Years ago I thought this as well. However, once I became good friends with people of different races, I started to become attracted to more people of those races as well.
So, I definitely do think that there is some component of "racism" to this, even though it may be subconscious.
I need to be thankful for the song "The Lakes of Pontchartrain." If it wasn't for the line "handsome young creole girl" I wouldn't have been curious enough to date my present girlfriend, who is African American. We've now been going out for almost 3 years, and I'm happier than I've ever been. I've also discovered a lot about what subconscious racism I've been carrying around in my head.
There is racism. You can't be black and have a conversation with your sons and your brothers in a parking lot. The police will come by and harass you. This despite the fact that my girlfriend's uncle is a wonderful, industrious, upstanding ex-military man. You can be white and do this, though. (This was not some seedy parking lot in a run-down neighborhood in the big city. It happened in a rural town of only 16,000.)
Maybe by some strict definition they are, but not in the ordinary sense we use the term, and to expand its definition to include those sorts of preferences might dilute the moral case against racism and sexism.
In this post and your next one you present an argument for why discriminating on the basis of sex is more rational than discriminating on the basis of race in terms of who you are attracted to. You seem to think that I was arguing that discrimination on the basis of sex is exactly like discrimination on the basis of race when it comes to picking romantic and/or sexual partners. Perhaps I was unclear due to brevity but that's not what I intended to say at all.
My point was that we should refrain from judging people for having racial preferences in who they want to date for the same reason that we should refrain from judging people for having sexual/gender preferences in who they want to date: because nobody really controls who they are attracted to, because attraction is a very personal thing that is based on a whole host of factors, some less rational than others, because there is no basis for saying that any particular set of sexual preferences is "right", and because saying that people ought to be attracted to people who they aren't just leads to alienation and unnecessary grief.
All of these preferences probably meet the technical definition of various forms of discrimination, but the words we have for those types of discriminations (rightfully) imply a certain moral judgment about the person being described which I think is inappropriate in this instance.
That's a perfectly legitimate argument for why a race-preference in dating should not be considered racism. I do not object to it now, nor have I ever.
What I do object to is conflating sex and race when it comes to questions of sex. The previous claim, which I objected to, was that there's no difference between a sex preference in dating and a race preference in dating. That's definitely not true, for the reasons I've outlined twice now.
Personally, I agree with you - a race preference in sexual attraction is not something you really have control over, any more than most other sexual preferences.
When it comes to sex, it's ok to discriminate on the basis of sex, because when it comes to sex the different sexes are very different. Their sexual characteristics are different, they produce different sex hormones, and they even participate in the act of sex in completely different ways.
Were there to be some activity where your melanin levels were critical (hard to think of a realistic one, but say you were going to be sent on a space journey where extra melanin would be a grave disadvantage nutritionally) then race (or really, skin color - I can't even think of a ridiculous example for race) would be extremely relevant. In that instance, discrimination based on skin color would make perfect sense whereas discrimination based on sex would not have any such obvious connection.
Gender preference is certainly non-equivalent to race preference. On the other hand, it does show that certain forms of discrimination which would be wrong (and just plain illegal) in other settings are perfectly okay in a dating setting.
As a better example, I'm not interested in dating women who are old, ugly, fat, or have children, and that's perfectly okay. If I were not interested in hiring women who were old, ugly, fat or have children then I'd have a serious lawsuit on my hands.
Now personally, I think that refusing to date someone based on their race is both regrettable and closed-minded, but it's not detestable the way that actual racism is.
>"As a better example, I'm not interested in dating women who are old, ugly, fat, or have children, and that's perfectly okay. If I were not interested in hiring women who were old, ugly, fat or have children then I'd have a serious lawsuit on my hands."
If you looked at the other OkCupid chart, it shows that race has little impact on interracial match %. It's fairly certain that "old, ugly, fat, have children" are all characteristics that would lower the match %, therefore you argument of equating these different traits is debunked.
Your bit about hiring is also suspect. Think about 50+ years ago when minorities such as blacks really weren't up to standard due to years of slavery and persecution. Back then it was also seen as "legitimate" (using your argument) to not hire black people in the same way that people aren't dating minorities today.
