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.
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/
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?
I totally agree but with one caveat. See the answer to the question "All this data is from a dating site. What does that have to do with my life?" from your link.
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.
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.
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.
It's not racist to personally find one race statistically more attractive than another to you.
That pretty much is the definition of being a racist. It's a rather personal and benign form of racism, to be sure, but it is very much discriminating based on a person's race.
Anyways, on the bright side, it means that there is an underserved market here for black women. That's gotta be useful somehow, I guess?
> That pretty much is the definition of being a racist.
We can argue dictionary definitions, and of course I would concede, but in the real world, calling someone a racist has additional connotations. I don't think a subconscious, genetic attraction to your own race, as shown by all the evidence of all races preferring their own race, deserves the label of "racist", with all the guilt and shaming and "wrongness" that comes with that word.
The fact that it exists across all races is the hint that it is genetic. Unless you're suggesting that all races have independently developed identical social pressures to mate with their own race, and override the any inherent genetic tendencies to mate with all races. Then I'd ask how that pressure came to be identical for all races.
I believe it'd be "...identical pressure for all cultural groups" where cultural groups tend to contain (or become?) predominantly one race. I'd argue it's learned behavior because centuries ago, trusting outsiders was risky and what better way to identify "outsiders" than "they don't look like us."?
It is like the ancient Greek comedies all over again.
Why dont we make the attractive people HAVE to sleep with ugly people first?
Make sure that the most able athletes in society mate only with those physically disabled from birth.
Those with the highest IQs mate with the mentally retarded.
The laughable thing is that you think that people should choose to go against their own personal preferences IS racist - you are asking people to change their dating decisions based upon race.
Eh? I don't claim any of that--some form of racism are benign (arguably even positive in certain circumstances). You're the one bringing in the stigma here...I'm just arguing definitions.
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.
> 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.
I also find it interesting that in the "Women rating men" table, the "White men" column doesn't even have a negative entry for the first three years...
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
