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.
“Odds are that the white women that are receiving all of these messages and the white women that are sending a lot of first messages are different groups of white women, and likewise for the men sending the messages. The pool of white people here is large enough for many things to occur within it simultaneously, with a lot of room for variation, outliers, etc.”
I never said otherwise. Nonetheless:
o White women who write initial messages are ignored more often than any race except black women
o White women who receive initial messages are far less likely than white men to be influenced by the race of the sender when deciding whether to respond.
Which is why it seems to me that whoever interpreted these results is stretching the truth to make it fit their initial biases/hypothesis. The data definitely doesn’t suggest that white women are considered the prize in the online dating world. Nor does it suggest that white men are “even handed” when compared to white women, who apparently “only respond well to white men”. If we are going to say that white men are even-handed, then white women are even more so. If we are going to say that white “only respond well to white men”, then surely white men only respond well to middle-eastern women.
By the way, if you have “a lot of… outliers” that all skew the data in the same direction, they’re probably not outliers.
I think black men and women are treated unfairly but their is a God who knows beyond borders!!
“White guys are shitty, but fairly even-handed about it.”
I notice, that even the ‘shitty’ white guys respond about 10% or more of the time than women of ANY race.
The lowest response was black female to ASIAN male at 31%
Oddly enough a black man contacting an asian woman only had a 17% of a response.
Which means that the lowest response rate for any category of men to any category of women is still 14%.
The highest percent chance of any woman responding to any man is also still 24% lower than the highest for a male responding to a female.
There are no real ‘sweetheart’ ladies by race according to your data.
IF
Premise 1: On average, white people in the United States are wealthier and have greater access to high-quality education than non-whites.
Premise 2: Women of all races reply more often to men who have a higher socio-economic status than to men of a lower socio-economic status.
THEN
Conclusion: Women of all races will tend to reply to white men more often than men of other races, even when they have no information about the race of the men they are replying to.
Yikes @ population counts on the “Would you prefer to marry…” chart!
I wonder how this could into account parental influence? Personally, I find Asian, Hispanic, and Mid-Eastern girls on the whole to be more attractive than average usually; though I wouldn’t pass on a white cutie either; and though I (white male) am not racist, I do belong to a family where many of my predecessors are. As much as I’d like to say there isn’t a pressure or influence there, sad fact is that there is. It doesn’t sway my opinion too much, and I don’t write off others based on race (and yes, I date outside of the general preference, too); but I’d imagine a lot of people in my shoes would be. Especially in families where parents/forebears are considerably more powerful. Which I’m sure DOES exist.
i_found_3_quid, that isn’t fair. If that is truly the case, maybe I should try looking for a girlfriend somewhere like Canada or Europe.
As a black man, I feel like I will never get respect from women of any other race. I curse all women as racists. No black woman has the interests I have. I would like someone to prove me wrong but as of yet no one has. You hear me women. You are all racist.
I don’t respond to obese people, does that make me in some way fascist?
I certainly don’t consider people who are larger than I sexually prefer to be less intelligent or less deserving of equal rights. I just don’t want to be physically intimate with people I am unattracted to.
I think if you were to apply this blogs definition of racism to my outlook, you would have to say that I am indeed fascist – yet clearly my attitude is not one which the term is designed to be used to describe.
Racial preference is as far as I am aware – totally natural and not racist at all provided it does not exist through a misguided racial belief.
As someone who grew up in an area very prevalent in racism, I must say that I’m quite disappointed in this article. Racism is the act of consciously rejecting a group of people based on skin color/ethnicity. The keyword there being consciously. All across the world you’ll find people that prefer people of their own race or ethnicity over others. Not all, but most. It’s not racism, it’s what is known to them. People migrate to what is comfortable, and, across the board, the majority of people feel most comfortable with people of their own skin color because that is what they grew up around. Since they grew up around that, it is familiar and therefore, safe. Race isn’t the issue. It’s about being comfortable. Look at cultures that have their spouses picked for them still to this day. The ideal spouse is someone who is of their own skin color and, if applicable, their own tribe. In the end, it boils down to what are you comfortable with. That’s all
Premise 1 is false – Asians are wealthier on average and better educated on average.