>"Now personally, I think that refusing to date someone based on their race is both regrettable and closed-minded, but it's not detestable the way that actual racism is."
What is this "actual" racism? Since when is there "actual" racism and "fake" racism? I'm amazed at how many upvotes you have received with what is basically a No true Scotsman fallacy comment.
It's fairly certain that "old, ugly, fat, have children" are all characteristics that would lower the match %, therefore you argument of equating these different traits is debunked.
I think you need to look up how their "match %" is computed. It was described in an earlier post on that blog.
"All OkCupid users create their own matching algorithms, so when we determine who matches who, we’re just crunching the numbers people give us."
Aspects like age/location can be included as part of the user matching algorithms if it is important to them. Overweight/has kids/ugly should be equally spread out between races and should not be dependent on race, especially only after the first message.
Therefore match % is basically everything except race that is important to the user.
That would only apply to people who intend to bear children. What if you're childfree and intend to remain that way, beyond your childbearing years, or you've had a vasectomy/tubal ligation? By your logic, would it not then be ok to discriminate based on race?
I'm not the one who said it wasn't ok to discriminate based on race when you choose who you're going to date. Fuck or don't fuck whomever you want, it's none of my business (FWIW I am white and married to a white woman, but would not have automatically rejected someone for being of another race). I was just asking asking a question. Nobody here has attempted to prove that anything - that it's ok or not ok to discriminate based on race or gender. I'm just asking, what's the difference?
It seems to me that the same principle of equality that says it's not ok to have a preference in partners based on race should say that it's not ok to have a preference based on gender, assuming that discrimination based on gender in general is not ok.
This is the logical consequence of the position that discrimination is not acceptable. Your first attempt to show the difference, based on procreation, was a failure, so you're reduced to calling the next logical step "ridiculous," which is not really an argument. I don't think there is a good argument for your position. 20 years ago, people would have said that the idea that not dating people of a particular race makes you racist was ridiculous, but here we are.
> It seems to me that the same principle of equality that says it's not ok to have a preference in partners based on race should say that it's not ok to have a preference based on gender, assuming that discrimination based on gender in general is not ok.
Applying the "principle of equality" with a total disregard for the facts is fallacious.
Why stop at race and gender? Why do we discriminate against corpses (necrophiliacs) or even different species (zoophilia)? This is the ridiculous argument you are presenting.
A line has to be drawn somewhere and the tone of your skin should be a far less compelling characteristic than gender.
I'm not presenting a ridiculous argument, I'm just pointing out the consequences of making non-discrimination your highest principle. I'm not interested in telling other people who to have sex with. And there are definitely zoophiles who seek acceptance and are waiting for their Stonewall, probably necrophiles too.
It looks like you've arbitrarily decided where the cutoff should be between acceptable discrimination and unacceptable discrimination. There are others who still think (as almost everybody did from about the 60s-90s) that the line should be drawn entirely outside of dating preferences. I don't see what makes your opinion any more binding than theirs.
> "I'm just pointing out the consequences of making non-discrimination your highest principle. I'm not interested in telling other people who to have sex with. And there are definitely zoophiles who seek acceptance and are waiting for their Stonewall, probably necrophiles too."
The problem with your argument is that the high percentage of females refusing to associate with different races (even their own race) is essentially dictating who other people have sex with.
What happens if this trend continues? A large portion of the male population will likely either die out as virgins or be forced to relegate themselves to a dwindling number of minority females.
I'm not trying to pull the race card, but you as a white male are likely not very concerned about this as it will not affect you in the slightest while minorities are worrying daily about how their dating prospects and why so many people simply ignore them.
> The problem with your argument is that the high percentage of females refusing to associate with different races (even their own race) is essentially dictating who other people have sex with.
Sorry, but your posts come off as really creepy and strange. I hope you realize that no one has a right to sex with anyone else, whether a particular person or a member of any arbitrary group? How do you propose solving this "problem" of women apparently being relatively less interested in non-white men?
