define ‘racism’ in a specific sense — perhaps as a phenomenon which doesn’t necessarily imply the conscious complicity of its participants. But that’s not how the term is generally glossed by the layman, and you should be mindful of that.

    For various personal and biographical reasons, race relations are extremely important to me and I’ve spent the better part of my adult life working toward trying to engender better harmony and understanding across cultural lines. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this time, it’s the importance of restraint and humility, and cavalierly making the kind of claim you’re making here, I think, is irresponsible and counterproductive.

  20. csoNarcloft says:

    Holy crap. I can’t believe the outpouring of anger this post prevoked. Wait… Yes I can. Let me reword that. I’m surprised by how many words were put into the author’s mouth post posting. I think its fairly obvious that this whole thing was done tongue-in-cheek. I also think its pretty self evident that OKcupid wasn’t condoning racism or decrying those individuals sampled for having a racial preference. I think it was merely an interesting statistical analysis with no sinister or evangelical motive. Yes, he cracked a few jokes about us being racists. No, I don’t think he meant them. It was just a statement of the facts intended to be taken as it would by the individual. The data doesn’t lie. Anyone who tries to attach a deeper meaning probably does. So people are attracted to members of their own ethnic background? Does that surprise anyone? We grew up around others like us. We’ve looked at pictures of pretty people who look like us all our lives. Of course our definition of beauty is going to fit into that mold! Doesn’t mean it should or shouldn’t. Doesn’t mean it will or won’t be that way forever. Its just hard mathematical data. And fascinating at that. Its science, kids!

    Interesting side note: The comments on this post prove all races equal. At least one person from every demographic represented was offended by a post that was meant to be humorously informative. On the other side of the spectrum, I think nearly every group also had at least one dickhead who purposely played into the data and essentially admitted being a racist. Isn’t it comforting to know that oversensetivity and ignorance come in all colors?!

    For my part, I’m a white guy. Nobody took more of a beating in this post than me. And I took it with gentle good humor. You know why? Because I’m comfortable with who I am and who I like. Yup. I like the blue eyed brunettes with soft white skin. I like the japanese girls with their big smiles and their almond eyes. I love the jamaican ladies with their sexy accents and their mighty fine hips. But mostly, I just like who I like when I meet them. If you were offended by this post, I surmise you have either been wronged at some point in your life, and I apologize for that, or you have done wrong and you’re ashamed of it.

  21. Observer says:

    Good work. Proves my suspicions. So much for the social networking. I have been wondering why that is. Culturally we are bombarded by an image of a standard male and female. That becomes the quintessential measure. Moreover it doesn’t help when media portrays men and women (mostly men) of non-white ethnicities as stereotypical caricatures. In a less informed society that quickly becomes a norm. I really hope that technology will help lean the mess of the past and humans will find ech other beyond the layers of prejudices and biases. I still am awaiting a single response after 200+ messages sent.

  22. Observer says:

    Don’t need to educate already brilliant team but would like to emphasize that this is the goldmine of data and can be used to educate the most primitive sides of us. This a wonderful forum to help clear the stereotype and level the playing field.

  23. Jessie Maims says:

    Silent Male:

    “If the argument that being gay is a matter of biology, and not social conditioning, is valid, then why isn’t the argument that being attracted to a certain set of physical features, and being repulsed by others, also a matter of biology ?”

    Because the results don’t make sense, from a biological perspective. If everyone was attracted first and foremost to their own group on the chart, that would be a distinct possibility that we’d have to consider, along with cultural conditioning and affinity/taboos and social penalties, etc.

    But… do you honestly believe that all races of women are biologically predisposed to be more strongly attracted to white men? If so, I have a bridge to sell you, sir. j/k

    White OKC members shouldn’t see the results as some kind of indictment on/of them in particular — christian’s snarky comments are probably more self-deprecating humor (because OKC’s staff probably consists primarily of white people who are mostly attracted to other white people) than anything — the white results are pretty expected, and actually line up with real-life dating and marriage patterns, because most racial groups generally prefer their own. Some of the justifications/explanations/defenses proffered have been kind of… interesting, though.

