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 repliesNo, 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 biasesAccording 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.
I left a comment about the data mining results in my OKCupid Journal:
http://www.okcupid.com/profile/BSAX/journal/516403571006914929/Does-race-on-Okcupid-really-matter-that-much-
I feel that it is prefrence not racism that either makes us reply to or ignore the message. Furthermore there are members such myself who are of mixed racial backgrounds and throw off your numbers… on my page it says that I am black or of african decent however I look pretty caucasion unless you really stare me down. I read in one of the posts above that black female senders do not write long messages BUT from my own person experience most of the messages I have recieved on OKCUPID (have been a member for 10 years …yess i used to be an underaged user lol) have been around the same length usually 20 words or less. It is interesting to see the numbers but honestly, being a black myself I know that people can and will discriminate cause we will never be black “enough” or white “enough” for someone else. This just turns up the pressure.
Reading the other comments was really shocking. Honestly, I don’t think it’s fair to refer to it as racist. I am by far one of the most open minded people that I know, especially when it comes to any thing to do with race, gender, sexual preference, etc, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a type or a preference. I get what you guys are saying, I just think that word is a little harsh.
On the site metafilter, people are always defending someone who says they have a sexual preference for a certain race or body type. They say it isn’t your fault who you are attracted to, you shouldn’t try to change it, you shouldn’t feel bad about it. I’ve always thought that was Bull. If you can’t look past appearance and judge people on other factors, you are shallow and evil, and in the wrong. You do NOT have the right to choose someone based on their appearance.
But, is it racist? When 45% of whites say they would prefer to date whites, I say yes, that is racist.
oops… being BLACK myself… is what I meant because being A black just sound as bad as this thread is trying to make us seem lol.
I am GuruOfReeason2 from St. Louis, MO, and am a black guy. My personal preference is white females, but I will date any female, provided that they are attractive. The statistics do make white people look racist. But I think that the statistics are very open to interpretation, and are not necessarily racist. Here are my thoughts on the results.
1. The United States is 67% white non-hispanic, and about 80% white (hispanic or non-hispanic). OkCupid is also very heavily white. In the US, whatever race you are (unless you are a black person living in hypersegregated conditions in the ghetto), you will be exposed to a lot of white people. Because of numbers, minorities have much more exposure to whites than whites have to minorities. But regardless of exposure, whites will end up dating each other because there is so much to go around. For every non-hispanic black man, there are there are 5 non-hispanic white men in the US. That means that even if many white girls love black men, their relative rarity (and social isolation) makes it harder to find and date one.
2. The numbers. again, show that white people are racist, if you interpret it that way. But let’s look at the stats from a different viewpoint. 7% of white people say that interracial marriage is a bad idea. However, that means that 93% of white people on OkCupid do not think it is a bad idea, and that is a very good and encouraging number. 50 years ago, the numbers would’ve been the exact opposite, with 93% being opposed and 7% either indifferent to it or supportive of it. Actually, the percentage of whites against would’ve been up to about 97% during those times.
3. 54% of white females would strongly prefer to date a white guy, and 46% would not. No problem for this black male. Black men are probably only 11% of the available American male population. That means that if every American black man would marry a white woman, then it would only decrease the white female dating pool by 20%. TAgain, white women are exposed to white men much more than others because of both racial segregation (neighborhoods and schools) and sheer numbers. If black men were a larger share of the population, the statistics might be different because of exposure. And exposure matters a lot when it comes to interracial dating. There are more white women on OkCupid who are open to dating a black man than there are black men. That means that every black man who wants a white woman can have one.
4. The statistics make it look like everyone wants a white woman or a white man, but that is not the case in real life. OkCupid probably attracts those minorities because culturally, it is geared towards the geeks/dorks/nerds. Do a search for blacks and whites and you will find that whites outnumber black men at least 5 to 1, and 10 to 1 for black women (at least when searching in the St. Louis area). And blacks do seem to like whites on this site. But that is likely because the blacks on here probably have more of an attraction to white people than most black people. Those who exclusively like other blacks are probably not on OkCupid, and are probably more likely to be found on Black Planet. And the whites who exclusively like black people and black culture are also on black planet. So I think that the environment and culture of OkCupid leads to the poll results.
