An article about this was posted to the "What We Missed" section of the main blog at Feministing. "What We Missed" indeed. What the editors missed in including this link is that it is profoundly sexist and racist itself, even as it tries to inoculate itself against that charge by finger-pointing at white women for being racist because they don't reply to a random given male user on their website who messages them asking for a date.
While I have no doubt that racism is alive and well, I want to note that generalizing about black women as generally nicer, more talkative, and more sexually available than white women is not exactly a new finding -- it is an awful stereotype about "oversexed black women" versus "frigid white women" that does neither person any favors.
Some choice quotes:
1. “Black women are sweethearts. Or just talkative.”
–i.e., black women are the oversexualized mammy figures we all believed them to be?
2. “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.”
–i.e., if you have an above-average percentile of compatibility as a result of their lame "scientific" matching system, you are obligated to be sexually interested in them, UNLESS YOU ARE RACIST?
3. “White guys are shitty, but fairly even-handed about it.”
–i.e., White guys don't reply to messages either, but hey, they are not racist, they are just self-absorbed slobs from a Judd Apatow movie. At least they’re treating everyone equally poorly, unlike those white chicks who clearly don't want to have cyber sex with you because you're black??
I don’t know about you, readers, but as a white woman who has a profile on this site, for the sake of making friends, I absolutely do not discriminate based on race, and I think this so-called “study” is chock full of ignorance, misinformation, and antibiotic-resistant racism and sexism. The only reason i'm bothering to complain about it is because the site does have a lot of use. I met one of my best friends through the website.
I'd like to expand upon the point I made regarding quote number 2. What they aren’t telling you about these "low reply rates to non-white men, by white women," is that any messages which I, at least, am not replying to, are messages from people (of all races) who are asking me –
–whether I have an innie or an outie belly button,
–whether I will take a picture of myself in lingerie while doing the some kind of Star Trek hand signal for them to add to their collection
–who i think i’m kidding when i say i’m bisexual
–how they would like to talk to me about my interest in philosophy but I am just too ugly
–hey baby u r sexi wanna chat
–outright homophobic, anti-feminist hate-mail that suggests my life has no value, that i should probably die, that i am a hooker because i wear make-up, and which actually made me fear for my safety.
This stuff floods my inbox all the time. OF COURSE I don’t reply to these messages. I’m not even trying to get a date right now, and I SPECIFY that on my profile. I don't imagine I am alone in my experience. To suggest that white women are racist not to reply to the hundreds of messages like this that they receive obscures a serious problem. It risks reinforcing the GEORGE SODINI stereotype that men should be entitled to unrestricted sexual access to women simply because the men are interested, are nice guys, are part of an oppressed minority, or because OKCupid gave us a high “Compatibility Percentage” (because your chance of success in love with someone is always quantifiable on a percentage scale of 0 – 100%).
Ugh.
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No offense, but I'm not sure what reproducing your comment from the original thread as a community post is going to do, especially since it's already been discussed and you've already complained that you feel like your personal life is being examined, even though YOU keep bringing it up. You seem very stuck on the idea that since YOU don't discriminate based on race, that there's nothing to this study. Part of what tells me that is that the study did not confine itself to what white women do, yet that's what you're focusing on. It looks at the response rates of each racial group to all the others. It even found that black men are less likely to reply to black women than to white women!
Racialicious has two entire posts dedicated to this study, with dozens and dozens of thoughtful comments on each one. Take the time to look outside of what YOU'RE doing on the site and try to understand what the information might be saying about how racial groups perceive other ones.
http://www.racialicious.com/2009/10/09/of-okcupid-and-denials-of-racism/
http://www.racialicious.com/2009/10/09/racialicious-loves-ok-cupid/
Like I said before, if it's not about you, IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU. And maybe it is about you, if you're so offended by the idea that maybe white people have racialized preferences. 'Cause the study certainly shows that we ALL have racialized preferences, regardless of our race, and it might further the conversation a lot more if we talked about what messages society sends us that leads to those group-wide preferences.
Hi, Alixana. I submitted this community post a long time ago, like, directly after I posted my comment, because I thought this might be a better forum for it. I didn't foresee the ensuing debate.