I’ll admit, I don’t reply much. BUT nearly all of the messages I get are “Hey.” Wow, that’s fucking great, thanks for the message.
I’m tempted to go on to say that race really doesn’t matter to me, but that would probably sound really defensive considering the data present. So fuck it.
I am currently taking a Race and Ethnicity class, so this data made my day (not saying I’m happy with the results, just that it mirrors a subject I am currently studying).
One of the most interesting things we have been shown is that even through studying DNA tracers, we cannot tell one person from another in terms of race, ethnicity, or national origin. Heavy stuff when we look at these charts and see how prevalent prejudice– even if only at the subconscious level– still is.
I have to say, I did get a hearty chuckle at the comment about white males being shitty, but at least even-handed about it. Very nice.
Asians, blacks, whites etc WHO? WHERE?
It seems to me there is a confusion of concepts: what is “race” and what is “nationality”? Do black people in th US seems to think themselves superior to black people in Africa, and does the same thing happen with other “races”?
I would like to know the figures for the NATIONALITY of the users of this website, and that to be considered in the racism “analysis”…
I tend to think that is a problem with Americans: they think the “world” is the US, the whole planet is just like them and their standards, put numbers and data as “global”, and whoever is not according to US standards is “inferior”. That´s “cultural”: ie all the hollywood blockbusters where Americans save “the world”, and “the world” is the US, the aliens and monsters speak English… not only plain stupid, but hilarious.
So to me, there is an important piece of data missing from this “study”…
AGE!! is a much more prevalent prejudice than RACE on OKC… by far!!
This has little to do with racism. It’s to do with attraction. You wouldn’t call someone a racist because they only go for blondes.
Some racism is subconscious. Despite knowing that racism is stupid and illogical many people find it hard to feel comfortable around people of another race. Trust and comfort is a far bigger issue for women than it is for men because men have so much more physical power. This seems to be backed up by the results above.
Men and women seem are nearly identical to their view on interracial marriage yet women on a personal level are twice as likely to have a strong preference to someone of the same race. This is probably also to do with the differences in biological urges between men and women. A man biologically is supposed to spread his seed to increase chance of his genes surviving whereas a women has far better chance with a single stable father figure.
The exception of course is Asian women who are less likely than their male counterparts to stick to their own race. I believe this is idolization of the west due to Americanization of the East over the last 100 years and women in the porer Asian countries wanting to marry rich white men.
I think these results are exaggerated over the general population due to this being a dating site. I think there are many people like me on this site who prefer people of other races and cultures but find it harder to meet them in the out-side world.
Well, for starters…
Not having an attraction for another race is not racist. Hating another race is racism, degrading another race is racism, harming another race is racism… and only with no exceptions. (Eg, harming a person of one race, but being friends with someone of the same race does not constitute racism, as there is no solidity or unified “hate” for the entire race.)
I am a MUT white guy, and I like MUT girls, Oriental girls (some of them), I have had attractions for black girls (Jamaican and African), and I even had attractions for specific races like Italian, Spanish, Latin, south American Spanish, and some southern American girls. (Northern mutts are not the same as southern mutts.)
However, I don’t find a majority of the “black” girls that message me to be attractive, so now I am racist? I don’t like a majority of ladies with children, so does that mean I hate kids? I don’t message many females who message me… so do I hate women?
Get a real theory, and then you can submit your findings to a national agency. It is reasons like this, that they don’t accept YOUR input on matters of race, because you assume too much from too little.
If you find that many messages contain the phrase, “I hate niggers”, then you can say someone is racist… if you can prove that they didn’t just say that to stop a black person from pestering them, to be cruel, not because they actually hate people with dark skin. (Black is not just African, and black is more than one shade, many times not involving any specific race.)
When you assume… You just make an ass out of yourself, not me.
