How Your Race Affects The Messages You Get

October 5th, 2009 by Christian Rudder

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Men don’t write black women back. Or rather, they write them back far less often than they should. Black women reply the most, yet get by far the fewest replies. Essentially every race—including other blacks—singles them out for the cold shoulder.
  • White guys respond less overall. The average reply rate of non-white males is 48.1%, while white guys’ is only 40.5%. Basically, they write back about 20% less often. It’s ironic that white guys are worst responders, because as we saw above they in turn get the most replies. That has apparently made them very self-absorbed.

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



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


(Addendum to original post)

Same-Sex Data for Race vs. Reply Rates

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

See for yourself:

Still, there are a few conclusions we can draw:

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

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

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

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

  1. jim torpedo says:

    What is funny is all this post racial talk and ‘colorblind’ nonsense and we see that majority of women prefer white men. White women prefer her own race of men compared to the other races. This is what 500 years of indoctrination first by the church and now the media that “white is right” has corrupted the minds of women throughout the world. We see Indians, Filipino, Asian, Latino and Black women bleaching their skin to become white. Now we are at the point where, once the women of the fore mentioned races become educated or sophisticated (in sense of using computer and navigating to ok cupid), that they are willing to wash out their racial genes for that of the white gene. Well done Mr. White Man, well done.

    BTW, I am a black male.

  2. jim torpedo says:

    HAHA!!! For the fallacy of “love is blind.”

  3. Jack says:

    This is a very interesting study, but the conclusions are all wrong. The fact that women of all races disproportionately prefer white males doesn’t suggest that anyone is racist. What is ‘racism’ in the end but an abstraction with an endlessly contestable meaning? Applying Ockham’s razor, I think it’s pretty clear that everyone prefers white males because white males are objectively the best. We have all the best qualities — pearly white skin, great hair, height, muscled physiques, etc. — and we do all the best things — we built and continue to maintain civilization, we’ve created and established the best-functioning political system and spread it throughout the world, we play the classiest sports (like tennis and sailing)…the list goes on. We don’t need to posit an abstraction like ‘racism’ to explain why we’re the most desirable men on the planet.

  4. "racist"withReason says:

    after reading this i did a quick global match check for non-white girls that fit the type of girl i’d like to date . the main parts of the search were 18 – 23 , single , non smoker , doesn’t do drugs , and with 2 key words ” camping gaming ” . i got 3 results total . and one of them said this right in the small into that it shows b4 profile “if button madder means I mash buttons on my stupid xbox or any other gaming system known to man, I’m going to start punching people in the face …” so that really only left 2 . and they were in Springfield, Massachusetts and Detroit, Michigan… not exactly in my backyard or even within a full days drive . after checking into the insides of their profile not only the 2 but all 3 were X / white ( X = non white )

    so yeah , call me a racist if u want , but u try searching that and see what u get , not much i bet

  5. blackfeminista says:

    Wow. The defensiveness in the comments are (not shockingly) unbelievable. Truth is a mofo, indeed.

    I will say this: as a black woman, the data here definitely reflects my experience on different online dating sites over the past several years. Gay ones included.

    I’m not saying that I didn’t get any at all, but I will attest to getting back WAY LESS than what I put out (no pun intended, but whatever…)

    Don’t shoot the messenger.

  6. Brandon says:

    “Basically, they write back about 20% less often. It’s ironic that white guys are worst responders, because as we saw above they get the most replies. That has apparently made them very self-absorbed.”

    Uh…no. White men write back less because they’re more desired (as evidenced by the higher response rate), and thus have more options, so they’re less likely to be interested in any particular woman who contacts them. Conversely, the high response rate of black women isn’t because they’re “sweethearts” or “more talkative”–it’s because they’re less desired and thus more likely to be interested in those men who do contact them.

    Note also that the “shitty” white men have a higher response rate than women of any race. Is this because men are just better people than women? Of course not–it’s because women get much more mail than men. Of course, you wouldn’t dare trash women for their low response rates, but white men are always fair game.

  7. babybro says:

    @ Borg

    Exactly, all of these individuals who fall back on the ridiculous claim of preference fail to understand how OUTSIDE FORCES influence their “preference.” Your preference is set 100% by you, as we all know. It’s influence by your environment, your family, your society and many other topics and issues. And as we all know, white men and white women are placed on a pedestal. This is evident as to how EVERY women talk to white men more than everybody else, including their own race.

    But again, asking these folks to accept the privilege given to them and open their rather narrow minded ways and close minded attitudes is doom for failure. It took primarily minorities to do anything related to civil rights, so you can’t expect things to be different nowadays.

  8. faceman says:

    i find it funny that people are getting so offended and defensive commenting about the numbers and facts.

    fine, you have preferences.

    okay, it doesn’t make you hate mongering “racist”.

    but what this data shows is that race DOES play into who a lot of people choose.

    to compare the color of someone’s hair to the color of skin or ethnic racial traits is not a good comparison. cause if you say appearance matters well, then it still means the appearance of someone’s racial traits aren’t attractive to you, meaning race DOES still play into it.

    race matters to a lot of people. even if they are just judging on appearance preferences.

    so don’t get so defensive, these are the facts, deal with it.

