
I don’t need prejudice in online dating, too - jdavis703
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2015/10/12/black-women-face-prejudice-every-day-i-dont-need-it-in-online-dating-too/
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codewithcheese
And guess what if you male you will receive less messages than if your
female... online dating on average is a indicator of the fickle. but, you
don't have to care if you get less messages than someone else. at the end of
the day you only need to meet one person. online dating is not that different
to offline dating. use whatever platform or situation to try and meet someone
you like and get on with your life.

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daenz
The title "Black woman face prejudice ... in online dating too" is entirely
ignorant of the fact that black women discriminate against every race but
their own, according to OKCupid studies
[http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/race-
attraction-2009-2014/](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/race-
attraction-2009-2014/)

But besides that, what kind of wacky world is this where it's now frowned upon
to have a preference in who you want as a partner? It's not racist to
personally find one race statistically more attractive than another _to you_.
I don't want to date gay men, does that make me homophobic?

~~~
Mz
_I don 't want to date gay men, does that make me homophobic?_

I am assuming it makes you a heterosexual male. While it is possible to be
heterosexual and not be homophobic, it is not possible to exclude people based
on race and not be racist. That is a form of racism, albeit one we cannot
legislate out of existence because whom one wishes to sleep with is very much
a private matter. You are entitled to want only female sexual partners. It
doesn't make you homophobic. You are equally entitled to only want sexual
partners who are not black. However, if that is a preference, you are, in
fact, racist.

~~~
daenz
Let's be very clear here, you're stating that every race is "technically"
racist when it comes to race preference, because they all exhibit this
behavior in the data.

Like I said elsewhere, I concede that according to the dictionary definition
of racism, it is racist. However, in the real world, calling someone a racist
means that a person should feel guilty and ashamed for their wrong choices.
Are you telling me that a person (indeed, the vast majority of all people
included in those studies), because they're "technically" racist, should feel
ashamed for finding one race statistically more attractive than another? If
you're not saying it's a bad thing, then you're saying that that form of
racism is ok, in which case I'd wonder why you're arguing this at all.

~~~
Mz
I think a) there is a difference between "I just happen to date my race more"
and "I actively exclude people based on their race." b) I think there is a
difference between "I happen to be heterosexual" and "I am homophobic."

Homophobic goes well beyond "I don't have sex with people who are my gender"
and into "I don't like people who do that, I think they are doing something
wrong, etc.."

Just because people date a lot more of their own race doesn't necessarily and
automatically mean they _intentionally exclude_ people not of their race.

This is something I have thought a great deal about. I have a genetic
disorder. I am white. It is a predominantly white disorder. I was diagnosed
late in life. I did not know I had it when I was younger. I grew up in the
racist deep south and I married a white man, who was a carrier, so one of our
children also has the disorder. I got diagnosed in my thirties and later
divorced. Following my diagnosis, during my divorce, the idea of ending up
accidentally pregnant by someone who was a carrier really freaked me out and
so I went through a period where I actively discriminated against white men,
not because I don't like sleeping with white men but because it is a quick and
dirty genetics test. (I have blogged about this, if you want the link.)

Anyway, during my divorce, I intentionally went out of my way to not signal to
men what my dating/relationship history had been because I did not want to
repeat the mistakes of my past and I was very aware that if I told men that my
ex husband was, for example, blond, then blond men felt more confident about
approaching me and non-blond men felt like I was suggesting I was not
interested in them and were more reluctant to pursue me. Even with actively
trying to eliminate that sort of bias from men who might be interested, I
found that if you analyzed the data, I tended to date more of certain kinds of
men. However, I cannot say WHY that was.

One possible explanation was that I simply had more opportunity to date men of
certain categories. For example, I have tended to have more relationships to
men who were in the military or former military. On the one hand, my father
and ex husband were both career military, so I tend to more readily get along
with people with a military association of some sort. They tend to understand
me better and interpret my bluntness more positively than people without such
a background. On the other hand, I was near a military base and I had friends
in the military. So I happened to have a much higher opportunity to meet or be
introduced to military personnel and former military members under
circumstances that made getting involved with them easier.

I was not consciously and intentionally looking for military men or former
military members. Nonetheless, my dating numbers did skew towards that subset
of the population. I don't think it means I straight up "discriminate against"
non military members.

There are other things like that in the data concerning my relationship
history. Military vs civilian is not the only category I contemplated when
thinking about this and concluding that you can, for example, date more of
your own race without straight up being racist. But I chose that as an example
in hopes that it is the least problematic example I can use.

Does that make more sense?

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discardorama
Notice the diagonal of green in the "women rating men" table in OKCupid's
data: [http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/race-
attraction-2009-2014/](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/race-
attraction-2009-2014/) ? It says that women prefer a person of their own race
too.

The writer seems to imply that online dating uniquely has this problem. On the
contrary: IRL, it is very easy to act on your biases and _not_ approach the
Black woman at a bar; but no-one's there to quantize such interactions and
count them and graph them.