5. Also, looking at the stats, there doesn’t seem to be huge disparities between the races. While black guys seem to have the worst luck with Asian women on here, still 17% of Asian girls reply to black men, which is not bad. Beyond demographics, there is still racism. But since demographics accounts for most of the difference, I don’t think that racism is a huge deal on this site. And if you are a minority, it will be easy to filter the racists because they simply will not reply to you or anything like that. Black women are getting the worst deal on this site. Black women are rare on this site, and the ones who are on here get the shaft more than any other women. This is very well racism.
I dont understand how this proves that racism is still alive, if someones preference of a particular race makes them racist then i guess im racist :S which isnt the case.
Oh dear…what are we getting into now?????? For those that would want to be with those that ARE in their skin color/race, you should take a better look in the mirror and try to figure out why someone like ME won’t want to be with you. Hell…I am a white female, and a BUDDHIST for that matter, but the racial background don’t matter to me at all (I do have a real weakness for guys outside of my race, mainly Hispanic, American Indian, and Asian), because I honestly don’t think that two people that LOOK alike (race/skin color) share common morals or values to a science. To further prove myself, my brother-in-law is black while my sister (the one he’s married to as I have two sisters and a brother) is white. I’m honestly for interracial relationships, bring it!
I don’t think it has to do so much with skin color, but the personalities of each race. In the area I live in, there is a certain stigma with black men and with hispanic men. my longest relationship was with a black man while I’m white, but as a general rule I don’t date black men because of the way they dress, the way they talk, and the way they treat women. It’s the same with hispanic men. I don’t like their personalities as a rule, but I don’t discriminate until I find out whether or not they’re stepping outside of the stigma that their race or ethnicity has built around itself. I may not reply to certain messages because I ALWAYS check pages first and a lot can be said about the grammar, likes and dislikes, so on and so forth.
I think racism is more subtle than the commenters here realize. For one there are centuries of opression that have never been rectified. This is obviously going to affect how whites see minorities, how minorities see whites, and how minorities see themselves.
Your asthetic or visual preferrence is very arbitrary. That’s why we have historical trends of what society deems beautiful and what it fetishizes. There are only a few things that I remember are common for everyone, like symmetry and proportion. I do believe the color of skin people prefer has more to do with beliefs and assumptions than people want to admit. It doesn’t take a study like this to see it. I see it all the time. Look at schools, neighborhoods, groups of friend, prisons, etc. In San Francisco, which prides itself on being liberal and open minded, there is extreme segregation in schools, neighborhoods, and social gathering. My sister used to live in the Mission back when it was mostly Latino. Not too long ago she took some very Latino looking friends a block up from Mission street to a Valencia restaurant and got the most horrible looks.
Black women are incredibly beautiful with amazing bodies. Not all of them are, just like any other race. There are beautiful people of all races. Do you only eat vanilla ice cream because it tastes better than all the others? These are only “REPLIES,” not marriage engagements. White men used to love full figured women, until something ugly changed that. I hardly ever see a white woman with a body as rockin as a black woman, or latina, etc. I understand choosing someone based on culture, but you’re all Americans on OKCupid, the cultural similarities at this point far outweigh the differences.
I don’t think it outright consciouce racism, but racism has a lot to do with it. I’m conscious of my discrimination. For example, I don’t take Americans as seriously as other nationalities. I think Americans are superficial, materialistic, and dumb, but I’ll still date an American born woman. Why not? They aren’t all bad.
Did you correct for message length/messaging no-no’s (http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/09/03/how-to-get-people-to-reply-to-your-messages-in-online-dating-part-i/)?
I don’t doubt that many OKC users have strong preferences about the racial background of prospective mates — but I’d like to know whether there’s any data about the content of people’s messages by racial group.
An earlier entry made it fairly plain that low-brow abbreviations like “ur” (in place of ‘you are’…or perhaps also your…whatever) co-varied rather dramatically with low response rates. Are their any robust findings about how often people, by race, use those words? Do you think it’s correlative or causative?
Also — are there any findings about the outliers? Example: I know of a few African American men who have done quite well on this site. Are there any statistical regularities about these people? Are they better educated — are they taller — is their success explaninable by any combination of their traits? Are their higher response rates correlated more-closely with their having a particular messaging strategy (as a group)?
…A related question though…
Is there a meaningful way of talking about the people high on the ‘OKC-foodchain’?
The core of people who have high response rates, and high ratings…are there stable tropes for them?
We all know the benefits of using an on-line coupler, there are any number of commercials and advertisements cheering the benefits of using a matchmaker. Sometimes the key to a successful dating is starting with a little help from the outside
What makes a Professional Matchmaker Do?