> Sorry, but your posts come off as really creepy and strange. I hope you realize that no one has a right to sex with anyone else, whether a particular person or a member of any arbitrary group?
So you are going to vote me down for citing a statistic?
I never talked about forcing anyone to date a race they don't like.
The first part of solving a problem is admitting there's a problem. Ignoring racism is part of the problem.
I think there's a classic nature vs. nurture question here. Is there inherently something that causes people to be attracted to people who look like what they see in the mirror; or is it influenced by the media, your peer group, your parents, etc. Personally, I suspect the latter plays a much larger role, but I don't have any solid evidence to back that up.
And, let's face it, there's probably some degree of it just being easier. Your friends and your family are never going to give you any hassle about dating someone of your own race (). You're never going to have to worry about some bigot yelling at you, or worse, walking down the street. Is that sort of calculation racist? Probably a little, although of a mild sort.
In my mind, though, these sorts of mild racisms help to perpetuate the more serious manifestations. They limit interracial interactions; they perpetuate the myth that there actually is significant genetic basis for the concept of race; and they give comfort to racial-purity bigots.
The delicate thing here is to recognize this sort of feeling without beating yourself up about it too much. But, to start, just try to make the transition from thinking "I'm just not attracted to people who aren't the same race as me, and there's nothing wrong with that" to "I'm not attracted to people who aren't the same race as me, and I'm not really sure why that is".
Yeah but the article had some other interesting points, like how black females are less desired by every other race, including black males, and how females in some non-white races prefer white males over males of their own race.
In general men can easily be attracted to women of different races. I think it is in their nature to be broad in their selection. Nearly every men I know have or have considered dating outside his race. Most women I talk to can find someone of a different race attractive. But they will not date them.
Did anyone else think this one had a little more interpretative language, though? "sweethearts" "nails in coffins" or "schizophrenia of people’s racial attitudes" all seem to distract from letting the figures speak for themselves, and given the explosive potential in the figures I guess the less editorial comment the better.
Edit - I'd also like to see a brief post that just looks at the zodiac chart. Would be the best place to send every zodiac-preacher I know to 'disprove' so much of what they argue (excepting the Capricorns, because they don't listen to evidence anyway).
>Did anyone else think this one had a little more interpretative language, though? "sweethearts" "nails in coffins" or "schizophrenia of people’s racial attitudes" all seem to distract from letting the figures speak for themselves, and given the explosive potential in the figures I guess the less editorial comment the better.
Agreed. I have alternative interpretations. "sweetheart" -> "desperate," "shitty" (used to describe white guys who don't answer) -> "in a position to be choosy." Naturally, the more replies you get, the more picky you'll be.
Right. Black women were the "sweethearts", and consistently found to be unfortunate in all of the categories.
It also happens that black women are the only group I don't find attractive.
Does that make me a racist? Especially when black males' answer to "would you strongly prefer to date someone of your own skin color" was a resounding "Hell no"..
By the way, I've got one friend who doesn't like Asian women, and another who only likes Asian women. Go figure.
Would be the best place to send every zodiac-preacher I know to 'disprove' so much of what they argue
If only. Go back and read some the comments on the last post (on okcupid, not HN). Someone there argues that just using the zodiac chart as shown (which is the sun or moon sign, I forget which) is insufficient. Apparently we need to use more advanced Zodiac sign knowledge to determine compatibility.
In any event, no amount of statistical data will dissuade strong believers.
Frankly I kinda like the informal interpretative language. It's more entertaining and less clinical. I don't think these guys see themselves as there to just regurgitate statistics; they're writers, too.
Sometimes the comments on HN are more interesting than the article. This isn't one of those times. This article is full of surprises, whereas the comments are fairly predictable.
I wonder what the pattern is. Which articles tend to yield boring comment threads? Ones that involve politics? Ones that invoke identity?
What I'd really like to find are simple, automatic ways of detecting boring comment threads. I know one that works: more comments than points. Anyone have any suggestions for others?