  9. TheVoiceOfReason says:

    I agree with borgcollective and Taylor

    Another thing about the obesity rates is that there are more whites in this country than black and less fat white women that white men so the stats say. If thats the case there should be more than enough “fat white men” for the “fat black women” out there.

  10. anonymous says:

    did you ever think that race correlates to certain cultural norms that your matching questions fail to uncover and that it is not racism that is causing the disparity in matching but culturalism requirements?

  11. Alezander says:

    Cimmaron, “Fair and Honest,” Miles, Taylor– I can dig it.

  12. Richard says:

    If people would stop being so defensive about themselves and actually read some of what’s being written with an open mind, they would learn a lot about the world around them.

    For the sake of argument, just leave aside the word “racism.” Please. Just do it. We’ve been conditioned to think it’s a four letter word that really has no equal in terms of how evil it is. Instead, let’s use the word most people seem to be using instead, “preference.”

    Yes, I agree, people have preferences when it comes to whom they date. Yes, I agree it is perfectly OK and normal to have preferences. YOUR PREFERENCES DO NOT MAKE YOU A BAD PERSON. You’re not being criticized or attacked. You do not have to defend yourself. Clear?

    What is making people throw up their arms in frustration is a simple fact that, frankly, many of us already knew before we saw this data — dating preferences are not distributed equally. Women of all backgrounds find white men more attractive. Men from all backgrounds find Asian and white women more attractive.

    Now stop here.

    Tell me, honestly, that you don’t see a problem in any of this. And by this, I’m not talking about your personal preferences, but rather the aggregate whole of everybody’s preferences. Can you sit there and say that it is OK, natural, healthy, etc. for certain race/gender combinations to be valued above others? Surely we can all agree there’s something wrong with that, EVEN IF we’re not doing anything wrong personally.

    I will fully admit that I am at the bottom of the dating totem pole, and yeah I knew it before I saw this data. And, like I said, I bet other people who are posting right now knew it before they saw the data too. We’ve known our entire lives that our society/culture does not deem us as attractive as other people. If we’re brave, we’ve probably even tried to communicate our concerns to other people. Imagine how frustrating it is, when actual data is presented to validate our claims, that people just get defensive and dismissive.

    Get real, everybody. You don’t have to do anything about what’s happening, but at least give our experiences some respect and admit that something is happening.

  13. TheVoiceOfReason says:

    Thanks Richard it seems like we have a serious case of denial going on here. It’s not just a river in Egypt. People need to take accountability for their internalized racist beliefs. The buck stops at you! Quit passing it.

  14. Hohum says:

    Interesting post, and something i seen in my dating life. I am a white male, and i do find it is easier to date black women, then most other races. I don’t feel attraction to them, but few times i did, it was easy to meet and date. As far as scammers, i don’t know, i haven’t gotten any scam email on ok cupid and i dont reply that often because i get contacted and have a lot of choice. Is this normal? i dont know, but it certainly fits with statistic.

  15. AZFF says:

    I’m not sure how accurate or inaccurate the statistics are. It doesn’t matter to me really, but it was an interesting article. I am a male Hispanic/White/Other and I have dated Asian, Caucasian, African-American, Pacific Islander, Italian, Irish, and Hispanic women and it doesn’t matter to me what race the opposite sex is. I love them all. To me it’s more about the woman and what type of person she is, and NOT what her skin tone may or not be.

  16. dan131m says:

    When are you guys going to do a similar statistical comparison based on weight?

  17. Jody says:

    These comments, I can’t get enough of. It’s been a few days and I’m shocked to see all the wonderful opinions piling in. By wonderful, I simply mean honest. Upon first reading this blog entry, I was pissed. Yes, pissed. Pissed because I could no longer be paranoid. You see, in my world everybody is racist. The white person that just smiled at me, the indian person who just walked right past me without noticing, the asian kid that keeps pointing at me while chatting it up in Korean. Yup, it’s safe to say that I’m pretty sold on the matter.

    This is my safety bubble. If everyone is racist then I have very little expectation. I have no proof but I’ll just believe it anyway. Can you imagine how earth shattering it was to realize that I’m not crazy and that most people are actually racist? Well yeah, pissed.

    However, I think it’s unfair to draw such a definitive conclusion from this study. There are way too many factors that aren’t being taken into consideration. For example, what if I’m an upper middle class black woman born and raised in one of the oldest/whitest/richest suburbs of america? I would think that my cupid profile and message content would look a lot different from let’s say… most other black women, right? Right. This is because the description I have given is rarely the case.

    In actuality, certain races are economically and intellectually at a disadvantage. I have no problem making this point because with a long history of systematic oppression, how could this not be true? There are issues like poverty, education level, worldliness, and in all cases, how close to the ‘european ideal of beauty’ you are. We cannot ignore these factors, and unfortunately, our society is way too screwed to really measure them.