Professional matchmaker always works with clients to analyze the things that they need in a relationship. You can see in people and read them before they say a word. After a few minutes of conversation a matchmaker can make familiar to him or to deal not only with the type of person you are, but the kind of person you are looking for. This helps them to find your perfect match. This does not mean that they are right the first time, but they will try again and again.
What does this do?
Most people think of their relationship as their responsibility. You get frustrated when you have a different relationship not working. You get frustrated when people who have not the same goals and the same ideas about what a relationship like her. A matchmaker can help you step outside the box so that you are not from the same type of person and the same types of errors.
As online dating, have a professional matchmaker access to a wider number of people can meet as you go through your daily routine. A professional matchmaker, whom you can focus out, is leading to more chances of success and ultimately your soul mate.
This is awesome! I had long postulated vast discrepencies between races when it came to getting responses, and it’s fantastic that there is now real-world statistics to refer to.
My heritage is Indian, and despite my observation being superficial, it was nonetheless clear to me that I was going to have a much tougher time meeting somebody via online communications, and it felt it was a race issue. Sometimes I would initiate communications without mentioning my race, and I would receive responses easily, and in cases where I did mention my race I literally never received a reply. That’s not scientific, but it is sound observation on my part. These numbers definitely reflect what I’d been thinking for a long time, and not just for Indians, but what would be the case with other races as well.
All that aside, I don’t blame folks for being “racist”; we are what we are, which is actually racially sensitive, and there is not one person in the entire history of this planet who wasn’t a racist. It’s just built into our physiology, bilology, and our sociology.
Thanks for the great article. Now I have fodder in debates with my friends over whether race affects my chances in online dating
Asian women prefer other men? Not really. Asian people usually don’t use dating sites, it’s usually the gold diggers or unattractive desperate ones hounding for men of other races on sites like these.
Out of the professional, well-educated and attractive East Asian women I know only one of them is married to a white man. Out of all of the “Asian” women with mental disorders, self-esteem issues and broken homes that I know, all of them are dating white men.
That’s just the truth. I always knew that whites strongly preferred their own though, something whites have criticized me in the past for.
not surprised
I knew it.
There are a number of problems with this. First, people have fetishes. For instance I generally am not attracted to guys who are short. I may find them appealing visually but could not imagine them in bed. Does this make me a bad person? The survey uses logic that is based off of the idea that people on these websites are entitled to date who they want; and while these websites claim to be better then the meat market of a club scene, how many people without icon pictures get an email back? I doubt many. This is because people are inherently shallow about their dating lives.
If this is designed to advertise to people who are not dating as much out of their race that they could get a better deal or more selection if they were to increase their categories of interest. Well that possibly could be successful. It’s just as long as people understand that not everyone will be on the market .
Rather than calling everyone who dates within their race bigoted, do you perhaps mean to foster something more akin to dating etiquet? Where people are willing to message people back and be polite rather than just ignoring message from people they aren’t into? Dunno. That might work better than all the moralizing. Moralizing just tends to makes people angry.
Manners. That might be a good compromise. No one should be outright rude to others even if they aren’t into them. After all there are a lot of people on dating sites that aren’t into each other.
It’s so funny how everything has to be so politically correct today. I mean, come on, just because someone has a preference of who he want to be with makes him a racist? So stupid. One of my friends told me I was disgusting because I wasn’t attracted enough to a transexual to be with him. Really now? I cannot help that I am in no way attracted to transexuals or African Americans. That doesn’t make me racist or transphobic – that makes me honest! I don’t want any harm towards either of these groups and all should be equal – so, to label someone a racist because the doesn’t want to wake up next to someone for the rest of his life who he isn’t physically attracted to- that’s pushing it. And if that’s the definition of modern racism, then I am a proud racist.
I didn’t see anything in there in terms of relative NUMBERS of replies. FIRST, the truth is, we can’t sit on here all day every day and reply to every email we get. So even though white guys get sent messages more often, there’s only so many in a day/week you can reply to at all. So it actually makes sense above – that if white guys get more emails, they can only reply to a certain number and so their reply percentage goes down. SECOND, the same applies in reverse to black women – if they get sent fewer messages overall, they have fewer to reply to, and so their percentage likely goes up. THIRD, based on contacted/replied numbers, there should be some correlation to actually meeting up or going on a date. The more often that happens, the less time and inclination there is to reply to other emails.
