When I had originally posted on Facebook this shockingly well summarized study from OKCupid about race and reply rates on the popular dating website, I had just written the word, "duh." Race has always been a part of dating for me, whether it be what race my parents find acceptable, finding that my white boyfriend that I thought wasn't racist really was, or figuring out on first glance when a man likes you for you, or because he has a thing for Indian chicks. But my friend Dave took me to task and noted that they actually analyzed an enormous set of data that they then published, so that gets more than a, "duh." I will upgrade to a, "that is fucked up," and "duh."
But enough with my Facebook shenanigans. This study is interesting to no end and not just because I am writing a book on dating. The study found that even though OKCupid has a unique matchmaking system where race shouldn't matter...
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?" 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.
...it does:
* Black women are sweethearts. Or just talkative. But either way, they are by far the most likely to reply to your first message. In many cases, their response rate is one and a half times the average, and overall black women reply about a quarter more often.* 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.
And specifically on reply rates? They found the following:
* Men don't write black women back. Or rather, they write them back far less often than they should. Black women reply the most, yet get by far the fewest replies. Essentially every race--including other blacks--singles them out for the cold shoulder.
* White guys are shitty, but fairly even-handed about it. The average reply rate of non-white males is 48.1%, while white guys' is only 40.5%. Basically, they write back about 20% less often. It's ironic that white guys are worst responders, because as we saw above they get the most replies. That has apparently made them very self-absorbed. It's interesting that white males do manage to reply to Middle Eastern women. Is there some kind of emergent fetish there? As Middle Easterners are becoming America's next racial bogeyman, maybe there's some kind of forbidden fruit thing going on. (Perhaps a reader more up-to-date on his or her Post-Colonial Theory can step in here? Just kidding. Don't.)
And the zinger? They found this to prove that racism is still alive. I have a crush on OKCupid.
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I don't think it's racist to have a preference for a certain type of race when it comes to dating. Let me ask the the poster about her preference. Would you (or any woman for that matter) date a guy 4 inches shorter than you? Seriously, height, color of skin, hair are just physical attributes and everyone has theirs. Simple as that.
I don't think you can compare height with skin colour. That's two different levels.
I am more attracted to slender/athletic guys...I prefer punk guys over non-punks... I love military guys as well.
but for racial preference? I don't care. That doesn't affect how attracted I am to the man.
OK, I can see that some people have a cultural preference for dating... for instance, some of my cousins, born and bred in India, are more comfortable looking for Indian-born, Indian-bred spouses to marry. Nothing is wrong with that.
Me, I am more comfortable with a Western born, Western raised dude... I don't care what race or religion he is, as long as we both have similar passions!
Like I said, I have no racial preferences. I really can't stand people who say "I only date Asian chicks," or whatever. Fuck that.
There are so many problems with this "study" and their "conclusions" I don't know where to start.
For starters, they don't look at the intersection of income and race. So white guys are being contacted more - is that because they are white, because they have higher average incomes, or both? Contrary to their main claims, their methods don't allow us to isolate the independent effects of race on contact rates.
Second, they use inflammatory language to describe results, but their results don't support their claims. For example, they claim that "White guys are shitty, but pretty even handed about it" because they respond to 40% of emails. Non-white respond to 50%. But they also find that White men receive significantly more emails. If a white guy receives 10 emails and replies to 4, and a black guy receives 8 emails and replies to 4, how does that indicate that white males are shitty?
Of course race influences response rates. If you look through the postings here in Los Angeles, there are quite a few women of Southeast Asian descent who indicate that only Asian or White men should contact them. Analyzing these trends carefully would tell us alot about race, racism, and dating.
But this study fails to do even the simplest of controls to isolate the extent to which race per se influences contact rates, as opposed to traits correlated with race (e.g., income, geographic location, etc.) and the way these correlates interact with race to influence contact rates.
"Would you (or any woman for that matter) date a guy 4 inches shorter than you?"
Since you opened up the question with the parentheses, yes, but that proves nothing regardless. Nor does any individual woman being uninterested in doing so.
The interesting question is why is it apparently common for women to prefer taller men.