    Hopefully, what’ll come of this is a more efficient search and/or matching mechanism that allows people to specifically see people from the races that they want that actually want someone of the searcher’s race. This would actually benefit less desired groups more than the current system as it stands, which results in a lot of wasted time for Indian men, Asian men, and black people of both genders, and a lot of unnecessary inbox clutter for Asian women, white women, Latinas, and probably white guys. Ideally, individual preference information would be clandestine to cut down on both harassment (the “not being shown to undesired groups” would help here, too) and dishonesty for the sake of appearances.

    We’ll reschedule the colorblind utopian f***fest for next millennium, perhaps. :)

  24. Nico says:

    romantic, sexual, social or mating preferences that show trends along racial lines is NOT an indicator of one’s racism.

    i may not like soul food. that doesn’t mean i want soul food restaurants banned from my neighborhood.

    there’s no disconnect between what race people prefer in a mate, and whether it’s ok for *others* to date or marry outside their race.

    it’s sad that this is not blindingly obvious to people.

  25. Well says:

    I see heteronormativity is alive and well here at OKCupid too.

  26. John Ezell says:

    I love how everyone who points out that race and gender and everything isn’t important at all blatantly go out of there way to point out what gender and race they are. Pot calling the kettle black aren’t we kids?

  27. dpr says:

    I’d be totally curious to see the racial data on gay and/or msm contacts. I’m sure that is a whole different can of worms.

  28. Cimmarron says:

    Having a racial preference logically implies racial discrimination and that is by definition racist.
    However, no one said that one is racist for having a racial preference. No one is passing judgement her, but the fact that one has such a preference is in all probability due to racism.
    For example, most people marry within their race. Most people also marry those who live within their proximity. Taken together the implication is that people marry within their “race” because they live near others of their “race’. However, the fact that people live almost exclusively among others of their race is, in America, due to racism. Matter of fact, the fact that we have different races, white, black, etc. is due to racism. Choosing to divvy ourselves up due by race and assuming such division is natural is a racial/racist thinking that is a result of racist policies.
    Having a physical preference is not the same as having a racial preference( especially when among Hispanics and Blacks who tend to come in all colours) There is nothing natural about prefering a person of the same race as race is not a natural category. It might be natural to prefer those whom one perceives as being like you however, why is race such an important category in that regard considering it trumps the meticulous and accurate system of matching Ok Cupid has painstakingly developed.
    Selecting ones mate in part based on race is to say that race matters for me when I make mating decisions.
    Does that make one racist? Maybe not, but your sure as hell not “beyond race”.
    Personally, I dont’ care about individuals dating habits however, when the data ls analysed, thei impilcations are disturbing and are evidence that large, structural forces are still at play that cause race-based inequalities to persist in ours supposed fair society.
    Oh, and for those who use a few “bad” experiences or statistics or media to excuse their racial discrimination perhaps you would agree that based on my viewing of to “catch a predator” which disproportionately features white men or the fact that most of the sexual predators in my neighbourhood are white me, I am justified in encouraging the women in my life to avoid white men as they run the risk of meeting a pervert.

  29. Keegan says:

    These results have nothing to do with the media or power. The fact is white physical and social features are the most desired around the world.

  30. Fair and Honest says:

    I am not surprised by your findings. Although over 90% of the people responded that interracial marriages were okay, about half of white responded that they prefer to date within their own race. Society is more open but people are still the same as far as their personal prefaces.

    I’ve been studying race, gender and sexuality issues for years and professionally worked in advertising. To the latter most people have no idea how powerful the media is in subconsciously affecting their personal choices that they think are “natural” choices of “personal taste.”

    Is it any wonder that most white women from the interior and city suburb are attracted to the “All-American Abercrobie” type guys even if they move into the city and consider themselves “cosmopolitan?” No is the answer and, it is no different that them thinking they “naturally” desire a certain fashion and upwardly mobile lifestyle.

    Let me tell you folks that Madison Ave has you coming and going. It promotes certain things that we should reward, mainly white males. This is “naturally” why they get the most response and Blacks males don’t.