I am really being misunderstood here, because I am not offended by the idea that white people have racialized preferences. I KNOW they do! I am simply asking why they aren't talking about the sexual harassment, which seems important on a dating website. I am also saying, for the fiftieth time, that singling out white women as opposed to white men is problematic, and risks sexism, and saying "black women are talkative sweethearts" is racist even if it sounds like a compliment.
I have already read the articles you recommended on Racialicious, thanks.
If you'll look at the end of the comment thread from "What We Missed," you'll see that I am actually talking in detail about what leads to these group-wide preferences -- like the fact that POC are being systematically denied things that might make someone a desirable partner, like education and wealth, and that people need to check themselves for unconscious bias because of this. I know I did.
Also, as far as I can tell, the Racialicious' reproduction of the graph does single out white women with a big red box. However, I'm sure the numbers have truth to them! We do not disagree here!
TO EVERYONE: I recognize how easy this post is to misinterpret. The reason I didn't have a problem using language like "cyber with you because you're black," which I now recognize sounds ridiculous, is because I personally didn't perceive the problem with sexual harassment to be a result of black men on the site. I have only ever had problems from white men.
I am simply really frustrated with sexual harassment in general, and I apologize if this has made me come across as unsupportive of social change with respect to perception of interracial marriage, which is obviously (cf. Louisiana) a very serious problem.
Ok, bye.
:-(
Meh. When it comes to choosing romantic/sexual partners, people have a right to like what they like, for whatever reason and it's nobody else's business. You don't have to like my choices or approve of them and I have a right to be as shallow or superficial as I choose to be, as do you. If someone doesn't want to date me, it really doesn't matter why. I just have to accept that I'm not what they are looking for and move on. At least this is what we tell men who feel entitled to have a woman they want, even if the attraction isn't mutual.
The choice of sexual/relationship partners is an inherently discriminatory process. Honestly, that's kind-of the point of dating -- to weed out (i.e. discriminate against) people with whom you'd rather not have a romantic relationship.
Discrimination -- even discrimination based on problematic reasons like race, religion, sexual-orientation, disability, etc. -- is a problem when people are being denied the ability to do something that they have a right to do. People do not have the right to a relationship with any particular individual ... and thus have no right to demand that any particular indivual be fully equal-opportunity when choosing a suitable mate.
In short, people have the right to be attracted to whomever they're attracted to -- short, tall, thin, not-so-thin, blonde, brunette, white, black, abled, disabled, talkative, quiet, extroverted, introverted, athiest, Christian, old, young (within limits) ... whatever. With that comes the right to reject a potential partner for any reason of the above reasons.
It is not necessarily a bad thing to ask yourself why you're not attracted to members of a certain group -- Christians, or African-Americans, or blondes, or the disabled. It could be a learning experience.
But, each of us still retain the right to reject a sexual partner for any reason ... or no reason at all.
kbz
Thank you, guys.
I wasn't sure why I kept being accused of racism for pointing out an entirely unrelated issue, particularly when I personally am not even adverse to dating anyone of any ethnicity. I'm glad to know that some people have brought up the point behind my original question -- we can't conclude from the fact that someone doesn't respond to an e-mail by someone of a different color, without knowing anything about the content of that e-mail, that they are doing so because of racism.
And frankly, if they are, it's their loss.
One thing I noticed is that they picked people who were of around the same attractiveness according to their picture-rating utility. I don't use OKCupid, but isn't the picture-rating optional, and isn't that something that people more concerned with physical appearance, and other people's opinions, would opt into? I have no doubt that the results show a real trend, but I think there might be some selection bias magnifying the result.
And yeah, the framing of the results are dumb, too, as many of the comments point out. Black women aren't "sweethearts"; they're considered less desirable in a society with white-centric beauty standards, so they can't afford to be as picky. I also really don't like how they let white men off the hook, like you say. If we're going to decide that 20% to 29% is such a huge gap that we can say white women "only respond well to white men", then 32% to 47% (a range 1.5 times larger) is surely not being "even handed".