Yeah and see that's the other thing. Most women's preference is for "taller", not necessarily tall or the tallest, at least by society's standards. There are plenty of short women who are happy with a man who is short by society's standards yet who meets her height requirement.
I think that's where height and race aren't such a great comparison. Preferences for height and weight could be a better comparison, I think.
Why shouldn't height be consider "same" as race? Just because it doesn't suit you? That's double standards. You are saying it's OK to reject someone based on height and not on race just because it suits your interests? I think it's OK to reject based on either.
As far as why women prefer tall men is because women (even so-called feminists) still deep down like the feeling about being in the presence of a tall, strong man you makes them feel safe, womanly and protected (which is strange because woman have been fighting for equal rights for years). As long at men have this particular advantage over women there never will be gender equality in society.
Whoa.
If you'd please actually read my comment you'd see that I addressed a single aspect of your previous comment.
Do not put words into my mouth.
There is a reason my statement of what I deem to be the interesting question, is not phrased as a question and does not have a question mark. That is because mulling over hypotheses (even if contributors don't realize that all they have is a hypothesis...) on a blog won't actually yield a reliable answer. It may yield interesting and original ideas. Not that it has, yet.
So why do men prefer shorter women, Justin?
Why shouldn't height be consider "same" as race? Just because it doesn't suit you? That's double standards. You are saying it's OK to reject someone based on height and not on race just because it suits your interests? I think it's OK to reject based on either.
As far as why women prefer tall men is because women (even so-called feminists) still deep down like the feeling about being in the presence of a tall, strong man you makes them feel safe, womanly and protected (which is strange because woman have been fighting for equal rights for years). As long at men have this particular advantage over women there never will be gender equality in society.
This comment has been deleted.
As with so many things in life, what you get out of it depends on what you bring to it.
shut up, sit your worthless ass down, and finish that glass of milk.
Moron.
There are so many problems with this "study" and their "conclusions" I don't know where to start.
For starters, they don't look at the intersection of income and race. So white guys are being contacted more - is that because they are white, because they have higher average incomes, or both? Contrary to their main claims, their methods don't allow us to isolate the independent effects of race on contact rates.
Second, they use inflammatory language to describe results, but their results don't support their claims. For example, they claim that "White guys are shitty, but pretty even handed about it" because they respond to 40% of emails. Non-white respond to 50%. But they also find that White men receive significantly more emails. If a white guy receives 10 emails and replies to 4, and a black guy receives 8 emails and replies to 4, how does that indicate that white males are shitty?
Of course race influences response rates. If you look through the postings here in Los Angeles, there are quite a few women of Southeast Asian descent who indicate that only Asian or White men should contact them. Analyzing these trends carefully would tell us alot about race, racism, and dating.
But this study fails to do even the simplest of controls to isolate the extent to which race per se influences contact rates, as opposed to traits correlated with race (e.g., income, geographic location, etc.) and the way these correlates interact with race to influence contact rates.
I hear that whole "but I'm just not attracted to Black/Latina/Asian/etcetera" women thing a LOT from my (white) male friends. I also hear it about weight. For some reason, they don't think that their exclusive attraction to skinny white girls could be related to prejudice in any way whatsoever. That's just HOW THEY FEEL, you know? *eye roll*
Sure, I might have general preferences in potential partners. I like folks with body mods, for instance. But I would never, ever say that I wouldn't date someone without any piercings. It's superficial. It fails to look at the person for who they are rather than what they look like. And I suspect people who are willing to draw the line at the color of someone's skin "just because they're not attracted to it" are a either a lot more bigoted or a lot shallower than they realize.
but that's the thing.
Skin color and racial preference is NOT the same thing as a tattooed/heavily pierced guy!
I don't care if you think tattooed guys are ugly or hot. What DOES matter is that if you refuse to date black, Hispanic, or Asian guys, or whatever, because you'll claim that you're not "attracted" to them.
(I'm not attacking you, just giving you an example)
Wait a minute, wait a minute, they are only talking about *replies* here.
Does this take into account who messages the person first?? Cuz I hardly ever sent a message to the men---they all contacted me.