    Black and Hispanic males are portrayed as “less than” or are a sexual fetish in some cases. Asian and South Asian males? Well, they are not even on the radar for poster boys of strong male images like White males.

    I think what is interesting is how [the recent influx] Asians and South Asian in their assimilation to “American” values [over the past few decades] seem to prefer White Americans over Blacks even if they are of the same middle class background. They don’t really “see” themselves as “people of color.”

    Now you can’t tell me this is “natural” versus social and media conditioning to adopt valuing one group of people over another.

    Thanks for reading and I hope you all find happiness with whomever regardless of race.

    Peace!

  31. malkia cyril says:

    i am so impressed that okcupid did this study. this is reflective of a larger structural problem, and i’m so glad that instead of just making money, there is some attempt to improve the world we live in, or at the very least, reveal it. thank you.

  32. Miles Lacey says:

    When it comes to relationships there are many factors that we take into account when we look for a person whom we would go out with and one of them is whether or not our society, our cultures, our families, our friends and our communities would accept them.

    Who we find attractive is shaped to some extent by the society we live in. Until the 1960s inter racial relationships in many parts of the United States were not only condemned but they would’ve been nearly impossible because of the social, economic and employment consequences of maintaining a relationship. It would’ve been a bit hard going out with someone if you have to sit on seperate park benches, use seperate toilet facilities, sit at opposite ends of the bus and can’t eat in the same restaurants or go to the same drive-ins. The legal segregation may have ended but the attitudes that allowed it to survive for so long largely haven’t. I’m not saying that Americans are racist, I’m simply saying that American attitudes towards inter-racial relationships are still heavily influenced by segregation. Even in this day in age it is extraordinarily rare to see an American programme where a relationship between a black person and a white person is portrayed.

    In New Zealand we never had legal segregation. Thus, while inter-racial relationships might’ve been frowned upon in certain circles, it never had serious social, economic or employment consequences for those who were in such relationships or the off-spring of such relationships. For that reason, inter-racial relationships are so common here that it is the exception rather than the rule that ethnicity would be considered when considering a partner either consciously or subconsciously for a relationship.

    Anyone who claims that social conditioning doesn’t affect who they go out with to some extent is an idiot and a liar. Part of that social conditioning includes which ethnic groups to go out with.

  33. malkia says:

    what’s even more revealing than the study is the comments. Despite evidence of racism, people are so hell bent on denying its existence and certainly their own culpability, suggesting that these trends are the result of “personal preferences”. This is just evidence that the right wing framing for personal responsibility that places no responsibility on trends, government, corporations, conditions, or anything and all responsibility on individuals- has worked. It is disappointing that even the most “enlightened” folks can be so blind, and sadly, dumb.

  34. Sarah says:

    Hmmm… I think its raciest that you guys are backing white people in to a corner. On top of that this doesn’t make anyone racist. People just have dating preferences. It doesn’t make them racist when they have a preferences on skin color. There are also preferences on hair color, eye color, height, and just the very all appearance of a person. At some of these qualities in which they prefer are only found in certain races. Just because people prefer different qualities in people doesn’t make them racist. I mean most people are attracted to blue or green eyes because brown are to common. Does that make them racist? Another thing try doing these calculations in different country’s and different states. I bet you every time you will get different calculations.It is idiotic and ignorant to call people racist due to dating preferences.

    Don’t you yourself have dating preferences?
    Nobody can help who they are attracted to.

    -Sarah-

  35. Seth says:

    yeah. I don’t necessarily think this is an issue of racism. I’m a 22 yr old white gay male, and all I’m attracted to is hispanic, asian, middle-eastern and pasific islander men. I am not attracted to white or black guys. I don’t know why, I’m just not into them. And I am as white as can be, being the redhead I am.

    The statistics are interesting though. I just think the point you are trying to make is a bit askew on the graph.

  36. Seth says:

    The point I was referring to was that racism is alive and well.
    I’ve always known race is an issue when it came to dating. See my previous comment.