I’d like to see: on average, the number of first contacts each type of guy and girl gets, and then the average number of replies – I think that would be more telling than overall percentages.
I’m not physically attracted to black women. This, apparently, makes me a “racist” in the eyes of OKCupid.
If you look in Webster’s, you’ll notice that many words have multiple definitions. Therefore, I’ll buy that under one of the more obscure definitions of “racist,” that I am racist for where my physical attractions lie.
I’m not attracted to men, fat women, or old women either. Does that make me homoloathic? A fat-o-phobe? An age-o-phobe? I don’t know…you’ll have to talk to the guys back in the shop, because when I was made, that’s how I was programmed.
However, we all know how the game is played. Being labeled a “racist” is the modern-day Mark of Cain. The 21st Century’s Scarlet Letter. To be “racist” is to be a Nazi. A KKK member. An evil white man. Just a bad dude.
I’ve never faulted others for their physical attactions. I’m unattractive myself. Geeky, on the short side, miserly, bluntly honest, hot-headed, opinionated, stubborn, unstylish, selfish, and a loner. I’m also increasingly old, about to enter middle age. In response, no woman has ever touched me unless her job description required it. (There’s a plus side to this – the gay guys stay away as well.) And yet I, unlike my cultural betters, am far, far more accepting of other people’s choices -if that’s what you want to call our programming -than the self-righteous blowhards who run this site and poison the airwaves.
In response to the PC KGB, I retort that anybody who tries to put me in the same category of “racist” as the Nazis and the like are racists themselves and are welcome to go fuck themselves with a roll of 10-grit sandpaper.
Duke Red
Yes we know white people are racist, these stats actually understate how racist they truly are
I’m not physically attracted to black chicks. Does that make me racist? I don’t care. Call it what you want to call. It is what it is.
I am black and mixed with choctaw and irish. I know that I take big chances by posting on a site not exclusive to interracial dating. My ex husband was white and we met on one of the most popular paid sites. His family had an idea in their mind defining black as criminals, lazy and trashy. After meeting and getting to know me, they had to redefine what they had been taught years ago. They saw that color does not make the person who they are. Race did not cause our divorce in as much as his character defects. He told me that I was the best wife (out of the other 2) and he screwed it up. I was his first and now he is even more open to dating another race.
There are a few interracial dating sites dedicated to just those open to dating outside their race. Yet I keep an open mind that there will be men of other races open to (dating outside their race), and comfortable in their on skin. Ignorance comes in all different shapes, colors, religion, gender and whatever I may have missed.
I know that racism is alive and that is sad. To me the one’s that are prejudice hold more bitterness in their own heart and will have additional hoops to jump through if not now then over a spread of their life.
So far this site does make it safe to view and not experience the rejection factor.
I think it’s ridiculous that you are trying to guilt trip people over the their preferences in this review.
Since when did ‘progressive politics’ become a requirement for who you dated?
It would be nice if we could get less of a subjective bias and more scientific/objective review of the data.
I don’t see the problem here at all. People have preferences and this site allows them to choose their preferences. They may discriminate on looks, personality, ethnicity, or skin color yet that does not mean they are racist. They just want someone who is similar to not feel vulnerable or out-of-place with their societal perspective. What IS racist is using such discriminatory perspective to cause harm, or injure, or deny actual human beings welfare, lives, or personal ethnic.
So far, this entire section of the blog just shows the general average of OKCupids population as to their personal preferences. What got out of hand is where the creator of this article and the commentors inferred from this information.
You guys are total dorks, and I love you for it. Please try to publish this somehow.
I live in New York City, am a black female, and am in no way surprised that black females get the least responses.
The BLACK Stigma
Our race has the least advantages in society, are most stigmatized of all races, and thus perceived as the least desirable when generalized. Individually, we are an amazing, beautiful people. We are successful in larger numbers than people realize. We are smart and innovative. Yet, we are defined by the few amongst us who project negativity. We are shown as AIDS cases (esp. black women). We are profiled on the news as criminal offenders more than our positive contributors to society are mentioned. There aren’t enough of us in numbers to be profiled so negatively without it influencing peoples’ perception of us. Now, it is easy for a person to see Michelle Obama, Bob Johnson, the black elite class, Tyra Banks, Jay-Z and Beyonce or just go to BlackEnterprise.com to read about our brilliant people, but it’s EASIER to accept blacks as we are projected. It makes people feel better about themselves also when there’s someone that they can feel superior to.