Interesting. Just a question. How did you define people’s ethnicity? By their self-definition? In that case I guess it is worth taking into account that a lot of people might not have filled in that section – are they included in ‘other’ or excluded from these tables?
Of course I don’t know exactly how many people of which backgrounds have left the ethnicity box blank but it just might affect your stats. Some people might well have left it blank for ideological reasons – because they think it really shouldn’t matter. If these people are excluded (and there are a significant number of them), you might get a more ‘racist’ picture than is really warranted?
Ok, end to geeky rant. Thanks for such interesting data though!
Other factors other than color do hold ground right. Well they should. So shut it.
I will agree that “All they have shown is that, on average, there are correlations between “race” and sexual preference.” But, I would like to ask you, before I continue, is if you think racism is not still prevalent.
I feel that it is still prevalent, but in less obvious ways then voter rights, lynching, and bus seating. I think, particularly in America, (I cannot speak so clearly for Italy, on this) that racism exists as a reinforcement of stereotypes.
Say for instance there is a popular TV comedy that pokes fun of “all” people equally. Okay, cool. But, who is the targeted audience of this show? Who is writing the script? Who is deciding what is being made fun of, at who’s expense, when? What gives them the right, the understanding, to make the joke or generalization of another person/group of people? Who gets paid by the success of the show?
So then these jokes from the popular comedy trickle there way in to common fraternity boy vernacular, (who may or may not be able to catch the irony of said jokes) where they are then spread amongst their homogeneous group of friends, where they all feel comfortable laughing. Then this becomes a subtle mentality- it becomes a “truth.” The stereotype becomes a reason, a piece of close minded rationality.
The stereotype is the reinforced, is seen in the minority, because it is being looked for. It’s the same thing that causes people to believe their horoscopes, a “pattern” recognition.
As much as no one likes to admit it, there is a certain level of privilege that comes from being born white in America, especially if you are male. It’s only been 45 years since the Civil Right movement. Things take a long long time to change, they haven’t completely become equal, and one of the worst things disable progression is believing that none is needed, because racism does not exist.
So looking at this data, I can agree that there are several contributing factors towards sexual preference. I will also be one of the first people to say that statistics is the mathematical art of lying- that depending on who is measuring them, different “discoveries” and “proofs” can be made. I will agree that there are multiple discriminating factors, from height, body type, religion, hair loss, kids, drug use, income, education, etc. The article acknowledges those other preferences in the section titled “More Compatibility Means More Replies (Normally).” This goes on to say “… 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.”
I re-posted this article because it is the first public, widely read/accessible piece of information I have seen on the topic. If you read the responses made on the article, you will see evidence of how ignorant/insensitive may people are. I commend the fluffy dating site for saying something that is so unpopular to say.
Forgive me for taking it so seriously, but, I feel that it is one of many serious issues that go mostly ignored/unrecognized by those who have the most power in changing it.
Danielle:
Black Women have 75% of the bachelors degrees of black people because black men are overall too busy being locked up in prison.
The question is, what percentage of black women have bachelor’s degrees compared to white women? What percentage of black women have children out of wedlock compared to white women? What percentage of black women are poor compared to white women?
I will be perfectly honest – I am far more likely to respond to a message from a white woman than a black woman, but not for any racial reason. I’m just more likely to respond to a woman without children, more likely to respond to a woman with a degree, more likely to respond to a woman who can write proper english, and when you put all that together, I’m more likely to respond to white women.
And that’s not because I’m a racist, it’s because due to the history of this country, black people are more likely to be born into poverty, are more likely to have poor family structures, are more likely to receive a sub-par education, are more likely to grow up in a culture that values things like gangs and attitude than education, and all of those things conspire, over time, to make black women less desirable than white women. But not because they are black, just because, overall, the black population in this country starts out disadvantaged.
Now, if a college-educated black woman with great grammar and no kids wrote me a message, I would reply to that message in a split second.
So I would like to see OkCupid redo this study and correct for factors such as has children, or education, or quality of spelling/grammar in the profile. While I doubt that would eliminate the racial disparity, I bet it would drastially reduce it.