  37. Heathecliffe says:

    Well, growing up in a very diverse place like Los Angeles, I always thought I was so ‘plain’ being a White chick, but apparently I have something going for me! And now I know it isn’t personal when White men don’t respond – they don’t respond to many people according to this.

    Really, is this so controversial? I think it illustrates something, indeed, but necessarily racism? I have friends of every race, but dating is so much more personal a thing. We are drawn to people with similar backgrounds so why not our own race? I’m actually more shocked that the majority of races aren’t as fixated on dating their own as Whites are, To me this shows the influence of a media that feeds us ideas of who is beautiful and powerful. White women dominate magazine covers, so is that what makes them the no. 1 choice of all men? White men tend to hold all the powerful positions and wealth in this country, so why wouldn’t they be the no. 1 choice of all women?

    Personally, I have a strong preference for men with a VERY pale complexion and jet black hair. It’s something that I am instantly attracted to. This sort of automatically eliminates most men (even tan Caucasian men!) from the running. However, you’d think this would make Japanese guys attractive to me, but it doesn’t. If only attraction was that easy to figure out!

  38. haydendane says:

    I feel its got a lot to do with perceptions people have. People are judgmental, and as far as I am aware the west certainly does not have a good view of Asia or Africa. And i feel that has had an adverse effect on the minds of white people especially when it comes to relationships.
    However, in contrast this is certainly not the case with Asians, I have no knowledge of how Africans perceive things. I know many Asian women who would rather date a white male rather than an Asian, simply due to the developed nature of their country or due to the aura left by the white man during colonial periods. Yes it still exists. Especially, in a country like India where many people thrive on backward conceptions, things like these are common, and the simple factor that they have a large population increases the percentage on your analysis. Another thing there are even bollywood movies which reinforce this concept for instance “bride and prejudice”. Don’t watch it stupid movie!

  39. Haydendane says:

    Maybe in an era where the East might be far more stronger than the West things might turn around.
    There might then be the case of Asian women replying back to Asian men alone.

  40. Haydendane says:

    I also feel that, since this analysis is based on the activities of people who are not in close contact has added to the numbers. People tend to rely on their perceptions more often when they are deprived of information. Though profiles and chatting try to alleviate these barriers, I however feel that meeting someone in person can never be outdone. In such a circumstance there is far greater opportunity of making a positive impression.

  41. Dan says:

    As an Asian who grew up in a 98% white community his entire life, I can say that I personally feel that I have to work harder than a white male to get a date. That for me to make it so a girl is interested in me, I need to be extra attractive in every other trait besides being white in order for a girl to take notice. I actually kind of consider myself white too just based off who I grew up with. I am more attracted to white females than Asian females. I probably have a higher attraction rate to them than white people, but I definitely am more attracted to white girls because thats all I saw growing up.

    I personally think that the product of where you grew up is whats going to influence how you feel towards a certain race. Being charismatic through out my early years, I hope that the girls I had classes with at least feel a little more obliged in responding to an Asian male just because I was a part of their life early on.

    I knew going onto a dating site, my number of females that I would get responses on would be about the numbers that the graph shows. If you’re at a bar, you’re not going to go up to someone of the opposite sex and just start talking to them if they are gross looking. We talk to people we’re attracted to. Thats what it all comes down to.

  42. Marc says:

    Jessie Maims, I want a true colorlind utopia where the color of one’s skin has no consequence and I want it now. I demand it(I sound irrational, but I don’t care because I want what I want). Unfortunately, being a certain race or color has consequences. People are often treated a certain way because of race and color, and often badly at times. That is not the world I want.

  43. Critical Thinker? says:

    Seems there is a very important point being missed by many of the respondents here. Nowhere in the blog did they say that racism was good or bad. If you could manage to leave your preconditioned media damaged knee-jerks at home for a bit, you might see that the blog was entirely about ACTUAL and REAL activities of the people here. There was no judgment placed beyond the occasional injection of humor into what is clearly a touchy subject.