    In response to the many who claim that preference does not equate to racism. Consider if you will, how many of the images presented in our ads, tv shows, books, are representative of the person you see in the mirror. If you are white then you should realize that most of these things are indeed tailored to you. This is when the red flag should go up. By bombarding us with these images, the fashion industry, cosmetic industry, even the publishers of some of your favorite novels are saying that white is the standard. Why the shock factor when we learn that whites are preferred to — every other race!

    That being said, like my boyfriend once said about the under representation of black authors in our local bookstore, “write books”. We should really be aiming for a diverse society where ALL races are being represented to ALL races, and humanely. Not models who only come in two shades of white, blacks being arrested or starving in africa, asians making all of our stuff somewhere, latinos hiking across the border, etc.

    It’s sad and refreshing to see that this conversation is happening. Some of you have put more thought into your opinions than others of you. However, even the bigots can offer some insight on this controversial matter. It’s a rudimentary approach but kudos for approaching the subject, cupid!

  18. Scaramonga says:

    It has little to do with race and everything to do with appearance. Regardless of the “match” rating, if the recipient doesn’t find the sender appealing, there will not be a reply.

    And TVOR… Accountability for internalized racism? That has nothing to do with it. Appearance (genearally weight), and other non-indexed items (has 3 kids, is thrice divorced, thinks she’s still a just out of high-school virgin despite all that)

    There’s plenty of women outside my personal racial group I find attractive.

    If their upper arms are bigger than my leg, they’re not in that group.

    That’s not racism, that’s personal preference.

  19. Wolfva says:

    The only thing you have proven is that people have preferences. Preference is not racism. You can prefer thin women to rubenesque. Do you hate ruben women? You can prefer corn beef on rye to turkey on whole wheat. Do you hate turkey and whole weat? Remember that racism is hating someone because of the color of their skin or place of origen. HATE. Hate is completely different from preference.

    Why do white people prefer dating whites? Or blacks prefer dating blacks? Are they racists? Or do they prefer to date people who have the same likes, dislikes, and experiences as they?

    Strange, isn’t it. If a white woman decides not to date a white man because he likes gangsta rap, uses demeaning gangsta rap style terms for women, etc no one sees anything wrong. But if she turns down a black man for the same reason, then she is a racist. SO, what happens when she dates a black man who prefers classical music, speaks proper English, and doesn’t use deragotory terms? Why, he’s considered a race traitor. I got a suggestion. Howabout STOP seeing people as colors and instead see them as PEOPLE. Then you can stop wasting time making a survey about PEOPLES PREFERENCES and mislabeling the results as ‘Racism’.

  20. ZachFlavored says:

    I would be willing to bet that the predominant race in any country would match up with the preferences displayed by whites in these charts.

  21. KT Chong says:

    Researchers at the University of California at Irvine has recently release a similar finding (on interracial dating preferences and biases.) Cynthia Feliciano and Belinda Robnett collected data from Yahoo! Personals between September 2004 and May 2005, randomly selecting profiles of people ages 18-50 in the Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Atlanta metropolitan regions. The entire study is 42 pages and titled “Gendered Racial Exclusion among White Internet Daters.” You may google for an early, incomplete version of the study that is available online. This new OKCupid finding reinforces what the UC Irvine study has recently revealed.

  22. KT Chong says:

    Here are the links to the UC Irvine study:

    Internet love is not colorblind: UCI study of online daters shows race-based preferences:
    http://www.uci.edu/features/2009/04/feature_datingandrace_090421.php

    Gendered Racial Exclusion among White Internet Daters (PDF):
    http://paa2008.princeton.edu/download.aspx?submissionId=80046

  23. KT Chong says:

    “According to our internal metrics, at least, OkCupid’s users are better-educated, younger, and far more progressive than the norm, so I can imagine that many sites would actually have worse race stats. ”

    Yeah, Yahoo! Personals seemed to have worse race stats.

    There is yet *another* similar study (in addition to this OKCupid study and the UC Irvine one) that was published last year or two years ago; it’s also about racial preferences and biases in dating. I’ll try to find it and get back to here.

  24. Anansie says:

    Been watching/reading these posts and i think it’s FANTASTIC. It seems to be a case of actions by way of words speaking louder than what people churn out to each other in “society”.

    Keep ‘em coming. This puts you ahead of all those “other” dating sites that tend to fail to put our hard earned money we’ve parted with, where their mouth is.

    ^_^

  25. Maximus says:

    From being a member of OKCUPID myself and being extremely MORE succesful in other websites I noticed that the trend of this website is especially higher than in other ones. I know a lot of you are saying well what happens if the black person listens to gangsta rap, wrote me a demeaning message or is just not attractive or appealing, I think those can all be repudiated with my example: I am NYU grad and a part-time male model, who also happens to be hispanic It is extremely easier to meet (and possibly hook up) with co-workers (who are predominantly white-female models) and people on the streets, but I wanted to come here to find that rare breed of woman that is attractive and intellegent at the same time. I have to say that OKCUPID has a lot of those but the rate of response that I get on this website as compared to something like POF (who has a lot of attractive but less educated women) or Yahoo personals, is much lower.