If you wanted to do it right, you'd need to collect a seed sample of articles you thought generated excessively boring/predictable comments. Then you could analyze them, generate grounded theory, and run the rules on the population of HN stories to look for false positives.
Any other recent examples of boring comment sections?
I suspect threads with excessively high churn (combination of up and down-votes) across the comments in the thread indicate dogmas colliding. The false-positive to watch out for would be people saying interesting things that go against the status quo.
Something like:
comment is interesting if (score * 2 + 5 > number_of_votes)
thread is interesting if (number_of_interesting_children * 2 > number_of_children)
seems like most submissions that have more comments than points tend to be boring/predictable. not always, but its a good indicator, as controversial topics tend to have most comments fall into certain predictable buckets.
Plus, shocking or offensive comments are generally downgraded, even though they're not "boring" due to their controversial nature. It's also difficult to define what "boring" actually is since it has such a subjective meaning.
just off the top of my head, i'd say that there's probably some sort of relationship between the points on the submission and the average points per comment in the comments.
> A lot of dating and who a person would consider for relationships is based on social, cultural and economic considerations, and it’s a simple and unfortunate fact that generally speaking whites are at the higher end of the social and economic spectrums.
I just wanted to call that out in case anyone has been taught that way, but not had a chance to think it through clearly. Becoming successful doesn't make the rest of humanity less successful - it makes them more successful.
It's not a "simple and unfortunate fact" that Vietnamese people immigrating to America revolutionized nail salons and made them affordable to almost all women while making themselves wealthy.
It's not a "simple and unfortunate fact" that many of the greatest American scientists of the last 100 years have been Ashkenazi Jewish.
And so on. It's not unfortunate when one group of people is succeeding - it brings up all of the rest of humanity. One group of people succeeding is not unfortunate; others failing is unfortunate and we can work to rectify that, but never feel guilty about succeeding and prospering.
The "unfortunate" comment seemed to be directed at the relative inequality, not the fact that whites are "succeeding". I think it's pretty tough to make the case that economic and educational inequality in the United States along racial lines is intrinsically a good thing, particularly given the historical context.
Inequality may be the least-bad outcome given the menu of potential remedies ("Harrison Bergeron" and all that), but it's not a great thing in and of itself. Particularly given the historical and occasional modern-day evidence of straight-up racism (see: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0DXK/is_9_20/ai_10452... ), I think it's reasonable to at least scrutinize situations of high inequality to figure out whether they are, in fact, just caused by some people working harder or being more lucky or what have you, or whether there are actual problems.
On the merits, though, I think OKCupid's matching algorithm (the questions) theoretically accounts for the social, economic and cultural differences - what their data shows ("suggests" is probably more appropriate) is that people react to race even after controlling for the other factors, which is at least interesting.
Edit: just to clarify and follow up - here's my claim: if the relative dominance of Ashkenazi Jews among American scientists, or Vietnamese women among nail-salon entrepreneurs, were the result of, say, discrimination, or government subsidies at others' expense, or some sort of other external factor that made the "competition" unfair, then it would be fair to categorize that inequality as "unfortunate". As far as I'm aware, that's not the case for either of those examples (and in fact is somewhat the opposite). But if it were (and the author of the original comment we're talking about seems to make that assumption about whites being better off on many socioeconomic measures), then calling that inequality "unfortunate" wouldn't be out of line.
> I think it's pretty tough to make the case that economic and educational inequality in the United States along racial lines is intrinsically a good thing, particularly given the historical context.
I'll address it, but before I do - look at how you framed the question and response. It's mildly disingenuous and makes it hard to have a discussion. Take this:
"I think it's pretty tough to make the case that economic and educational inequality in the United States along racial lines is intrinsically a good thing"
I don't know anyone that's making that claim. I mean that literally - I don't know anyone who says, "Economic and educational inequality along racial lines is a good thing." Most certainly I didn't make the claim, and I don't know of anyone that has.
But let's talk about relative inequality, because it's important. Take some groups of people - could be race, gender, religion, favorite color of car, anything. Some of the groups are doing better than others.