    Before you condemn the author for racist views, or get defensive about your own, look at the reality of this situation. People on this site ACTUALLY reply to folks based on race. So what? Does that make us bad people? Nope. Makes us humans.

    You might also consider looking up definitions of key words, such as racism. At its root, the term racism simply means determining actions based on race. We all do it. Any organization that uses “Affirmative Action” is by definition racist. The negative twist is only when you make the same racist choice even against any evidence that your prejudicial racial determinant is wrong. If I normally don’t respond to black women, that’s likely because I am a white male. Not really saying anything about me as a person. If the initial message from a black woman indicates that she read my profile, understood what I like, and included jokes that make me laugh and suggests music I might like, then it would be wrong of me not to reply and at least say “thanks for the laugh. I’ll have to check that group out and listen to some of their music.” I did not see any data to suggest that sort of prejudice here, as they only talked about first responses. Of course, noticing such details requires some critical thinking, or at least a refusal to post until my knee stops jerking…

    What truly condemns us as a group are the last two questions, and OUR OWN response rates. We profess to be “colorblind” and yet we clearly do not act that way. Again, this doesn’t make us racist in a negative way, this makes us unthinking respondents to media induced POLITICAL CORRECTNESS. That is the truly saddening item here.

    For those who want to say that statistics can be used to manipulate folks, I have to ask: Do you hold the same standards for your favorite news media outlet? Do you require them to post any useful data supporting their claims that “the most recent poll of US Voters shows X” during the electoral silly season? Do any of you realize that a poll of self-selected respondents of 2500 possible voters is statistically insignificant in a population of over 300 million people? Seems you do not.

    Jessie Maims, gotta agree with you on a number of points. Nice to see that some folks leave their brain running while putting their fingers in gear to start typing. :)

    [rant=OFF] ;)

  44. Z says:

    I’m a social scientist (poli sci) and the most obvious question is whether this comparison is valid. Are the white, black, asian, etc. groups of daters identical *except* for their race, so that we really can be confident that race itself is the causal factor? There is no evidence that this is the case.

    Nevertheless, there certainly are noticeable patterns among inter-racial dating. Oh well. People are free to date whom they wish. There are a thousand ways to make youself more attractive to the opposite sex, but altering one’s race is not one of them. Why dwell on this? Just what do you plan to do about it?

  45. Penny-Elizabeth Neil says:

    Wow, what an enormous waste of time. When someone of one race writes to someone of another race and doesn’t get a reply…that’s called preference, not racism. I’ve had men from all over the world contact me on this site, and I respond mostly to the ones from my city and English guys. Does that mean I’m racist against everyone who doesn’t fall in these lines? No- it means I’m looking for people close to me so I can meet up with them, and English men- because I like their accents.

    I prefer white men to black men because I like pale skin, that’s not racism- it’s preference. I prefer women with dark hair rather than blonde, that’s not racism, that’s preference.

    Stop seeing people as their country of origin (and stop insinuating we do too) and start seeing them as people with deeply complex psychology on what they find attractive, and what they prefer to pass over.

  46. Loser says:

    This is silly. Just because I am not attracted to most black guys does not mean I am racist. I just do not physically feel an attraction. Same goes for most Asians. Not messaging a black guy or an Asian guy back does not mean I have negative opinions about their racial background, it merely means that I am not interested. The same goes for extreme geeks and extreme jocks – would you call me prejudice against them? While these results are interesting, I think that using them to determine the racism factor is a bit much.

  47. Who is Good Will? says:

    One thing that isn’t accounted for purely on the numbers is the amount of obvious scam email. I can easily imagine white men getting more email than others from “lonely women” and not writing back. I have received quite a few emails, on OKC and other boards, from women who just happen to be on vacation in Africa or who are stranded in Russia and just need a few dollars to get home, or women who are in Nigeria but have become convinced by looking at my profile that I am the serious love that she is ready to commit to for life.

  48. Taylor says:

    IT ISN’T WHO WILL YOU MARRY. IT’S WHO ARE YOU ATTRACTED TO. When you talk marriage, or even relationships-then all the racists come out. But I am surprised this many people are saying that they are not ATTRACTED to people of other races. That is bull.