    That said, I dont think the people I am writing to are racist, they are just inherently more predisposed to date those of their own race because they have a better image of them. Even though (I believe) that my profile shows me as well-spoken, sarcastic and/or witty this has probably not helped one bit as the imaged portrayed by society of people like me is too deeply ingrained in their mind.

    I believe that change is slowly coming. A big chunk of my relationships have been with people of other races (I just have not met them on the internet). We are definitely not where we should be but I am sure that 20 years ago my situation would have been a lot more dire.

    If Okcupid would like to further their experiment I would love to be their guinea pig. Then they could say “We used a guy who happens to be of darker skin, yet has mostly european features” and HE still did not get as many responses as an equivalent guy who is caucasian……

  26. Marc says:

    KTChong, call me cynical, but better educated doesn’t necessarily mean more progressive. I am in college and most of the people in college prefer to date within their own ethnicity. Many would not say so in polite company. Years of being arond liars and passive-aggressive people have given me a sad view towards people. I know that not all people are bad, but it is easier for me to see the bad in people first. I have met some very educated people who are suppose to be “liberal” and are obviously closet racist, but because this is a college environment, most people who hold racist views hide them because if you expressed them, you would go under for it. There were some racial incidents on my campus. When I was in high school, most of the people who were racists pretty much left little to the imagination and said it out loud, and were proud of it too. Neither is much better.

  27. Melanie says:

    To all you fools who keep repeating that it is natural that people prefer people within their own race, then why is it that non-white women for example even prefer white men over their “own” men? And even some non-White men for white women? Is it that white people are just generally better looking, and more inherently better mates than other races, or could it be because we live in a white dominated society that states “white is right”? Honestly, i could care less if whites prefer one another. What i find disturbing is that even non-Whites prefer each other. Actually, i think that minorities should really think about this preference for white people and try to understand where it comes from. We are not all “naturally” predisposed to find the almighty white man to be the most attractive, so spare me that nonsense.

    Also, if you think about it, shouldn’t Asian Men be the best mates for women? They’re not only financially successful with the highest median income, but they also have the lowest crime rate, lowest obesity, higher IQ’s, etc. But for what ever reason, they come dead last. Why is that? Is it because perhaps Asian men aren’t perceived by others to be “sexy”, “attractive”, and a better mate due to their lack of positive representation in the media? When was the last time an Asian man had a leading role in a movie? I wonder what exactly the media is scared of showcasing. I guess they know if they showcased a Takeshi Kansherio hunk, or Dennis Oh type guys that they’d have no chance, huh? So they’d rather people think that Asian men can’t be hunks

    To the Black women thing. It’s pretty much the same as Asian men, except that Black women ARE in the media ALOT, but unfortunately, the representation is mostly negative. When people see a Black woman, they think ghetto, loud, rude, “Shaniqua” and for that Black woman to overcome those stereotypes, she needs to be some sort of goddess, Halle Berry type beauty combined with an Ivy League education and a 140 IQ. In other words, she needs to be extra extra ordinary, unless she’s just another “unattractive Black girl”. I see the type of Black girls that are universally found to be attractive, and they are usually EXTREMELY gorgeous, whilst the Jennifer Manniston and Jessica Man Jaw Simpsons of the world are easily declared as “hot” because they have blonde hair with white skin that is the “ideal”. Uh-huh..

    My main point is mostly to non-Whites, please for stop begging whites to find you attractive and want to date/marry you! They live in a white dominated society and they don’t even realize is because they have the privilege not to have to think about it! It’s so hypocritical for you guys to want to date Whites, but then get upset when Whites also want to date Whites! Stop giving white people the power! They are NOT better looking, nor are there smarter, nor do they have better personalities, or ANYTHING!

    I mean really, some of the comments are so pathetic. I especially had a good laugh at the one black guy who didn’t date black women, but was upset and saddened that white women didn’t want to date him. How hypocritical of you! If you think White women are somehow better than Black women, what makes you think you as a Black man is any better than a White man and that a White woman would think that?

    BTW, this little study is a bit skewed. All they calculated was the response rate. As someone pointed out, if i were to respond to someone “Get a life”, that counts as a response. Does that mean i think that person is desirable? Hell no! But it would count, would it not? Idk, there are many many variables, though my point still stands that non-Whites are to obsessed with wanting to mate with Whites, and it’s sad because Whites want to mate with each other (which is fine btw!).

    Whew, that was long!

  28. KendiHendi says:

    I wonder how much of this is subconcious attraction and how much is truly racism… I don’t care what color you are, but I personally don’t find several races… physically attractive. That doesn’t mean I would automatically ignore your messages just becasue of your race, but lets be real… the first attraction IS physical. You can’t tell me you look at pics and if you think the person is unattractive you take the time to read their profile.

  29. KT Chong says:

    Marc, it is what it is. I’ve read enough studies of this sort to come to some conclusions:

    White women are the true hypocrites. White women say (and even promote) one thing in the open, but then in the private they do a different thing when they think no one else is watching and will know. Study after study has shown that white women are the most close-minded in dating. That is why white women really, really despise studies like this one, and always try to vehemently deny, discredit and debunk the studies. I’ve seen it happen too often: when white women come across a study that reveals them as they are, they would inevitably whine, scream, yell, complain and attack the study (and sometimes even the people who did the study.)