[Quote]
John
I hope minority don’t take this study serious. I notice every once in a while, white people would post “studies” to highlight their racial superiority over others.
It is like when whites make up studies that highlight their positive while negating the minority.
This is just another propaganda by whites and their racist institution. What I find surprising is that any non-white people would go on white dating sites like OKC. Come on people, there are other sites that are catered to you.
Stop going to movies that only show white people. I think white people are disgusting people. They really do lack character and depth that is why they suck so bad.
As much as the media try to brainwash you into think white people are better, they are NOT. They hiding behind their numbers. Once they go under 50%, the hispanic is going to take over, whites will have hell to pay. LOL.
[End quote]
All whites are racist? doesn’t that make you a hypocrite. Yeah us whites have committed terrible atrocities but so has every race that has ever lived. People like you are the reason racism still exists.
This study isn’t racist, it’s fairly accurate scientific observation. It’s only by identifying a problem and it’s root causes you can solve it. Why the hell would OKC want to purposely alienate a large percentage of its customers?
[Quote]
Carlton Booze
This is such an interesting topic, one that’s not even broached on other dating/social communities! Even though my profile has been visited many times by white women, they will not write me back when I thank them for viewing it, or even say hello to them simply because they’re racist! And since that’s the case, I can’t be worried about it – I’ll just stop wasting my time on these sites, no problem.
THEREFORE , I HAVE TO CONCLUDE CATEGORICALLY THAT MY SKIN COLOR IS THE NUMBER ONE ISSUE WITH THESE WOMEN THAT MAKES THEM IGNORE ALL MY POSTS! THEY SEE MY SKIN COLOR AND IMMEDIATELY ASSOCIATE ME WITH ANY OTHER BLACK PERSON THAT’S EVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG IN HISTORY!
AND, IT SEEMS I CAN’T FIND A BLACK WOMAN BECAUSE MANY OF THEM ARE BREAKING THEIR NECKS JUMPING OVER ME SO THEY CAN THROW THEMSELVES INTO A WHITE BOY’S ARMS, EVEN IF HE’S UNEDUCATED AND EXCEEDINGLY MEDIOCRE!
BUT, LIKE GUCCI MANE SAID IN ANOTHER POST, THE WHITE WOMEN HERE CAN CONTINUE TO IGNORE ME; I’M NOT GOING TO LOSE ANY SLEEP OVER IT!
[end quote]
You’re right the colour of your skin is stopping you having the success in dating you want. Not because it’s an issue to them but because it’s an issue to you. Yeah black men get about 1/3 less responses than white men but that hardly makes it impossible to get a date there are millions or women who couldn’t care less. If it is an issue to them they aren’t worth your effort. Women want you to make the first move, if one percent of the women who look at your profile sends you a message you’re doing very well. If they’ve looked at your profile race obviously isn’t and issue to them. Your problem is most likely the messages you send or your profile. Thanking a women for looking at your profile is not going to get them to respond. Try confronting the issue head on and add some humor.
Try:
What’s the matter, Scared of the big black man?
Don’t worry I don’t bite. Say hi and tell me about yourself.
Also look at their profile add 2 observations and 2 questions.
This is agricultural fertilizer.
One can have a preference (i.e. hardwired attraction) for a particular race without being racist (i.e. believing that one’s race is inherently “better” than others). People cannot control who or what they are attracted to. Note that I am referring to physical attributes, not personality traits.
In the context of physical attraction, race is like hair color, body type, weight, or any other of the necessary-but-not-sufficient physical characteristics that makes someone “attractive.”
Without scrutinizing all the data, I have a feeling that many variables were not considered in the analysis. Variables such as: age, communication style, and simple attraction.
When I reply, I first and foremost pay attention to the way someone communicates. The way someone communicates can be a function of things like education, intelligence, motivation, class, and culture. It would be wrong to conclude that because Asian women “reply selectively” to black men that it is because they are racist. It could simply be cultural. Sure, I may reply to a “hey, how are you?” from someone I think is hot, while I wouldn’t bother with such a banal message from someone who I do not find attractive, but it would be wrong to attempt to analyze my beliefs about ethnicity based on to whom I am replying.