The Black Female
A study was done where blacks cited light-skinned females as feminine, and dark-skinned females as masculine. In most media featuring blacks as a couple, the female will almost always be lighter than the black male. She’ll likely be black/white biracial or Afro-Latina. If she’s dark, she likely will have an A-sexual role or be fat.
On many shows (like The View), there’s always attractive wome of other races, then a fat black woman. Again, A-sexual and/or comedic.
Since the days of Dorothy Dandridge, the black female object of sexuality has been represented by light and/or biracial/admixture black women who excude Eurotypic standards of beauty.
The rest are pretty much weaved and permed up, claiming the hairstyles are simply choices, yet you do not see any other race of women altering their hair texture to something completely opposite their own at the same RATE that we do. That says a lot about how we see ourselves and how we think others perceive attractiveness.
I need not mention the black men as black women in drag phenomenon. Geesh. We are the ‘butt’ of jokes. Speaking of which, some black women (I am being nice here) are a bit robust, and it has more to do with lifestyle choices than genetics. C’mon now, let’s be real. I am fit and get teased for not having a “booty” or eating healthy. There’s a sort of stigma attached to being healthy and fit amongst some of us.
Social Issues
The white man’s ice is colder…so goes the saying. This means that you can have the same product, but if it’s sold by whites, it’s (perceived to be) better! The same goes with objects of desire, I believe. Men of other races want what white men want, so it seems, and white men want in large part Asian and white women.
The Asian White Race (Hapas?)
I read the word “Hapa” on an Asian site. Forgive me if that’s an offensive term. I questioned the makers of a video that celebrated white Asian interracial kids, but did NOT include black Asians. Only one Asian replied, agreeing with me that it was odd. But was it?
White men have a social advantage as a group. A white man who is living paycheck to paycheck does not have an advantage over Will Smith (it’s a shame that I can’t think of many non-entertainment successful blacks w/out doing research myself). However as a group, the white male has a GLOBAL advantage. That’s how one (a prisoner) was mistaken for an attorney recently, and allowed to walk free. Perceptions.
Considering this social advantage, who wants to mess it up? If I were a white male, I wouldn’t. Hence they seem to date who fits into what society accepts – white and Asian. I see more white men with Asian women in person, in TV ads (major), movies, TV series and even a reality TV dating show. The KEY is that THOSE pairings are not even treated like interracial relationships. Those pairings are treated like the NORM.
Jon and Kate Plus 8 is in the news due to the divorce and scandal. I have YET to hear anything about their race. If this were a black and white pairing, race would be THE topic. In fact, they’d probably never GET a show due to lack of interest. I Love Lucy featured a Hispanic man married to a white woman, in the OLD days, and race again was NOT the hot topic. I mean, that was before my time, but if it was a hot topic, it wasn’t enough to keep it off the air.
Conclusion
This is just my 2 cents. These factors tell me as a black woman that all other women are okay to be seen with. Asian, white-cultured (not ghetto-ized) Hispanic and white women (not the chunky, ‘hood-actin’ ones that some black men get easily) are most socially acceptable for mainstream and successful (or those who desire to be) white men. They allow white men to maintain their social privilege. Whites who aren’t desirable tend to link up with average blacks anyway. Desirable ones attach themselves to money despite race.
So if black women promoted themselves as light-skinned with a lot of money and power, maybe there’d be higher responses. Or maybe not because white women have as much if not more money and power. Oh well. t’s best to be happy with one’s self and appreciate those who appreciate us
Excellent, insightful article!
Now, how about fixing your quiver algorithm to take people’s messaging requirements into account? I frequently receive quiver matches for people whose messaging requirements clearly indicate that they don’t want to hear from me, and that’s pointless.
Racism on OKC? yes of course, the whole world is racist. But then why do you have race as an option in ‘The Skinny’ section? Really if people want others to look past their physical preferences then the height and body type options should be removed as well. Going that far, we should remove the options of pictures too. However, then this dating site wouldn’t be as effective or as popular. We are going to break people into small groups based on how they appear, thats how our brains make sense of it. All in all, attraction is attraction. No matter how interesting a person is, if there is no initial attraction then the outlook of it going anywhere offline is limited. Also. being online, you’re allowed to ignore a message from someone you’re not interested in. This is different when it comes to real life, being polite and politically correct tends to rules us. Even when they get in the way of our feelings towards an individual.
