My therapist recently gave me some advice that made me feel like a diseased elephant was in the room with us.
She said, "You should try dating white men."
The elephant glared at me.
"But I am not attracted to white men," I whined.
"Well, then you should try. Because your bias is limiting your choices."
I bristled at the word "bias." Was it a bias? Or was it a preference? I do date white men. I just don't prefer them. The heart wants what the heart wants. And my lusty heart wants someone non-white, preferably from a distant land.
But maybe she was right? Perhaps I was biased.
I asked a girlfriend if my preference for non-white men was a bias? She asked a provocative question back.
"What if you said you only wanted to date white men?"
"Um, I probably would be accused of being biased."
"Exactly. So why is it a bias in one direction but not the other?"
I hung my head in shame. She had a point. And it was a conundrum I couldn't easily solve. We can't completely control whom we are attracted to. It's a decision affected by a host of factors — our family upbringing, society's beauty standards, our first sexual experiences, pheromones, past lives (joking…sort of), and geography.
But this begs a more challenging question: Do ethnicity filters on dating apps encourage racial biases?
If you ask sociologists Jennifer Lundquist, Celeste Vaughan Curington, and Ken Hou-Lin, authors of The Dating Divide: Race and Desire in the Era of Online Romance, they will say they most assuredly do. The team uncovers a pernicious form of racial bias — "digital-sexual racism." The authors explain:
Thankfully, under pressure from the BLM movement, Grindr, Tinder, and Bumble recently removed ethnicity filters. (OkCupid, Match, Plenty of Fish, and Hinge still allow users to screen by race.)
And that solved the problem. Yeah, right.
Melissa Alvarez recently was brave enough to share her personal experience on this subject. Yes, she is a study of one, but I guarantee other Black women feel the same discrimination on dating apps.
But if you ask the dating apps if their tools encourage racism, they will shine some rainbows over the problem. According to Match Group's Singles in America Survey, 7 out of 10 singles said they were open to dating someone from a different race or ethnicity.
And let's not forget how we got here. According to Gallop polls, 87% of Americans approve of Black-white marriage, vs. only 4% in 1958. In the early 1990s, the approval rating for dating someone of a different race was only 48%. We have made progress, and we should celebrate that progress.
But not so fast. Although single people say they are willing to date outside of their race, the data on whether they choose those people tells a very different story.
Christian Rudder, co-founder of OkCupid and bestselling author of Dataclysm: Love, Sex, Race, and Identity — What Our Online Lives Tell Us about Our Offline Selves, explored how racism plays out on dating apps.
In 2014, OkCupid used a five-star voting system to allow users to tailor their match preferences. Rudder took those race preferences and compared them to race preferences on other dating sites. (Note: DH is a hookup site.) The results are below.²
Data was collected in 2014. Rudder, Christian. Dataclysm. United States, Crown, 2014 — see source notes.
When men are choosing (left column), Black women are less likely to be chosen, even by Black men.
The results do not get much better when women (left column) are doing the choosing.³
Data was collected in 2014. Rudder, Christian. Dataclysm. United States, Crown, 2014 — see source notes
While Black women are more likely to choose Black men, biases still exist from white, Latina, and Asian women. What is going on here? If single people claim that they will date outside their race, why isn't it happening?
Unlike the Match Group, Rudder's data is not relying on self-reporting — a research method fraught with biases. None of OkCupid’s users know their preferences are being aggregated by the wizards behind the curtain. And lying about your preferences would be counterproductive because users would only get matches they don't want.
In other words, I am calling bullshit on Match Group's Singles in America Survey. No one openly admits their biases. That is the very nature of biases — you are unaware of them.
And if you think love is blind, let's examine the dating preferences of blind people. In Blinded by Sight: Seeing Race Through the Eyes of the Blind, Sociology professor Osagie K. Obasogie interviewed blind people from birth and found startling racial biases.
Obasogie tracked 106 blind people on first dates. Although the study was small, his findings were gut-wrenchingly poignant. He found his blind subjects were perfectly happy with their romantic choices until they discovered their date was a different race. Sadly, even blind people are conditioned to have racial biases.
To be clear, I am not conflating biases with racism. For example, when OkCupid polled users and asked if they would date someone who was vocally racist, 84 percent said no.⁴
Americans generally don't want to date racist people, but that doesn’t mean they are open to dating outside their race. Currently, only 6.3 percent of marriages are interracial. If you include Latinos, that number only increases to 17 percent.⁵
Ostensibly, part of the problem is segregation in America. The U.S. might be diverse, but we are still deeply divided. These racial stereotypes grow out of ignorance and isolation. When we are only exposed to one race in the media, our schools, employment, and tight-knit circles, we choose intimate partners that are familiar, even if that familiarity is wrapped up in biases.
There is a solution to this problem, but it is a band-aide solution — all dating apps should remove ethnicity filters. Period. No, that won't solve the problem, but at least it will stop actively encouraging biases.
I recently turned off all my search filters except location. But I will be honest about why I sometimes screen out white men, and it has nothing to do with physical attractiveness. I find it painfully dull to be with someone who has the same cultural background and upbringing. Not always. But often. I want to learn about new music, art, history, and literature because it expands my tiny world.
And research is going to back me up on my approach. A recent study found that people who date others from different cultures and races increase their creativity. So if you are in a creative field, nix the ethnicity filters. Your art will thank you for it.
That is the power of dating apps. We finally have a tool that allows us to discover people from all walks of life, anywhere in the world.
Why would you ever want a filter to eliminate those possibilities?