That said, this “study” doesn’t mean anything; it’s sensationalism, really.
I have a probably racist question to ask. Have you run the numbers on the correlation between race and word usage, specifically the words that are huge turn-offs? My own anecdotal evidence suggests that black men are much more likely to message me with things like “ur realy pretty”. I’m as likely to respond to white man who sends me that message, but white men don’t.
As a black man, I feel like I will never get respect from women of any other race. I curse all women as racists. No black woman has the interests I have. I would like someone to prove me wrong but as of yet no one has. You hear me women. You are all racist.
You say its cause of economic status? what about when your young and don’t have to worry about that? Whats the excuse then?
im not surprised about the race stats, but so what? how about running age stats,, 5 10 and 20 yr diff in male female
Firstly and foremostly, Anthracite, you are a riot. I’ve been having an awfully stressful month and reading your post really got me giggling. Your ignorance is stunning and hilarious, but probably dangerous as well, so I wish to make a suggestion- please enroll in a college level sociology course. There is still time! Don’t give up on yourself just yet, darlin’.
White Americans are fat and stupid. The food associated with them is mayonnaise. White people like to mix mayonnaise into things and then call it “salad,” and this phenomenon has been going on for ages. Sheesh. Everybody knows that. And what of soccer moms, I ask you? Is this not a white stereotype? There are obviously lots more, so I expect you to go and do some research on your own time, and then maybe think about the daft-cow-esque things you posted. Apologize to the globe, my friend. And if you think I’m wrong about the whole intelligence issue, just look up our average reading level these days. Holy retardo batman!
When I fail to respond to messages it has nothing to do with race. I’m just a picky, picky, nerd-face. I rarely respond to boring messages. I adore a humorous and entertaining profile. If a profile makes a person seem pessimistic or cynical, I typically will not respond. I don’t care for an over usage of sarcasm. I avoid people who happen to be much younger than I am. I almost always ignore those with bad grammar, poor spelling, or who snd mssges 2 U like ths. I shy away from those who are much older than I am. I like smart folks who show an above average command of the English language, and I like them to have a bit of style.
In real life, you better believe that I am not this picky at all. I freakin’ love all kinds of men, and have historically never been one to discriminate. Boys, boys, boys, I just love ‘em. However, this is an internet site. Potentially I could hook up with somebody who is a psychopath and end up chopped into tiny bits and buried in a corn field. I live in Wisconsin for pete’s sake. There are cornfields all over the place! I figure the fact that people are even looking to an internet site for dating assistance already makes them more inclined to be a bit off, and I don’t want to take any chances. An optimistic, humorous person is the only sort who may stand a chance with me in the long run. So hopefully they won’t be a terribly clever serial killer. And hopefully the don’t have the lye hidden in the trunk on our first date. If they are and they do, however, guess what color their skin is going to be? Yep. White. We all know white folks seem to be the only ones who spend a fair amount of time turning murder into a science.
A final thought for the ladies out there on OkCupid who’ve been ignoring non white males- In my experience, black, hispanic, puerto rican, and guatamalan men are great lovers. Yeah, there have been good white fellas here and there over the years, but those ethnic boys have ALWAYS exceeded expectations. So if you’re tired of the two-pump-chumps, and the guys you’ve been taking to the sack can’t spell the word clitoris, let alone find one, maybe you ought to retire your secretly racist ways and start answering some of those ethnic guys’ messages.
If I had to chose I will chose Latino guy but all people are good just Latinos seems to be so happy .
If I were a white guy reading this, it would be open season on hot abercrombie-identified black girls. LOL
Certainly dismissing a person based solely upon his or her race is simple-minded, and leads to foolish choices.
Racism must be defined as acting solely on the basis of race, and not merely incorporating aspects of race in one’s thinking.
