A short video, published by theguardian.com, has touched on one of the sensitive issues that we are afraid to talk about, but yet affects our daily lives—especially for those who make use of the internet to find love.
The video tackles issues of race, romance and stereotyping, and questions why most of us don’t look for love with people from other ethnic groups, and whether that makes us all secretly racist.
According to The Guardian, various studies which have evaluated our dating preferences have been conducted; these studies revealed that systematic racism is affecting the romantic choices that we make on various internet dating sites.
Based on statistics earlier this year from dating site-OK Cupid, which have been backed by various other academic studies, it was revealed that the vast majority of website users prefer to date someone who is of their own race.
Journalist Mona Chalabi, who has been following the situation closely over the years, argued that while there are a variety of reasons why people express certain preferences when looking for a partner, this trend is in part due to their exposure to negative racial stereotypes.
She cited some examples of how Asian women on dating sites are seen as submissive and docile (worryingly, this stereotype makes them quite popular), while Asian men don’t do very well at all.
The Researcher-Christian Rudder, from OK Cupid dating site, wrote about the most recent research, which used data from 25 million accounts and followed on from another in-depth study in 2009.
He concluded that “Non-black men applied a penalty to black women while black men showed little racial preference either way. All women preferred men of their own race, but they otherwise penalized black and Asian men. These biases are pervasive in the data I’ve seen. For example, 82% of non-black men on Ok Cupid show some bias against black women.”
After publishing the study, Rudder has said that nothing has significantly changed in the last six years. He was quoted as saying by the trueactivist.com, “Ok Cupid users are certainly no more open-minded than they used to be. If anything, racial bias has intensified a bit. One interesting thing is to compare what you see above with what those same users have told us about their racial attitudes.”
However, he admitted that although the number of people claiming to be willing to date anyone from any race has increased over time, in actual practice, it is not happening—adding that it will take a long time for change to come.
“While Ok Cupid is large enough that its demographics reflect the general Internet-using public, Date Hookup is a niche site particularly popular with Latinos and blacks (those groups comprise 13% and 20% of the site, respectively.) Other sites in our portfolio, with still different demographics and business models, show the same attraction patterns,” he said.
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No its not racist it’s commom sense this site it being filled 20th retards who can post so fast it’s shocking if you think dating only your own race is racist do the world a favor drink a gallon of bleach and post how if you die the bleach was racist as well.
I’m a white woman…and frankly, I much preferred to date any other race BUT my own!
You’re racist
Hey Guess what, you are all “Racist” for posting this article or arguing over it. There is only one race, Humanity. Only difference between any of us is distance from the equator and other environmental conditions.