~~~
Eyas
> The writer seems to imply that online dating uniquely has this problem. On
> the contrary: IRL, ...

Not sure why you draw this conclusion? The OKCupid blog (as well as the linked
article) are both clear in that this data on an online dating platform simply
documents/mirrors a societal trend (and inclinations) already existing.

It is not a commentary on online dating or technologies, but the state of
society and the role race continues to play.

------
haliax
1\. I don't think you can conclude that the profile picture incidents are
totally about race rather than general appearance

2\. Who you date is an extremely personal matter, you should be able to set
whatever standard you want.

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mc32
Is it a bad thing black men are choosing outside their race, or that Asian
women are choosing outside their race?

If there is racism, it's cutting both ways, isn't it?

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untog
While I'm sure there is much to nit-pick in this specific article, I think the
topic is well worth a read and something for everyone to reflect upon.
Effectively, black women are penalised in dating scenarios by men of all other
races, including their own. That isn't reciprocated and nor is it the case for
any other races.

While it doesn't seem like focusing on online dating achieves much here - it
is just reflecting real life, after all - it's still interesting to think that
online dating has the ability to mask these issues (imagine a site with "blind
dating"), but it would require people to actively choose to use a service that
challenges their preconceptions. For what reason would someone choose to do
such a thing? It's difficult to see.

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mistermann
> At times, online dating as a black woman has been extraordinarily painful. I
> have desperately wished my friends and peers would more actively and deeply
> explore how profoundly this disparity in opportunity affects my life and
> those of millions of others — not to mention how it holds us all back from
> more equitable and enjoyable dating experiences.

> What if online dating sites called on all users to consider what it means to
> be a black woman or an Asian man while swiping and messaging? How would
> behaviors change if people were forced to recognize that you are
> consistently being rejected, not because of who you are but because of your
> race?

I'm curious if the author actively and deeply explores the profound disparity
of opportunity suffered by others (men, mostly) who can't get a date, _ever_
(as in literally their entire life), for reasons other than race.

~~~
thescribe
> What if online dating sites called on all users to consider what it means to
> be a black woman or an Asian man while swiping and messaging? How would
> behaviors change if people were forced to recognize that you are
> consistently being rejected, not because of who you are but because of your
> race?

I wonder if this would add to the friction that online dating is attempting to
remove? That is to say, would there always be a market for a service lacking
the 'feature' of calling on users to consider the meaning of being a black
woman. Since presumably the users of a dating site are there to online date.

------
savanaly
If it were just about race, you wouldn't see this gender disparity in asian
men/women and black women/men. I think it's more about what people perceive as
sexy-- petite in women and bulky in men. Although it is definitely about race
somewhat, just not entirely I think.

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sago
What a weird article. On one hand it seems to complain that platforms give
people tools to be prejudiced (going as far as saying, because it is
profitable), then on the other hand saying that matching people with
prejudiced people would be bad.

So what is it? Is this a technical problem, or a function of more people not
wanting to date black women? Complaining about the technology or the platform
in this case seemed churlish.

There may be a case for saying that people have a gut prejudice, that is
easily overcome if they are introduced to people they'd really like, but not
ordinarily consider. But if that's been tried and has not met with consumer
interest, then it is hardly a platform problem, is it?

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Mz
She is entitled to quit online dating. But her expectation that people should
appreciate her for "who" she is, not "what" she is, is probably unrealistic.
People who meet her in person can still tell she is black. They either are or
are not okay with that. Skipping the step where someone feels confortable
stating upfront that the dealbreaking detail is her race may make her more
comfortable, but it won't make de facto racists more likely to ask her out. It
just helps them hide their racism and not admit so readily that they would
interested, if only she were not black.

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escherize
The author focuses the article on being rejected because of her race, offers a
critique of sites that allow filtering via race.

Iirc, the most prejudiced category in okc's dataset was level of education.
That kind of prejudice doesn't seem to be an issue(?). At least not one that's
untouchable. Prejudice around things one cannot change should be the problem.

Yet, I don't think wapo would publish an article like this from the
perspective of a short man who is upset that dating-site-x allows filtration
by height.

So maybe prejudice around things that are immutable aren't wholy unacceptable.

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tonomics
The prejudice isn't targeted at black women, but black people in general.