    White men, who are generally being regarded as the most racist demographic group, are actually more open-minded and even-handed when it comes to dating women of different races. In fact, they can be even more open-minded and even-handed than men of other races in dating women of different races.

    In regards to the popular Asian women/white men interracial coupling, it’s actually Asian women who have a preference for white men. White men actually do NOT have a “fetish” for Asian women.

    Black women and Asian men are truly the bottom feeders. Black women and Asian women are really at the bottom of the barrel in the dating market. Ironically, black women and Asian men don’t want to date each other. (I suppose it’s really unhealthy to their self-esteem and self-image if they do.)

  30. Silent Male says:

    Jody:

    “In actuality, certain races are economically and intellectually at a disadvantage. I have no problem making this point because with a long history of systematic oppression, how could this not be true? There are issues like poverty, education level, worldliness, and in all cases, how close to the ‘european ideal of beauty’ you are. We cannot ignore these factors, and unfortunately, our society is way too screwed to really measure them.”

    There is a problem with that viewpoint.

    Indian-Americans, if the census data for 2000 is to be believed, are the richest ethnic group for which statistics are kept, edging out Japanese-Americans.

    Further, expressed as a fraction, Indian-Americans, especially males, are more likely to have advanced degrees than any other ethnic group (IIRC, the figure was 64%+ with at least a bachelor’s degree), and are the least likely to be unemployed (again from memory – google for this info if you want).

    Further, Indian-American marriages tend to have among the lowest divorce rates (points to familial stability), etc.

    In spite of that, we are at the bottom of the dating totem pole. Yes, even lower than AA’s who have a fraught history of racism in this country, Hispanics, Asian Americans, etc.

    So, without delving too deeply into the matter (the way I have in some of my forum posts), I would say that past oppression => present day disadvantages => lower dating status paradigm that you aim to construct above has a glaring counterexample.

    There is more going on here than just socio-economic status.

  31. KT Chong says:

    Melanie:

    I read awhile ago that Asian men are the second most unmarried group — after (you guess it) black women.

    I’ve also read the Asian men are the most financially well-off group after the age of 35. Asian men don’t earn more than white men on the income basis, but Asian men sure do know how to save and invest their money and build wealth.

    So, apparently the general wisdom that money and success attract women does not apply to Asian men.

    In yet another study, I read the Asian men lead the increases in getting cosmetic surgery in America!

    Somehow I think all these numbers are related…

  32. KT Chong says:

    Anyhow, I see a huge business opportunity out there to exploit all those wealthy but lonely, unwanted Asian men in America. :D

    (Not dating website because I know older Asian men tend to stay away from online and telephone dating services because they have tried it and know it does not work for them. But services like cosmetic surgery and $1000-per-pop dating coach are having a boom thanks to Asian men)

  33. TP says:

    It comes down to preference. Lets not lie, unless you went to an extremely racially balanced high school, of grew up in a really diverse neighborhood, you are groomed to think a certain way. You are raised thinking the “X” is the standard of beauty. Just so happens that in America “X” is usually a tall thin white woman, or a tall muscular white man. Thats what we see on TV the most, thats what we seein magazines the most. I was fortunate enough to go to really diverse schools, so I find a wide range of women to be pretty, but I still have a personal preference. I just am attracted to more petite girls. Not a slight on bigger girls, but the attraction just isn’t the same for me. Likewise as a black guy, I know that certain women will see my skin color and just move one. Period. Dating a guy with color is something foreign to them. They are a product of where and how they were raised. So if you weren’t exposed to other races as a child or teenager, then you can’t expect to be 100% openminded as an adult. There are some people on this site with bigoted points of view, but a lot of people have a certain “type” that they are attracted to. Also, remember you are much more likely to stick to your specific “type” in on-line dating, a forum where you don’t actually get to see a person live and see how they speak and interact in a real live setting.

  34. Silent Male says:

    KT Chong,

    I do not mean to quibble, as most of your points are valid. However, there is some inaccuracy here:

    “I’ve also read the Asian men are the most financially well-off group after the age of 35″

    The rest of the world counts Indians as Asians (that makes sense geographically). However, in the US, Indians are treated as a separate ethnic group in most places.

    Here are numbers from the US Census, 2000:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_American#Socioeconomic

    Interestingly enough, the US Census treats Indians as Asians (as it should), and your statement above is then incontestable. However, OKC classifies them separately, and there are significant differences in the dating success rates of the two groups (in that classification).

    So, we just need to be careful about the terms Asian, and Indian, here.

    Good points, all in all.

  35. Silent Male says:

    Melanie:

    “Also, if you think about it, shouldn’t Asian Men be the best mates for women? They’re not only financially successful with the highest median income, but they also have the lowest crime rate, lowest obesity, higher IQ’s, etc. But for what ever reason, they come dead last.”