I think users need to not take this OkTrend so personally. It is just a trend, not the absolute truth. There are always exceptions and trends have a habit of changing.
Interesting study. I think that it reveals biases, but I wouldn’t be quick to call people racist for not wanting to interact with members of another race on the net. I think on the internet, people look for familiarity and comfort, and people are in general more comfortable with members of their own race.
But with this inherent bias in mind, how does it relate to other possible interracial activities, like hiring decisions in a rough economy? I’ve heard that the real unemployment rate for black men in NY is 24 percent.
http://www.epi.org/analysis_and_opinion/entry/black_americans_face_an_especially_tough_job_market/
“In his presentation, Discrimination and Black Male Unemployment, Austin explained why many of the oft-cited reasons for this disparity are not accurate. His research shows that there was a large gap in employment levels even when blacks and whites had the same levels of education. Among men who did not have a high school diploma, unemployment levels in 2006 were 8.5% for whites but 18.8% for blacks. That same year, unemployment was 2.5% for white men with college degrees yet 5.1% for black men with college degrees.
Even having a criminal past does not appear to level the playing field. Austin cited research showing that employers were far more forgiving of white men with criminal records and called them back at a much higher rate than black men with similar records. One study conducted in New York City found that white felons received call backs or job offers more often than blacks with no criminal records.”
@ Truth Seeker- Within some Asian ethnic groups it’s pretty normal for the people to be into other races and stuff, but due to family pressure, they’ll end up marrying in their own group, Especially true among Southeast Asians in my experience.
In general though, I’ve seen most Asian women going for non-Asian (always white where I am). Most of the women on my mom’s (my Asian half) side of my family (including her) are married to white guys. Most of the Asian girls in my city (90%+ white, true) are with white guys, and Asian guys are single more often than not. For whatever reason, they don’t want to date Asians, and us Asian guys really don’t care about race (much), but get the shaft from just about everyone.
…granted, there’s a subset of white girls who actively seek Asian guys, but many (not all) are batshit crazy and watch too many Japanese cartoons. If only black girls were into Asian guys…
I don’t think that percentage of replies to messages is a good measure of “how much you like someone” in the slightest. I personally do not reply to anyone that doesn’t have anything at least a little interesting to say, all races included. A lot of OKC users use messages for different functions, not simply to set up a meeting or even to “give someone a chance”. I don’t think there’s any way expose racism using anything other that question responses and especially not using reply rates.
Jeez, as a black female I say lesbianism with other black women is clearly our only hope
I think many of the comments miss the point that although overall reply rates correlate well with match percentage (i.e. if you match someone well, you’re more likely to reply), and race hardly correlates with match % at all, which would make one think that reply rate shouldn’t correlate with race, it actually does. This implies that people are taking race into account when replying, even when on paper it shouldn’t matter.
I feel sad reading this. The lessons we’re learning about who to date…, I had someone tell me people should only date other people that look like them. I find that to be so narrow minded. I know it’s a preference, but it’s boring for me. I want to date someone with a different life experience so I can learn something new. I like to learn. But what really stood out for me as a black male is the fact that black males scored the lowest percentage for having a strong preference for someone in their race. Either we’re taught well to accept people of other races, or we’re taught to shun our own race. And from conversations and experiences I have had, I find the latter to be more common.
So I read both week’s blogs and I found them interesting. It’s nice to try to make this scientific and it really made me think. I appreciate OkCupid providing us with cold hard facts (with some humorous side comment in between) so that we can make up our own minds about this.
But the simple fact is: it’s very hard to apply science or statistics to attraction. Attraction is defined by what we have been told is attractive since we were young. It makes sense that living in places with very anglo-centric media will make us more attracted to whites. White women and white men, if you wanna put it blunt, have better chances than, let’s say, an Asian like myself STATISTICALLY.
But perhaps we should take this in a positive light: it’s easier to weed out the people that obviously just look at a headshot of you or a photo and decide then and there they like you or not without giving the rest of your profile, who you are as a person, a rat’s ass.
I hate to say it and I wish it wasn’t so but that’s just how MOST people are. But whatever, screw em =)
@ Countach
According to the the US Census, interracial marriage rate declines among Asians: “According to U.S. Census data, the number of native- and foreign-born people marrying outside their race fell from 42 to 33 percent for Asians from 1990 to 2000.”
