Welcome back, dorks. We’ve processed the messaging habits of over 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. It would be awesome if the other major online dating players would go out on a limb and release their own race data, too. I can’t imagine they will: multi-million dollar enterprises rarely like to admit that the people paying them those millions act like turds. But being poor gives us a certain freedom. To alienate all our users. So there.
When I first started looking at first-contact attempts and who was writing who back, it was immediately obvious that the sender’s race was a huge factor. Here are just a handful of the numbers that illustrate that:
The takeaway here is that although race shouldn’t matter in messaging, it does. A lot.
More Compatibility Means More Replies (Normally)
First of all, how do we know that race shouldn’t matter? Are we just making some after-school-special assumption that “true love is colorblind?” No, we’re not: we know race shouldn’t matter to replies because the races all match each other more or less evenly, and reply rate correlates to matching.
On OkCupid you create your own unique matching system, and that means your better matches are people you actually want talk to. Below is a graph showing match percentages vs. reply rates for a random sample of 500,000 people. As you can see, in general, the better you match someone, the more likely you are to reply to a first message from them.
We can see this principle in action when we look at our trusty control, the Zodiac. Here are the match and reply rates side-by-side, with similar rates colored yellow. There’s no real need to inspect the numbers; just observe the similar colors.
- Throughout this post, yellowish colors are short-hand for “neutral” and red and green indicate “strong preference.”
People of the various Zodiac signs match each other all at roughly the average rate, and, as we would expect, they reply to messages similarly. In general, the correlation between match percentage and reply rate means that whenever we compare the match/reply charts for a given breakdown of the population, they should look about the same. However, this, like so many other fine assumptions, totally breaks down when race gets involved:
Again, don’t bother squinting, just check out the colors. We’ll soon look very closely at these tables.
The Race Is On
So here’s last week’s compatibility by race table (I explained how we can confidently measure “compatibility” in that post). This is a blow-up of the leftmost table above:
As you can see, the races all match each other roughly evenly: good news. It means all other things being equal, two people, of whatever race, should have the same chance to have a successful relationshp. But now let’s look at the table of how individuals actually reply to each other’s messages. First we’ll examine messages sent by men to women (I know our gay readers are interested in same-sex versions of these tables, there’s a link to them here and at the end of this post):
The numbers on the perimeter of the table are the weighted average rates for each column/row. Here’s what we can know:
- Black women write back the most. Whether it’s due to talkativeness, loneliness, or a sense of plain decency, black women are by far the most likely to respond to a first contact attempt. In many cases, their response rate is one and a half times the average, and, overall, black women reply about a quarter more often that other women.
- White men get more responses. Whatever it is, white males just get more replies from almost every group. We were careful to preselect our data pool so that physical attractiveness (as measured by our site picture-rating utility) was roughly even across all the race/gender slices. For guys, we did likewise with height.
- White women prefer white men to the exclusion of everyone else—and Asian and Hispanic women prefer them even more exclusively. These three types of women only respond well to white men. More significantly, these groups’ reply rates to non-whites is terrible. Asian women write back non-white males at 21.9%, Hispanic women at 22.9%, and white women at 23.0%. It’s here where things get interesting, for white women in particular. 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. There’s more data on this towards the end of the post.
Let’s see what happens when it’s the women writing the messages to men.
- Men don’t write black women back. Or rather, they write them back far less often than they should. Black women reply the most, yet get by far the fewest replies. Essentially every race—including other blacks—singles them out for the cold shoulder.
- White guys are shitty, but fairly even-handed about it. The average reply rate of non-white males is 48.1%, while white guys’ is only 40.5%. Basically, they write back about 20% less often. It’s ironic that white guys are worst responders, because as we saw above they get the most replies. That has apparently made them very self-absorbed. It’s interesting that white males do manage to reply to Middle Eastern women. Is there some kind of emergent fetish there? As Middle Easterners are becoming America’s next racial bogeyman, maybe there’s some kind of forbidden fruit thing going on. (Perhaps a reader more up-to-date on his or her Post-Colonial Theory can step in here? Just kidding. Don’t.)
A Last Couple Graphs
These are site-wide answers to a couple user-written match questions. They barely need any explanation: one comments on the other, really. Together they shed more light on the theory/practice schizophrenia of people’s racial attitudes.
It’s Probably Not Just OkCupid That’s Like This
I don’t want anyone walking away from all this thinking that OkCupid users exceptionally horrible mofos. It’s likely that any dating site (and indeed any collection of people) would exhibit messaging biases similar to what I’ve written up. According to our internal metrics, at least, OkCupid’s users are better-educated, younger, and far more progressive than the norm, so I can imagine that many sites would actually have worse race stats. But like I said at the beginning, we’ll probably never know. See you next week.
The same-sex equivalents of this post’s data are here.
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Interesting study. I’m from Toronto, Canada. I see black men with white women more than I see black men with black women. But it is very rare that you’ll see black women with men of other races. Example, their are two black women who work in my office and they are the only women there that don’t have children and are single. One or both are in their 40’s (although you wouldn’t know it). They are attractive, kind and have nice bodies, one I think has an amazing body! They are not obese. (You don’t see many “obese” black women in Canada. Overweight yes, but alot of other races are overweight and obese). The white women that I see black men with most of the time are actually overweight or aren’t that attractive at all. A friend of mine is dating a black guy and all of his black friends also have white girlfriends.
There does seem to be alot of commentary on black women lately. Racism is alive and always will be. Everyone knows about black people and stereotypes. I’m sure some deserve a bad reputation, but I have had nothing but friendly encounters with black women. Statistics state that a large majority of black women are single and don’t have children. Although I really don’t trust statistics, I can go on observation and talking to different people.