    Err, OKC classifies Indians and Asians separately, and Indians are at the bottom of the barrel, not Asians.

    Further, the US Census finds that Indian-Americans are the wealthiest and best educated people when you consider national origin. But your point holds, with added power :)

  36. AllanPartridge says:

    This entire article needs to be rewritten. It is the author, not the statitics that reveal racism.

    For it is a sign of the greatest racist imbecility to conclude that gentically determined outcomes are worth sacrifcing to liberal fanaticism.

    Of course men of all races prefer white females – that’s evolution, and liberals must convert to Creationism.

    I’ve been on OKcupid for year. I was never interested in Black women. Yes you can call it “racism” but you know what – I’m black.

  37. KT Chong says:

    Silent Male:

    Even if you want separate Indians and (East) Asians into two different groups, both are still at the bottom of the totem pole with black women. It’s either Indian is a runt above other Asians or the other way around. Either way, they are both right at the BOTTOM.

    And a lot of Indians still have that “arranged marriage” thing going on. The men are also pressured into marrying very early, before they can establish success and wealth.

    My understanding is that Indian men want to to marry young before 30, so they are often pressured into settling for arranged marriage. I know an brilliant Indian guy who went to the most prestigious universities and worked for the most prestigious companies, (he is still working for a prestigious company.) I knew he was definitely attracted to white women, but then white women were NOT interest in him (or most any Indian man for that matter.) For the record, he’s 6’2″ tall or maybe even taller, pretty good looking and too nice.

    I kept telling him to “hold out” until he became more successful, and he could always use his money and success to get younger, hotter women later in life. But when he hit the 30, he was REALLY anxious to get married. I believe it’s cultural. He experienced a lot of peer and family pressure to get married at 30. All his Indian friends and brothers were already married at his age.

    In the end, he settled for an Indian woman that he doesn’t particularly love. It’s somewhat like an arranged marriage. Strictly speaking, it’s not an arranged marriage. He went through a series of “arranged dates.” His family and relatives set him up with one Indian woman after another until he picked one he liked the most. He actually reviewed the women’s resumes (!?!) and bios and asked them a series of same questions. From what he told me, I thought each of his “date” was more like a professional interview.

    I thought he could do much better if he had held out. But he’s loyal to his “mate” whom (I think) he doesn’t really love. He just feels a strong sense of responsibility and duty towards his wife and son. I suppose that’s a cultural trait as well.

    So, in regards to dating in America, Indians have some other things going on that restrict their time frames and opportunities.

  38. blackdude666 says:

    I have a profile on this site but haven’t used it very much.
    I’m a black male. These were quite interesting results.

    I feel a tiny little bit sad that my intuition about middle-eastern girls turns out to be right :) I’ve always thought of lebenase women as incredibly gorgeous and attractive in general, but it was always clear to me that there was no point in pursuing them, as they and their families would absolutely not tolerate it. Oh well , such is life :)

    Poor indian and asian males! Good luck guys you will need it.

    Black women ! I actually like you girls quite a lot but I must admit that I like white and lebanese girls better. Sorry . With that said, I like you sisters more than asian girls and much much more than hispanic, indian or pacific women, who have almost no chance at all with me :) I suppose that australian aborigene women would also have almost zero chance with me too.

    As you can see, I have no qualms about ranking and having racially influenced preferences. I just thought that I’d add a dissonant voice to the predictable wail of black people complaining and bemoaning the fact that other people have their preferences.

    I have mine. They have theirs.

    There are probably very good reasons for academically inclined white/asian or even black women to be a little doubtful about a black male’s compatibility : How many black males have they been around to at school, if they study for example physics ? How many black males have they been around to if they’re in grad school studying something meaningful and challenging ( which of course excludes post colonial so called theory and gender studies ) ?

    I used to observe the far left students at my university. I’m talking about those whose lives were consumed with figthing racism, sexism and the like. Those students hung out with almost no black people at all. And i’m 100% sure that wasn’t because they rejected black folks, but because black folks in general could care less about genderqueer activism and all that stuff. Do you think someone like that would feel deep in their heart that a black male is equally likely to be compatible ?

    Next, what about those girls who like sensitive, not very masculine men? This isn’t exactly common but I’d think that on OKcupid they’d be found at a much higher rate than in the general population. Do you think such girls would go for a black male whom they havent seen in action or hasnt been vouched for by close friends ?
    Do you seriously think that a belle and sebastian fan is used to thinking of black males as potential mates ?

    Frankly, if this site is full of left-leaning, educated women the reticence towards black males is not much of a surprise and it is somewhat rational. I dare say it.

    The reticence towards indians and asian males probably has to do with something else entirely.

    Here is a hypothesis : those women who want sensitive, less masculine men aren’t reticent towards asian males.

    In the end, i believe that when it comes to dating, *anyone* can prefer *anybody* for *any reason whatsoever* including racial reasons. No I do not in any way believe that I have some kind of *right* to be seen as equally attractive in the eyes of a non-black woman.

  39. Silent Male says:

    That kind of thing is not exceedingly rare as I have heard of one such case.