Is there a problem there? Well, sure, there is. You've got some people not doing as well as the rest of people. It'd be good for them to do better.
But is the problem that there are others that are doing well? Well, this comes down to how you think the world operates. Is most wealth created by people benefiting humanity or destroying humanity?
This can actually be looked into, and generally speaking, the way to get wealthy is to benefit humanity. This is kind of new thinking though - the old world thinking is that stealing from and oppressing people was what successful people were doing. This leads to innate hostility to people doing well, which is misplaced. The path to wealth these days to benefit other people, as Vietnamese entrepreneurs and Jewish scientists have done.
So here's what I'm saying: You should do the best you can. If someone is not doing as well as you, it would be good for them to do better. It would not be good for you to do worse. You should not feel guilty or uneasy about doing well, or about the race or religion you're part of doing well. You can feel bad that other races or religions aren't doing as well. But you should always feel good that you're doing well, and keep trying to do well, and do right as much as you can while doing well.
If I misunderstood your point, I apologize. Care to correct?
Here's what I understood to be the debate:
Original comment you quoted:
> A lot of dating and who a person would consider for relationships is based on social, cultural and economic considerations, and it’s a simple and unfortunate fact that generally speaking whites are at the higher end of the social and economic spectrums.
Your response (paraphrased, I hope fairly): Vietnamese entrepreneurs and Jewish scientists did quite well, and that's not unfortunate at all. Inequality isn't inherently bad, and we should focus on bringing people up rather than down (or for people to bring themselves up, etc.)
Either your response is a bit of a non-sequitur, or the logical inference is that the fact "whites are at the higher end of the socio-economic spectrum" isn't 'unfortunate' (which is sort of a squishy word, but that's just the OP's language). I understood that to be the point you were responding to - if that's wrong, then I apologize and please do set me straight.
My point was that the OP calling better socio-economic 'outcomes' for whites "unfortunate" is pretty reasonable, as there's a good deal of evidence to suggest that it's not just the result of benign factors (see: history of slavery and segregation; evidence of present-day racism, as in the article I linked).
Likewise (and I sort of hate to use this example), a monopolist's market dominance may be the result of a superior product, or an unfair/illegal abuse of [whatever]. In the latter case, calling that monopolist's position "unfortunate" doesn't seem out of bounds - even if the best remedy is to bring the other market actors up, or even do nothing.
You called the OP out on calling white advantages "unfortunate" - I'm saying, it is.
> You called the OP out on calling white advantages "unfortunate" - I'm saying, it is.
Agreed, with an addendum: white advantages are unfortunate if they come via the exploitation or active assumption of disadvantage by other groups.
An advantage held by one group is not "unfortunate" if it doesn't hurt anyone else, or prevent others from attaining those advantages.
That might be a "well duh" statement, but I think the posters farther up the thread are (intentionally?) ignoring that in favor of a more academic debate.
Having said all that, most white advantages are indeed unfortunate.
> If I misunderstood your point, I apologize. Care to correct?
You actually made quite good points. The problem that I see, though, is people often feel guilty for being successful just by virtue of being white, and it causes all sorts of other problems.
I'll tell you about my own bloodlines real quick - as far back as I can trace my ancestry, we've got no oppressors/thieves/etc. No one in my family has ever owned slaves, for instance, and we went from lower class to middle class only in the last generation. If I make it myself, I'll be self made wealthy, and my children (only half-Caucasian) will be the first in my bloodlines to be born into wealth.
> You called the OP out on calling white advantages "unfortunate" - I'm saying, it is.
I don't think it's unfortunate when white people are doing well, or when anyone is doing well. It's unfortunate when people are doing poorly, but there should be no personal guilt or unease, just a general sense of "let's fix this" - the negative emotions are counterproductive on many levels.
On a personal level, I've taken very few if any benefits from American society, and learned a great deal of my lessons living in Europe and East Asia, taking friends and lovers of all colors, and just learning a lot at the sometimes-unpleasant school of hard knocks.