    Denial is the first thing that people do when you call them a racist. That’s why CALLING OUT racism never works to change anything. I have heard people use inflammatory words like the n-word to describe people, and you will still get people to defend those people by saying “Oh no, he’s not racist.” I have seen people dress in black face, squint their eyes, scream at Hindu Indians and call them Muslims-AND yet people still find a way to defend these people as non-racist.

    Nothing about “attraction” is biological. Don’t be stupid, when you have google. Eurocentric traits in the West’s heirarchy reign supreme. Period. Women who exhibit signs of hyper-femininity like submissiveness, long hair, pale skin, etc are usually stereotypically Asian and White women. That doesn’t make you BIOLOGICALLY attracted to those women, that just makes you so stupid that you can’t understand social conditioning. I am actually shocked that half these people on here claim they have a Bachelor’s degree. I don’t find tremendous fault in someone saying “Hey, I am attracted to White girls. Sure I know that society has pushed this image in front of me, I recognize that, and I attempted to accept all forms of beauty, but right now I am still really digging White girls primarily.” FINE. Or why not say that you recognize all the code word you are using are racially tinged (i.e. Can speak English, Culturally compatible, usually thin)-all code words for WHITE. LOL. your preferences are built from cultural experiences, a EUROCENTRIC cultural experience.

    I find it OVERT racism when someone says: I am not attracted to, Black women, for example.

    WTF. How can that be? Maybe you USUALLY aren’t, maybe you HAV been. Maybe you typically aren’t-but to say that you are just down right ARE NOT. No Black woman ever in your whole life, now or in the future-hmm, you are probably gay. I’m just saying. If I were dating a guy and he said “Oh, I am not attracted to Black women.” I would say “oh, you mean you NONE? Not even one, not even Halle Berry?”
    (And before someone stupid says, oh she’s biracial, well again, if you weren’t such a bigot, you would know that MOST Black people in the United States are mixed. ) And if that guy says “She’s ok.” I would say “If you had to pick which one you were ATTRACTED TO Sarah Jessica Parker or Halle Berry-and he says Sarah Jessica Parker.” I would either think he were blind or he was a racist. And I don’t want to be associated with someone who is racist. There are alot of very Eurocentric looking people of color. ALOT. So, if you can’t accept people of all beauty types, and you are stuck on Eurocentric features, etc, I still can’t imagine you not finding any woman, other than a White woman attractive. That is just appalling to me.

    This is from a girl who dated a guy, who kept saying that Beyonce looked like a man. At first I tried to ignore it, but then I just kept getting the feeling that he was gay. I mean, no one said you had to marry her, or even that the everyday Black women that you may see in your small town LOOKS like Beyonce. But I live in DC, where there are A LOT of very Eurocentric looking and acting (privileged) Black people-mostly Ethiopians and biracial Black people. And when this guy said that I just thought, TOTALLY GAY.

  49. WB says:

    The comment on scammers skewing the figures for white males is a worthwhile comment.

  50. BorgCollective says:

    Even if it is a “preference” as everyone is so quick to insist, you have to understand that these “preferences” reinforce racial segregation along dating lines. Don’t take it personally, but this country has a Major problem with race, other ethnicities… A lot of people coasting on “white” right now would not have been “in” 50-100 years ago. Italian and Irish Americans have come a long way in being accepted as white. Perhaps our current President is making other minorities more acceptable as well – I definitely felt that people were more relaxed and open-minded (in an interracial dating sense) after the election.

    It would be a wasted opportunity if we allow these stats to just trigger a knee-jerk reaction and go to waste – or to stigmatize OKC users specifically. It’s a bigger problem than that. My worry is that a lot of people come to this country (or were brought here) and work really hard to assimilate – in the past that has granted grudging acceptance. But sometimes it just feels like progress is SO SLOW and peoples’ resistance to diversity so thick! It feels at times that no matter how hard you work, or how American you get, how much of your own culture you discard or disdain, there really is no prize at the end, it doesn’t matter what you do – because the way you look you will never be “in”