    However, I disagree somewhat. My comments:

    1. Marriage and family is important to us Indians. The longer you postpone marriage after 30, the harder it is going to be to have a full family life with kids (and most Indian guys want kids). I am 33, and I can guess the kind of pressure you are talking about. Fortunately, I am a loner, and that pressure is a bit lower for me. However, being a loner, I have a higher pressure on myself since each day feels more empty otherwise. I don’t consider myself to be that good looking, however, I am the same height as the guy you are talking about :)

    2. Had he even waited for some time more, I do not think his chances would have gone up. The average age of marriage for the general population is lower than it is for the kind of educated Indians you are talking about. After a certain age, about the only women you run into are either women who have baggage, or are gold-diggers (Indians have to watch out for that a lot more), etc. Being lonely is bad, but being attached to such women is worse. Marrying women with kids from previous relationships / marriages, etc. is generally not considered acceptable in Indian families, for guys who have never been married.

    Add in the general dislike (bordering on hatred/loathing in some cases) of Indian guys, I think he had a choice between having a relatively passionless marriage or living alone. As an Indian, I think he made the choice he would have been happier with.

    3. The overall statistics for every race probably decline pretty sharply after 30.

    4. Asians and Indians both are generally wealthy, very highly educated, tend to have extremely stable home lives, but both are at the bottom (Hispanics > Asians > AAs > Indians). When two communities (Hispanics and AAs) with the lowest levels of median and educational achievement are ranked above the two communities (Asians and Indians) with the highest, socio-economic reasons are clearly inapplicable.

    I think the reasons for this are:

    a) The culture does not have too many positively depicted Asian figures, and no positively depicted Indian figures (CNN’s Sanjay Gupta is probably the only exception).

    b) Indians tend to be non-Christian / non-Jewish / non-Muslim. Given the fact that the US is one of the most religious countries in the West, the religious differences (and the different world view) is too big a hurdle for most non-Indians in the US.

    c) Indians tend to be socially conservative. The social conservatives in the US tend to be on the right wing of the US political spectrum. Whether due to racial, or religious reasons, Indians are a big anathema to the American right (98% of all Indian-Americans are thus Democrats). The socially liberal non-Indians who might be open to Indians are put off by the conservative values of Indians. I think this is the central contradiction affecting Indian dating choices.

    d) Indians are mostly into nerdy or geeky professions (as are Asians). These classes of people in general have a pretty low popularity / success in dating (though they can always find gold-diggers once they get wealthy enough).

    e) There is a settled narrative about Indian guys being, well, small down there (this is even worse for Asians). The large difference in heights and body sizes between Indian-Americans (who are the wealthiest people in the US) and many Indians in India (who live in penury and suffer from the physiological effects of malnutrition, which includes smaller body sizes) is generally ignored as it is always popular to stereotype an alien looking ethnic group, especially if it is about something like that. Asians have experienced this as well.

    So, that reduces the desirability of Indian males even further.

    f) Due to outsourcing (and the shoddy customer service that people, including Indians, get from call centers in India), there is a rising tide of dislike of Indians. It is politically popular to bash Indians. Alien looking, different religions, wealthy, their country being a source of loss of many American jobs, law-abiding, culturally irrelevant, small in number – what is not to dislike ?

    All in all, I am more surprised at the fact that 20.8% of women even bother to respond.

    Before anyone gets their hackles up, this is reality, realities create preferences, people have an inalienable right to those preferences, and should not be called racist for having those preferences.

  40. fenchurch says:

    again, do we have to mention okcupid that not all members are straight? please, when you are pulling this data, also pull info for male-male & female-female messaging, etc. Even if you have to make it a post for another week, it’s just plain heterosexism, which I guess is just to say that the OKCupid staff doesn’t seem to be immune to this hypocrisy either.

    Oh, and while you’re at it, add FTM & MTF (or at least intersex) to the possible sexes.

  41. Moi says:

    What’s most interesting here is that, instead of excepting the behavior illustrated by the statistics as the natural one, almost every one of you insist on critiquing it ideologically – an ideology almost every individual in the statistics shares!

    So, the falseness of the ideology is demonstrated. Nevertheless, you wail and object, while the black girls told-you-so. Pathetic.

    Here are two facts which suffice to explain the entire phenomenon, but which the ideology compels you to go into attack mode. White men are generally prettier than other men and are the dominant race. Black women are on average the least attractive women.

    Period. Mystery solved. The preferences are different than the behavior because no one likes to be set upon by the Harpies of Political Correctness. May you all rot in the Communist Re-Education Camps you are working so unwittingly to bring into existence.

  42. Moi says:

    *accepting – not excepting. D-mn I blew it.

  43. MaxDamagus says:

    “It’s ironic that white guys are worst responders, because as we saw above they get the most replies. That has apparently made them very self-absorbed.”

    Pretty much sums up this article.
    It’s biased, offensive and frankly scary that there are people out there who actually think they have the right to dictate or judge precisely who other people might find attractive.

    You do not.

    Extremist left-wing horseshit.