To say that there is no kernel of truth to racial or cultural stereotypes, or none to gender stereotypes, or to personality stereotypes (geek, nerd, jock, type-A, etc.) is just as simple-minded and stupid as classic racism – i.e. basing one’s decision solely upon race or culture.
We are all human beings – born and raised in a culture, with biological proclivity to seeing patterns – patterns associated with all sorts of stimuli – including gender, race, culture, and so on. You cannot deny yourself the capacity to perceive patterns. You will see patterns, unbidden, undesired, or welcomed.
The difference in my mind between those who are idiots and racists is whether they examine the patterns for their meaning – their truth. Are they accurate – and to what degree are they accurate? Does this person actually exhibit that tendency, or not? Are you willing as an individual to deal with other individuals as individuals?
But even the most enlightened person, completely willing to accept and interact with all others on an individual basis, will by nature of the nature of their very minds, perceive patterns, some of which will fit stereotypes (or can be easily taxonomized as stereotypes).
I call bullshit on those who claim that racism is a particularly white phenomenon. All races stereotype other races. Just examine the stereotypes and cultural divisions in Asia – Korean vs. Chinese vs. Japanese – and those are only the most coarse-grained distinctions. I am quite certain there are all sorts of “racist” stereotypes that exist in all of those cultures about themselves and each other.
Everyone knows racism still exists, but on a more subtle level as years go by. If you had similar statistics every year for the past 50 years you would see depolarization of some sort.
Oh and the response rate of Middle Eastern girls is because women from the Middle East are hot; More specifically girls from Palestine.
Holy cow, racism is a touchy subject. This “data” clearly skews the realities to draw a specific set of conclusions to elicit conversation and generate advertisement dollars. And every single one of us fell for the bait.
Well done, OKC members. We’ve all proven just how gullible we really are.
There is nothing inherently racist in the data shown because it overlooks and down-right omits too many factors other than race. As many others have mentioned, age, kids, geographic proximity all play a role as well as race, body type, sexual preference, “what you’re looking for” and probably 20 other things.
Personally, I’m a white male. I’m supposedly in the most racist group from what I read of the data. I rarely get messages, but when I do, most are from people who simply don’t meet my idea of what I’m looking for from this site. Many are simply because of how poorly written their profiles are, assuming they bothered to actually write a semi-complete profile at all.
It can surely be argued that race is one part of the socio-economic factors that go into how well written profiles are, but once again, it’s not the only factor.
Racism is the concept that a race is inherently inferior.
Look it up in the dictionary idiots.
I’d like to see the length of a message factored into replies.
I often don’t reply short messages if they don’t say enough for me to bother with.
“ur cute” will not get a response from me.
You can’t really judge message quality, but message length has got to have a lot to do with the reply percentage.
Carol, I hear you. Christie, you are so right, sad but very true.
biggie:
I find this very true. I’m a black woman and when men see my picture, they don’t see what degree I have, or what job I have, or anything. They just see a black woman and probably think, “no way.” If that is the case, then those men are racists because they are making an assumption based on nothing. If you think that just because you see a black woman on a dating site that she has kids, no education and no job, then you are a very prejudiced person.
Though I am a Black female, and I am singled out on dating websites (and in the real world), I do not think that having a racial preference when it comes to a romantic relationship is necessarily “racist.”
However, if you are using racial stereotypes to determine who you will date, then that’s racism. For example, if you won’t date a Black female because Black women are stereotypically obese, or loud then that’s racist. If you won’t date a Middle Eastern girl because Middle Eastern girls are stereotypically terrorists or crazy then that’s racist, and so on with all the other racial stereotypes of each race. And, if you choose your friends in the same way, then that’s definitely racism.
Things I’m looking for are only qualities that can be found on the inside of someone, not the outside. I’m not saying I’m gonna date someone who looks like a beast, but race is not important to me.