Personally, I feel no guilt at being white - but I was sort of raised to, like most people born after 1970, and did for a while. You know what really broke it for me? It's when I spent some time in England and saw lots of really multiracial groups of friends - it was common to see a guy from Africa, a guy with Middle Eastern blood, and a couple white guys hanging out. Or a Sri Lankan first generation immigrant, Chinese 0.5 immigrant, Aussie, and a couple Brits. They always "took the piss" out of me for being an American, but the groups in London actually are a lot less aware of race. The guilt in America over being white forces people constantly highlights our differences, which actually perpetuates racism.
I don't want to ramble on too long, but here's two last thoughts:
1. A lot of elitist white people think "those poor unsophisticated [blacks/Asians/Hispanics], we've got to help them!" -> This leads to teachers speaking slower to them, cutting them "breaks", etc, and there's been a lot of research that when a teacher thinks a child is stupider or slower and teach down to them, the student performs less well. So the, "Oh my, we white people have exploited, and let's now make it right" has nasty secondary effects of treating people like they're second class citizens and perpetuating the old race roles.
2. I see a lot of pro-minority groups that instead of taking a "pro-humanity" stance, they take an adversarial "us vs. them" stance. It's understandable to some extent, but it's a damn shame. As an example, look at how the Duke Lacrosse case went down. That was really shameful. I've read a lot of Dr. Martin Luther King's speeches, he was really a tremendous man. He was always stressing that he wanted to see blacks and whites gathering together, doing great things, supporting and working and serving great causes together. A lot of leaders have gotten away from "let's work together, all races, for a better world" to, "those no good people are exploiting us, let's get them back and make sure we get ours". Maybe it's understandable, but I don't think it's so helpful.
Guilt over being white is straight up a bad thing. People of Caucasian descent have done bad things throughout history, as have people of African descent, as have people of Arabic descent, as have people of Asian descent, and so on, and so on. Hell, the things the Spanish, French, and British Empires did to some of their colonies is more horrible than anything that happened in the United States, but the lack of individual guilt among their descendants on racial lines makes the societies closer knit and less racist. We need less "us vs. them" - and thinking it's unfortunate that whites are doing well is still, however well meaning, "us vs. them". Let's get people who could be doing better up to speed, but let's also never feel guilty about becoming more prosperous.
Not that I'm adding to the discussion, but I'm very impressed by the tone of this discussion. Even on HN (where I tend to find people more willing to debate (as opposed to argue)) discussions like this tend to get nasty. Cheers to this!
>>> A lot of dating and who a person would consider for relationships is based on social, cultural and economic considerations, and it’s a simple and unfortunate fact that generally speaking whites are at the higher end of the social and economic spectrums.
That's not altogether true. Asians earn more on average than whites. The ethnic group with the highest income is Indians. It would be interesting to see the stats for Asianas broken down by - "American-ness" - do American-born, accentless Harold and Kumar do much better than FOBs?
> It would be interesting to see the stats for Asianas broken down by - "American-ness" - do American-born, accentless Harold and Kumar do much better than FOBs?
I'd guess yes. "Blending in" can make it a lot easier to work with other people. Also being born in the US would make you more familiar with the US and how it works. Someone arriving in the US at age 25 would not only miss out on that intimate knowledge, but would likely have a bunch of misconceptions about how things worked based on their experiences back home.
Then again, you could also make the argument that the type of person who moves to a new country does so for a reason, usually because they think they'll have greater opportunities there. It's not unreasonable to expect that kind of person to be better focused and harder working, which may very well take up the slack.
But yeah, real stats would be interesting to see...
> It’s ironic that white guys are worst responders
Ironic means "surprising". When you just got done describing in detail how white males get the best response from all other potential mates, the fact that they respond the least is completely unsurprising.
I don't think guy response rates are all that relevant. Let's face it, if a chick is the one reaching out to you, chances are she is of the lower caliber(a fatty). The good looking girls don't need to reach out, they get thousands of emails a month, they don't need to bother looking for guys.
"They gave 77 white female Michigan State students several standard measures of racism at different times in their cycles. The "race bias" curve on the graph is a combination of the measures.