Link | Archive
She said, "You should try dating white men."
The elephant glared at me.
"But I am not attracted to white men," I whined.
"Well, then you should try. Because your bias is limiting your choices."
I bristled at the word "bias." Was it a bias? Or was it a preference? I do date white men. I just don't prefer them. The heart wants what the heart wants. And my lusty heart wants someone non-white, preferably from a distant land.
But maybe she was right? Perhaps I was biased.
I asked a girlfriend if my preference for non-white men was a bias? She asked a provocative question back.
"What if you said you only wanted to date white men?"
"Um, I probably would be accused of being biased."
"Exactly. So why is it a bias in one direction but not the other?"
I hung my head in shame. She had a point. And it was a conundrum I couldn't easily solve. We can't completely control whom we are attracted to. It's a decision affected by a host of factors — our family upbringing, society's beauty standards, our first sexual experiences, pheromones, past lives (joking…sort of), and geography.
But this begs a more challenging question: Do ethnicity filters on dating apps encourage racial biases?
If you ask sociologists Jennifer Lundquist, Celeste Vaughan Curington, and Ken Hou-Lin, authors of The Dating Divide: Race and Desire in the Era of Online Romance, they will say they most assuredly do. The team uncovers a pernicious form of racial bias — "digital-sexual racism." The authors explain:
The authors point out that dating apps are the only venue where it is acceptable to articulate racial preferences.
Thankfully, under pressure from the BLM movement, Grindr, Tinder, and Bumble recently removed ethnicity filters. (OkCupid, Match, Plenty of Fish, and Hinge still allow users to screen by race.)
And that solved the problem. Yeah, right.
Melissa Alvarez recently was brave enough to share her personal experience on this subject. Yes, she is a study of one, but I guarantee other Black women feel the same discrimination on dating apps.
But if you ask the dating apps if their tools encourage racism, they will shine some rainbows over the problem. According to Match Group's Singles in America Survey, 7 out of 10 singles said they were open to dating someone from a different race or ethnicity.
And let's not forget how we got here. According to Gallop polls, 87% of Americans approve of Black-white marriage, vs. only 4% in 1958. In the early 1990s, the approval rating for dating someone of a different race was only 48%. We have made progress, and we should celebrate that progress.
But not so fast. Although single people say they are willing to date outside of their race, the data on whether they choose those people tells a very different story.
Christian Rudder, co-founder of OkCupid and bestselling author of Dataclysm: Love, Sex, Race, and Identity — What Our Online Lives Tell Us about Our Offline Selves, explored how racism plays out on dating apps.
In 2014, OkCupid used a five-star voting system to allow users to tailor their match preferences. Rudder took those race preferences and compared them to race preferences on other dating sites. (Note: DH is a hookup site.) The results are below.²
Data was collected in 2014. Rudder, Christian. Dataclysm. United States, Crown, 2014 — see source notes.
When men are choosing (left column), Black women are less likely to be chosen, even by Black men.
The results do not get much better when women (left column) are doing the choosing.³
Data was collected in 2014. Rudder, Christian. Dataclysm. United States, Crown, 2014 — see source notes
While Black women are more likely to choose Black men, biases still exist from white, Latina, and Asian women. What is going on here? If single people claim that they will date outside their race, why isn't it happening?
Unlike the Match Group, Rudder's data is not relying on self-reporting — a research method fraught with biases. None of OkCupid’s users know their preferences are being aggregated by the wizards behind the curtain. And lying about your preferences would be counterproductive because users would only get matches they don't want.
In other words, I am calling bullshit on Match Group's Singles in America Survey. No one openly admits their biases. That is the very nature of biases — you are unaware of them.
And if you think love is blind, let's examine the dating preferences of blind people. In Blinded by Sight: Seeing Race Through the Eyes of the Blind, Sociology professor Osagie K. Obasogie interviewed blind people from birth and found startling racial biases.
Obasogie tracked 106 blind people on first dates. Although the study was small, his findings were gut-wrenchingly poignant. He found his blind subjects were perfectly happy with their romantic choices until they discovered their date was a different race. Sadly, even blind people are conditioned to have racial biases.
To be clear, I am not conflating biases with racism. For example, when OkCupid polled users and asked if they would date someone who was vocally racist, 84 percent said no.⁴
Americans generally don't want to date racist people, but that doesn’t mean they are open to dating outside their race. Currently, only 6.3 percent of marriages are interracial. If you include Latinos, that number only increases to 17 percent.⁵
Ostensibly, part of the problem is segregation in America. The U.S. might be diverse, but we are still deeply divided. These racial stereotypes grow out of ignorance and isolation. When we are only exposed to one race in the media, our schools, employment, and tight-knit circles, we choose intimate partners that are familiar, even if that familiarity is wrapped up in biases.
There is a solution to this problem, but it is a band-aide solution — all dating apps should remove ethnicity filters. Period. No, that won't solve the problem, but at least it will stop actively encouraging biases.
I recently turned off all my search filters except location. But I will be honest about why I sometimes screen out white men, and it has nothing to do with physical attractiveness. I find it painfully dull to be with someone who has the same cultural background and upbringing. Not always. But often. I want to learn about new music, art, history, and literature because it expands my tiny world.
And research is going to back me up on my approach. A recent study found that people who date others from different cultures and races increase their creativity. So if you are in a creative field, nix the ethnicity filters. Your art will thank you for it.
That is the power of dating apps. We finally have a tool that allows us to discover people from all walks of life, anywhere in the world.
Why would you ever want a filter to eliminate those possibilities?
Link | Archive