I just want to thank the author for providing this sort of information. Regardless of the bazillion theories of why the statistics are what they are, most of which probably are true in one or another instance, I find just the raw data friggin’ awesome. I’m such a dork, I know. No where else on the net can you get the sort of statistics this site can throw out, and I love it.
maybe its naive of me to beleive but I think that we all are created equal and race should not matter when it comes to choosing your romantic partner. i personally perfer to date outside my race, but i have no trouble dating in my race as well. but lets be honest, how many people find true love using an online site anyways. for me it is much easier to pick up on guys in the bookstore than online. lol i know that this had nothing to do with the subject, i just wanted to say something. =] have a good day everyone.
Interesting. For a silly, not so serious site, I am surprised you would anlayze such data. Have not be here for a few months, an it is just refreshing, because it shows intelligence and courage on the part of the owners to even go there. Thanks, Mike
Why exactly are we completely attributing this to racism when much of this can be explained through biology. Sometimes a person is more attracted to a person of the same race more simply because that it is normal for humans. It is our minds that get us past a natural instinct to breed with people that are similar.
For myself I’ll completely admit that the people I respond more too tend to be white. I respond to them more because they tend to be more likely share the same interests. It isn’t too often I get a message from a geeky, lets play DnD, Star trek is the greatest tv series ever, heck yeah I know who Jethro Tull is, and yeah I like big girls…guy that isn’t white.
Argh, we’re all doomed to become victims of our own self-perpetuating, racially negatively-reinforcing mindsets.
What a shame etc blah blah.
We need a nice big meteor to hit Earth and then perhaps the survivors will temporarily bond together, regardless of colour,status, age, gender etc. o.O
Ah. An interesting look at race, for sure. While the study surely says something about race, I find it interesting that it only includes heterosexual encounters; strictly messages between men and women, not between anyone of the same sex. Why is that?
Pardon me – I didn’t notice the link, taking you away from this page to gaytown. But, still, why a separate page for same-sex relations?
I would love to see this combined with the words used in message data as well as age differences between sender and receiver.
In my experience, some people simply don’t put any effort into writing a good message, but it would be interesting to see if race has any bearing on that. I would hate to think all men of a certain race came across as superficial and/or ignorant, but that has been my experience for at least one race so far, and has certainly affected my response rate to said race.
Likewise, certain cultures vary with acceptable age differences. Again, in my experience, one race is a big offender for “robbing the cradle” – most of them that message me are more than 10-15 years older (I am in my mid-twenties, so this is a considerable gap still). I am more inclined to respond to someone closer to my own age for compatability reasons, so an older fellow better be damn impressive to get a response from me!
In all, I think the results here are really interesting to see, but there are still too many hidden variables to take it at face value, especially when using an incendiary term such as racism. Keep up the number crunching though – it makes for great reading!
First, not all “white” people identify themselves as white, and secondly, how do Jews figure in to all this? Why does everyone forget the Jews?
Dude, it’s no wonder I haven’t had any replies! Racist!! Haha.
i don’t know what the big fuss is. we’re all pink in the middle.
Race or racism has nothing to do with it. You’re attracted to who ever you’re attracted to. Bottom line. I’m a Black male and I’ve both sent and received messages from women of all different races. I personally believe that racism is still alive, but not that big of a deal anymore. If somebody doesn’t like you, they just don’t like you. Get over it. Its Preference not Race. Have you ever thought that maybe, just maybe you’re not attractive. Attractive is attractive whether its black, white, blue or purple. Racism is when you actually take the time and effort to cause somebody pain or detriment because of their race.
Now that I’ve made it clear that its not really race…Preference.
Most people tend to be more attracted to what they know. And its basic knowledge that most people tend to be around people of their own race and background. Racism is mostly an American thing because here there’s so many different races, unlike in other countries where there is primarily one race for a specific region. So if you grow up in a black neighborhood and have a black family, and extended family; your probably gonna date and marry somebody that’s black. And that applies to every other race too. Now if you grow up in a more diverse area then your taste will very.
So stop throwing race into every situation cause it doesn’t always apply.
Preference and Location.
And the Statistics mean nothing they’re just a guess’ because nobody has every ask every single person in the world what they’re dating preferences are, and you cant generalize something that you have no way of knowing.