Their interpretation is based on evolution, avoiding outgroup fathers who won't be around to take care of the mother and child. One problem I see with that interpretation is that it is better for evolution to mix genes as much as possible. I don't really have a better explanation, though."
"marriages between third or fourth cousins in Iceland tended to produce more children and grandchildren than those between completely unrelated individuals"
These findings don't surprise me at all. I've always been baffled as to why some people insist that Race, Culture, Gender, or Religion have no bearing on anything. The problem is that if you make a statement like "race is a predictor of academic success" you'll get labeled a racist.
if you make a statement like "race is a predictor of academic success" you'll get labeled a racist
Not necessarily. Whoever you're talking to will carefully consider your language, tone, and any prior knowledge of you to figure out whether you're going to use your statement to support or attack their political beliefs, and then call you a racist as appropriate.
The problem is a vast number of people don't bother with the consideration stage.
(I attribute that to trash media personally; but that is a vague thought I haven't considered it too much)
EDIT: pop psychology. most people are massively influenced by society. Society "on average" would probably judge such a statement as containing racist overtones. Gut jumps in because racism is an issue that we attach strong emotions too (rightly). It takes a strong Head to overcome emotions like that.
Sure, people like that are deluded. Race, culture, gender, and religion should have no bearing on anything, but in practice, they do.
I'm not sure that a statement like the one you suggest would get you labeled racist, at least not among people who are capable of critical thinking. The fact remains that race is a predictor of academic success. It shouldn't be, but it is. To be a bit more socially sensitive, you might prefix that statement with "unfortunately," but I think that's one of the less-inflammatory things you can say that have a racial bent.
The problem is that people confuse correlation with causation. A being a predictor for B does not mean that A causes B, just that A and B tend to occur together.
Interesting to me: rate of reply seems inversely correlated with likelihood of reply. That is, if you're likely to reply, other people are less likely to reply to you.
My guess is that both of these things are correlated with social status. People with high social status are likely to be sought after (high rate of reply to their messages) and less likely to deign to reply (low rate of reply to others messages). It's well known that white males are perceived with highest social status, and black women with lowest, so these results make perfect sense in that context.
If you're more likely to reply, you're probably less picky. If you're less picky then you're likely to take the "shotgun" approach of messaging many people, regardless of whether it would be a good match. It shouldn't be surprising if a higher percentage of those people don't respond than to those who's approach is more targeted.
But to confirm this we'd need to see the average number of messages sent by each group of people.
There is, as I understand it, some evidence for the idea that people learn what's attractive in a member of the opposite sex by essentially averaging out all the faces which they see while growing up. This makes a helluva lot of sense as an evolutionary strategy -- you learn what your species looks like by observing as many other members as you can, and then you try to mate with the least unusual-looking person you can. Aside from protecting your offspring from the weird disability-causing genes which are sometimes signalled by unusual-looking features, it's also a great strategy if you assume everyone else is using it too: if you mate with a non-unusual looking partner you'll get non-unusual-looking kids, who will then be sought-after mating partners.
Anyway, if our brains really do use this strategy I think it goes a long way towards explaining some of this data.
edit: I don't mean to imply that this is the only criterion our brains use -- we probably find most attractive people who are slightly taller, more muscular and/or larger-breasted than the average we see while growing up. However in other things like facial structure where no particular face is objectively fitter than any other, heading towards the average is a pretty good plan.
What is even more shocking to me are the comments on OK Cupid to this post. Many of the commenters who say they are black/Indian/etc seem to acceptingly resign themselves to saying they're part of "less desirable" or "undesirable" groups, as if as a person they are in fact undesirable. (e.g. "As a member of a particularly undesirable racial group, ..." or "Some of us less desirable types ...")
The real shocker though is who advocates for restricting searches by race! From the comments, it is people who are part of undesirable groups who actually want OKC to be race-aware and allow people to discriminate.
Clearly the data shows that there are biases toward certain races. However, from my experience, finding potential dates online is a roller coaster ride. It has ups and downs, and unfortunately we are always looking for what causes those downs. After all, people just reject you without a reason!