More info here: washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/07/AR2009030701841.html
I guess one point in the less/ likely to respond for black women is that quite a few messages I got there were the Nigeria Connection kind of thing. I’m just not very inclined to answer to that, and I guess they probably are very likely to, since they see financial gain in that.
I don’t know if it’s enough messages of this kind to spoil the data, but considering that of about 20 women who wrote to me 3 were pretty much obvious Nigeria-connection-stuff, I can only imagine that it might take up quite a big portion of black female to non-black male messaging.
I stopped reading when I saw this: “racism is alive and well”. We will be forced to marry whom the author deems acceptable eventually.
Of course, the best thing about this poll is all the indignant bigots sputtering to defend their dating habits. Some of you folks are hilarious. I mean look at this dude:
” Truth Speaker
Asian women prefer other men? Not really. Asian people usually don’t use dating sites, it’s usually the gold diggers or unattractive desperate ones hounding for men of other races on sites like these.
Out of the professional, well-educated and attractive East Asian women I know only one of them is married to a white man. Out of all of the “Asian” women with mental disorders, self-esteem issues and broken homes that I know, all of them are dating white men.
That’s just the truth. I always knew that whites strongly preferred their own though, something whites have criticized me in the past for.”
What IS that? That’s off the chain. Shine on, you crazy, racist diamond.
”
It’s not racism, its a PREFERENCE.
Some people are simply more attracted to a certain pheno and genotype above all others, usually one that matches their own. Thats a preference.
Is this a crime, somehow?”
Ahahaha you think skin color is a substantial contribution to genetic diversity. Here’s a hint: skin color is a few minor alleles. Race is a myth we have created to push people apart, not some god-given thing people are born with. And yes, a racial PREFERENCE is racist. Hit the damn books.
To follow-up my comment that “race” has absolutely nothing to do with being “attracted to a certain pheno and genotype above all others: see http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/earthhistory/humanrace.html
” * Human beings have very low genetic variability. Probably the entire species is descended from a single family that lived about 200,000 years ago.
* Most (85%) of our genetic variation is within populations rather than among them, even when different sequences of DNA (or proteins) are examined (Barbujani et al., 1997 ). Statistical divisions of humanity based on different kinds of genetic data do not group people consistently into races (Romualdi, 2002 ).
* Many of the genetic distinctions among races are based on commonness versus rarity of certain alleles (forms of a gene), but the same alleles are usually found in all human populations. There are very few alleles (such as the one that causes Tay-Sachs disease) or genetic markers that are found only in one race, and those tend to be fairly rare within that race.
* Among the few genes that vary consistently between populations is the one believed to have the greatest effect on skin, hair, and eye color: MC1R (Ranaa et al., 1999 ).
* The greatest physical and genetic diversity among humans is among the people who live in Africa today (Relethford and Harpending, 1994 ).”
So, there’s a shocker, when you read huge social and physical differences into a set of ideas that western civilization essentially made up to keep poor black people from uniting with poor white people, you end up being wrong.
This is so intresting,but I think people should be free to choose people they want to talk to ,Like this thing of pictures people do not respond to my messages because there is no picture.to me this whole thing is about making friends Im not desparate for marriage no.Even if I was looking for a lover I would like that person to be my friend first before.There is abit of racism but hey its a free world,maybe I joined wrong site!!!
But Countach, the results show that Asian men DO care about race in the case of black women and that they’re particularly loathe to reply to them, even though they don’t get that many replies themselves and would conceivably have the time to craft a response. That being said, the amount of messages sent from black women to Asian men and vice versa is probably pretty low to begin with — even the people adversely affected by racial hierarchies of desirability, unfortunately, do and will continue to ascribe to them.
And did someone say that maybe black people are just inherently, biologically uglier as a group than everyone else on the planet? Surely, you jest.
I meant “subscribe” when I said “ascribe.”
calling it racism is too harsh, i am of a mixed race, both sides medditeranian, i’m not racist and i ca’nt be, i lived as a foreigner in few different countries for more than half my life, i have and had freinds of all races, i just am not attracted to african or asian women so i do’nt seek to converse on sites like okcupid.
not hitler, i just lik’em blonds and mildly brunnets
me again just adding to my earlier comment ( i felt i need to )
i guess it depends on what you are seeking out of sites like okcupid, if its just freindship then ofcourse any race would do, and even gender for that matter, but if what you seek is a relationship, then you do what humans do and check the image, if you are attracted( and your preferences are stisfied) you proseed with inthusiasm i guess
How about some data for the LGBT crowd?