Based on this study things to ponder: Are black women being discriminated against? Have white women bought into the myth about black men (although the vast majority of white women date white men)? The white population is triple that of black people in North America. Have black men bought into the white superiority complex (based on observation and what this study suggests)? Is interracial dating causing tension between the races, cultures?
I think the problem we need to focus on is the over-bloated sense of entitlement (narcissism) that is exhibited in human culture period, especially American culture. The sad part is is that people actually like to condone and justify this behavior and set of expectations because the supposedly antiquated way of being, where we appreciated character, and personality over looks has been not only abolished but frowned upon–and further more narcissism ends up in us via a back door.
you can question why I’d say its narcissistic to expect date “within your race” (even though we’re talking about a pervasive pattern), but I’d have to ask why is it so important?
I feel for every demographic on here who gets overlooked by shallow and often unfair expectations whether they’re white, black, yellow, polka-dotted or checkered. There are good people out there not only stuck in self-defeating patterns, but excluded due to them..
its a shame though, because we’re still witch-hunting the racists..we’re missing the point….
sad.
to user Deonn:
you already came off like a really entitled piece of work to start with–unabashedly so. but you made a comment that really drove to home that you’re a really the typical narcissistic , entitled (see also: fastidious, persnickety, shallow) white woman by saying the following:
“A final thought for the ladies out there on OkCupid who’ve been ignoring non white males- In my experience, black, hispanic, puerto rican, and guatamalan men are great lovers. Yeah, there have been good white fellas here and there over the years, but those ethnic boys have ALWAYS exceeded expectations. So if you’re tired of the two-pump-chumps, and the guys you’ve been taking to the sack can’t spell the word clitoris, let alone find one, maybe you ought to retire your secretly racist ways and start answering some of those ethnic guys’ messages.”
as if us black (and non-euro-American) men who are serious about dating need more white women to fetishize us as an “experience” and reduce us to walking talking dildos…good job. I’d venture to say, a lot of us would rather be left alone then be taunted.
we’re not slave boys you can piddle with because “massa” isn’t cuttin’ the mustard. And note: I put use that illustration to illuminate the mindset behind her words has echoed throughout history by many white females (as displayed by the above quote)–one mesasge I’ve experienced myself (more than I think is correct):
black men are often fetishized as good lovers but not taken seriously as relationship-worthy men, and I mean from the door.
I’d venture to say most of the black guys who’ve gotten responses on here (from white women) haven’t ended up in long term relationships with them…I sure as heck haven’t. But a fling, sure.
this goes along with my comment about the narcissism of the current age.
And as white women, you all pretty much rule the world (yes, the WORLD, get off your various hand-made feminazi crosses) and this helps sustain such an over-bloated sense of entitlement.
I forgot to add “by proxy” to the “white women rule the world” comment. hah
As a nonwhite male, it doesn’t come as the slightest shock to me at all that white men get the most attention and respect from women of all nationalities and races. After all, the richest, most powerful nation in the world (and also the entertainment media capital of the world) is predominately white, and thus white males have become the symbol of strength, virtue, and status/celebrity all the world over.
Even if the “nonwhite” areas of the world in E. Asia or India aren’t based around predominately white-male culture, as an earlier commenter said, they’re still exposed to a great deal of Hollywood-originated media, and all the movie stars and singers that go along with it.
When year after year, the same Hollywood, all-American celebrities such as Brad Pitt or George Clooney are ingrained the world’s consciousness as THE MOST powerful and famous icons for masculinity in the WORLD, respected and beloved by EVERYONE in the world, then how do you NOT expect nonwhite women in all parts of the world to start going ga-ga over white males, and wanting to “white up?” How did anyone NOT make this connection/prediction?
Awesome data! Incredible study of cultural geography, I am very impressed. very insitefull studies ,statistics and informatuion. I am finding it invaluable and realisticly setting my expectations. I started on OKcupid 3 days ago and can’t believe you are providing such a valuable service for free! I think Humanatarian awards should follow for your gracious charity.
Fun11-4u
As an Italian male, although being classed in the white category, we Italians know to well of stereotypes in racist white hollywood. I have attraction for all ladies, but especially black ladies. The uniqueness that no other race of ladies can compare. The hair, the naturally plump lips, hips, thighs, juicy butts not fake. Sexy, beautiful dark skin and graceful aging. Don’t like fat ladies. White ladies have become too spoiled and slutty. You lie and cheat on your boyfriends and husbands with black men. Why black males complain about black ladies running to white men when interracial dating shows that almost 90% is black man and other race. What are these ladies supposed to do? You even exclude them from your dating searches on not just this but many dating sites. Black ladies are too loyal to unworthy black males. I hope black ladies give males of other races a chance and don’t despair.
I think people are confusing “racism” with “personal preference”. Generically I define racism as a feeling that one race is “better” than another race.
That is very different from one “person” is more attractive than another. That’s just personal preference.
I think every race has their “10″.
Who wouldn’t respond to a message from a Halley Berry or Padma Lakshmi?
I haven’t read all the comments yet and will get through them, but I ditto everything Random Onlooker has said (assuming she hasn’t posted again).
I have a OKCupid account and while much of my lack of contact comes from my own laziness to update my profile and my low response rate, I know from real life that I am the last choice of so many people because of my race, almost regardless of what I look like.
It doesn’t give me much hope to be honest. I feel like giving up.
PEOPLE STOP TRYING TO FORCE THIS INTER-RACIAL BULLS**T ON EVERYONE!