Also, their compatibility score is kinda crap...they are all user driven questions, so you can get questions like "How do you feel about growing weed?" like 50 TIMES.
Also, why do minorities get a free pass when complaining that whites don't like them but don't want to date their own race?
Also, why do minorities get a free pass when complaining that whites don't like them but don't want to date their own race?
Well, black folks certainly haven't been getting a free pass on that sh*t. Which minorities are you referring to specifically?
I'm referring to the original post where there was a link to the original article where an Asian guy lamented that he prefered white women, but white women weren't interested in him.
Sorry for the confusion. ^_^
I just wonder if this is more of a numbers game than malicious intent.
In other news, my brother recently commented that he wasn't attracted to black and asian women---I told him that maybe he just hasn't found the right black/asian woman!
It seems ridiculous to me to assert that having a racial or ethnic preference when it comes to whom you feel naturally physically attracted makes one a racist.
Yeah, those other races are fine and all so long as they keep to their own kind.
I mean, I couldn't possibly be racist.
I'll let them use my bathroom!
I cannot control that I find pale skin and light eyes more attractive than dark skin and dark eyes. People have different tastes, there's nothing wrong with that. I don't have to fuck the entire rainbow of humanity to prove that I am an enlightened person.
Just as the person who is heterosexual isn't being sexist against members of their own sex by not being attracted to them, so too is the person who is not attracted to a certain race and the physical characteristics associated with that race (because some posters here seem to think that races only vary by skin color, and fail to take into account body types and characteristics that are associated with a certain race) being racist.
I know: it is not an entirely accurate analogy in that as far as I'm aware there are no known "race-focused" sexualities akin to "sex-focused" sexualities like homo/bi/heterosexuality, but I think it serves its purpose in noting that one's physical preferences, one's sense of aesthetics, does not make one racist.
Were someone to say, "I would never consider dating anyone of X race because I am not attracted to anyone of X race," then that person is 1) making X race homogenous when it's most certainly not and 2) reducing their decision about whom to date down to simply a generalized physical preference, which is shallow. That being said, it is hardly my fault, or anyone else's, if there are certain physical traits that are highly attractive and ones that are not attractive at all.
I don't find most Asian men or women to be physically attractive. Would I like to date an Asian wo/man whom I found myself falling for? Certainly. But chances are they're not the object of my physical desires.
I don't have to be pansexual to not be a racist, and that's what it really sounds like some people are proposing.
I don't think it makes one racist, but I think the concept of, as you put it, "naturally physically attracted" is something that is worthy of a conversation.
I mean, I married someone of a different ethnicity, with specific features, which I in the past would have sworn up and down that I wasn't attracted to.
I makes me wonder why I thought I wasn't attracted to "his type" in the first place.
So on dating sites I'll be more popular than non-white guys who are similar to me, apparently because I'm white? As a white heterosexual at-least-nominally-feminist male liberal, this is another dollop of guilt I really didn't need. But it will internalize and fester and then I'll stab someone with the gravy boat at Thanksgiving.
I hope you're happy, researchers, you and your science and hard data and reasonable if poorly-phrased conclusions.
It's a small segment of the population that would join an online dating service and a miniscule segment of the population that join that particular dating service, making these stats totally useless as far as I'm concerned.
or to put it another way,
I call B.S. !
I think everyone has a problem with the fact that people do have physical preferences that exclude certain races.
Which I totally understand, but I don't think it's fair to call someone racist because they don't get wet/hard at the sight of John Cho or Gabrielle Union.
Most fetishes are formed when we're young, and I think the same goes for the physical type we prefer. The reason people prefer certain races probably has a lot to do with the images of beauty we see when we're growing up. If we had more images of attractive people of different races, I think people would be a lot less restricted in who they're attracted to.
The solution is NOT to run around yelling at people for being racists because they don't want to have sex with people of certain races.
You can't expect someone to get into a relationship with someone they're not attracted to in order to be non-racist. That's not a relationship anyone wants to be part of. Everyone has certain physical traits that they like and while those traits don't carry the same baggage as race, the preference comes from the same place.