  44. Melanie says:

    KT Chong, regarding the “Asian fetish”, that is so true! I believe that based on numbers, there are more Asian women who prefer White men than the other way around. It just seems that there are more White men into Asian women, since duh, there are so many more of them. In general, i think it would be safe to assume that the majority of White men would ideally prefer a White woman, and that is not to say he would end up with an Asian or other non-White woman, but the “ideal” situation for them would probably be a White girl.

    That’s not a problem AT ALL imo. What i find a bit disturbing quite frankly is the amount of Asian girls that refuse to date Asian men and “prefer” White men. Why is this exactly? Nothing wrong with preferences, but when there is a general trend, i do like to try and understand the reasons for these so called preferences (I am interested in sociology and so that explains my “curiosity” lol).

    Also, remember, i am operating from the viewpoint that White men/people are not inherently better than non-Whites, but for some reason, so many non-Whites prefer them over their own ethnic group. Why is this exactly?

  45. Melanie says:

    Oops, i meant and that is NOT to say he WOULDN’T end up with an Asian or non-White woman!

  46. CJ says:

    WOW! Some of the comments on here are rather repulsive (as repulsive as periapt apparently finds women of color)… So I’ll add my four cents..
    1) To those of you who have never dated an “Other” (white, black, hispanic, asian, etc) – how can you say don’t like it unless you try it? It’s like saying you hate butterscotch pecan ice cream, but have never had a bite.
    2) Black women respond to messages more readily not because we’re sweethearts, but because we know that in the Good Ole US of A, we’re not ANYONE’s first choice, so those who DO choose us are at least worthy of a “Hello”. I don’t say that to be down on any of us (because we’re pretty damn terrific!), it’s just an unfortunate fact of (and result of) the history of this country…
    3) And whether or not you find women of color attractive, please stop throwing the stereotypes around. Saying all Black women are “fat and loud” is like saying all White men are “corny and have small dicks”…while this might be true for some…it’s certainly NOT true for most.
    4) Most popular dating websites like OKC or Match.com (etc) do NOT cater to those looking (and actively appreciating) interracial relationships; just as these sites don’t cater to anything “outside” the mainstream ( I mean let’s be honest, how many Harvard graduates who love anime, Ravel, and snooker are on this site?) – if you’re really looking for something different, you’ll need to head to a different website.

  47. fervorite-crush says:

    Wow! You data analyst folks over at OKC are awesome! Glad you have the guts to post that — we all need to hear it. Aside from the prevalent racism, the thing that bums me is that I, as a white guy, statistically should be getting way more responses to my messages. Oh well.

  48. Christie says:

    Word of advice from one Black women to all others – pack your stuff and head for Europe or Canada. Men there – whether they are White, Black, Mixed, Indian, Asian – are not as ignorant or bigoted as American men have been trained to be. Get a passport, ladies and leave these losers ALONE!

  49. Jessie Maims says:

    “Why is this exactly?”

    A fantastic PR campaign. Also, one of assimilation’s side effects. Once the dominant culture is adopted, the beauty standards usually are as well, and people need to remember this when they advocate it as some kind of panacea for racial discord. Assimilation can result in an inability to fit well into either world socially, because when it comes to close social relationships, people will usually see color. Even in platonic relationships… many people have friends of different races. But when it comes to people who they consider “best friends”, it’s probably going to start to look pretty homogeneous — I’m talking about across all groups here, so don’t get upset with me. And ideally, a SO is a really close friend who you feel attracted to and enjoy having sex with. When a person has met the dominant culture more than halfway, it can be heartbreaking to see it recoil in horror from their visage. I think it’s what broke my father’s spirit. Due to high levels of cultural assimilation among Asian Americans in particular, I don’t think the Asian/White thing is as one-sided as it appears. If Asian guys had their druthers, they’d probably go for white women in droves, as well (especially when men are more likely to highly prioritize physical attractiveness and be sold hard on the specifics by society) … they just can’t have their druthers.

    “In fact, they can be even more open-minded and even-handed than men of other races in dating women of different races.”

    That’s probably because white guys are more likely to believe that they have a chance in hell with women of different races…lol. Also, the results show that with the glaring exception of black women, men of various races are pretty accepting overall of women of various races when it comes to replying — although I would NOT be surprised at all if white women received the most mail from minority men on OKC… I wonder why the percentages of first messages sent and to whom isn’t here — that’s a rather interesting puzzle piece to leave out. I mean, we can all make informed assumptions, but why should we have to?

    “Also, if you think about it, shouldn’t Asian Men be the best mates for women? They’re not only financially successful with the highest median income, but they also have the lowest crime rate, lowest obesity, higher IQ’s, etc. But for what ever reason, they come dead last.”

    I asked a question akin to this earlier and got cricket sounds. I don’t understand why American girls don’t seem to appreciate Indian and Asian guys, and I don’t think I ever will.

  50. Carol says:

    As a black woman, this pretty much reiterated what I already knew. Most folks won’t go for a black woman. I’ve accepted that I pretty much won’t get into a relationship anytime soon….