With data like this, many people will just assume that RACE is the reason for rejection -- something they cannot do anything about -- when it is more likely something they can accommodate for. That is the real danger in reading too far into these studies -- dating is all about YOU, while these statistics are all about averages!
In the article, the most staggering bias was white women's preference for white men, but also the general preference of women towards white men.
Given that these stats are coming from the USA, I think our culture - television, movies, etc - provides us with ample images of white males in positions of success and power. Maybe this sways women's perceptions?
I'm confused by all the talk of the word "racist." The article didn't mention the word "racist" in the title, and in fact the one time it talked about the word, it was to debunk a straw man suggestion that racism is a factor.
Are people dragging their^H^H^H^H^H^H own^H^H^H other baggage into this discussion?
If that's the thesis for the post, I am underwhelmed, I see no evidence for racism whatsoever as I understand the word. Maybe that's why I didn't see the post as having anything to do with racism... Because it doesn't.
Really? Maybe I misread, but I got the impression the author was presenting evidence in favor of, not against, the "white women are racist" statement. The way it's expressed ("nail in the coffin") is admittedly confusing, but in what way could he be said to be debunking it?
I just read it as saying that White Women preferred to respond to White Men. Maybe it's my lack of baggage on the subject, I don't associate "Preferring White Shmeckle" with "Racism."
To me, the word "racist" has all sorts of connotations around desiring a de-integration of society on colour lines, around various forms of employment discrimination, and around hate and fear. Expressing a preference when choosing a mate is not racism, nor is it particularly surprising.
I agree with you on what racism means, but it certainly was my impression that the author does not agree, and is in fact conflating racial preference in mates with racism.
Looks like all y'all're right and I was wrong. Ah well, I will turn my attention to another HN front page post, this one on Reading Incomprehension. Perhaps it might help me understand posts like this a little better :-)
>We’ve processed the messaging habits of almost 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.
Did they take class into account at all? That could explain some of the results. Or even if they did, and all of these stats have been adjusted for class, carryover from class stereotypes could still explain the results.
There are a zillion factors which haven't been corrected for. As well as class, they include message length, message quality, profile quality, number of messages received on average by each class of respondee, income, education, number of cats owned and whether or not the man's profile consists of a shirtless photo posing in front of his Honda Civic (and I don't know why that mental image came to mind).
I imagine you could, by using fake profiles and fake messages, do a controlled experiment which took all these factors out. My guess would be that you'd still see a vaguely similar effect but that it would be much less pronounced.
Agreed. I think message quality would be highly significant, because black males (not to generalize or anything) are much more likely to use netspeak such as "yo" or "wut" that we learned earlier were response killers. Of course, maybe the reason women don't like these words is because "yo" is a "black" word.
I didn't even think about the money thing, but we do know that women care an awful lot about it. Who knows; a lot of the blatant racism towards black men (i.e. in the self report section) could be because women generalize that black men are poor. It could also explain why everyone seems to want to get with a white dude; he's more likely to be rich/have higher status.
And they also state at the end of the article that they do not have a representative sample of the population.
But if you do use the website and surf through some profiles, it becomes pretty clear that the majority of the users are, as the article states, younger, more educated, and more progressive than the average American. I would go even further and say that the vast majority of the users would not self-identify themselves as racist.
Now question for OKCupid would be, wouldn't it be interesting if you could make a table showing the relationship of race to socioeconomic status, and then the breakdown of reply rate by socioeconomic status?
For example, here's an alternative explanation consistent with their data:
Perhaps black females are generally more solicitous, and send out lots of communications, being generally non-discriminatory about who they communicate with. This would explain both their own high reply rates and their recipients' low reply rates.
How the heck is a preference in who you date "racism"? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. People have strong preferences over all sorts of superficial things - body type, hair color, hair style, breast size, height, etc. Is it really so hard to believe that someone's preference for XXXX skin tone is just as shallow as their preference for YYYY hair color? (I've yet to see a commenter to a survey showing men prefer blonds point to it as evidence of some deep seated prejudice/hatred said men have towards women of other hair colors.)
