Unique OKCupid Data on Race Is Fairly Depressing

During 2009, OKCupid posted their unique very first post checking out exactly how
race factored  into interest on the webpage
— while the results decided not to very recommend a colorblind utopia of post-racial really love. Many races recommended to date inside of their very own battle. Asian males and black colored men received less communications than white mexican men and black women obtained the fewest emails of most people. Nowadays, OKCupid data researchers
released another blog post,
revisiting the info to see if everything had changed over the course of five years. Definitely daters had be much more open-minded after a while!

Sorry, people: a peek at 2014 data shows that there have been small improvement. And in fact, produces OKCupid co-founder Christian Rudder, racial opinion seemingly have become a bit more marked eventually. You can check on most of the numbers
here
.

In general, the results seem to reveal less about OKCupid and its customers (indeed, Rudder points out this pattern is normal on some other dating sites aswell)  than about community’s prevailing beauty expectations and techniques they skew toward whiteness.

Rudder writes: “Beauty is a cultural idea whenever a physical one, therefore the criterion is actually naturally set of the prominent society. It’s My Opinion that’s what the truth is in the data right here …. One fascinating benefit of OKCupid’s user interface is the fact that we allow people to select multiple race, to help you actually consider people that’ve combined ‘white’ with another racial description. Adding ‘whiteness’ always helps your ranking! In fact it goes a considerable ways toward undoing any opinion against you.”

This information elevates SOME fascinating concerns — for one thing, are these  habits mirroring the real world? Or really does online dating provide men and women a particular liberty to get much more discriminatory? I am not sure about yourself, but this might depress me adequate to drive me back once again to the wilds of IRL internet dating.