Racial preferences in the dating world

http://www.seacoastonline.com/ ^ | May 11, 2007 | Steve Penner

[teldon30]

One of the more delicate areas I dealt with while running a dating service for more than two decades was the issue of race, and more specifically racial stereotyping by prospective members.

Stereotyping in itself is a volatile issue, and at some point during intake interviews, I often repeated the phrase “While there is some truth to all stereotypes, there are certainly many exceptions to every single one.”

However, when one is dealing with a sample of more than 20,000 single, divorced, and widowed men and women, I feel confident and comfortable making certain statements in a column titled The Truth about Dating.

Yet I was still hesitant to write this column, until a reader sent me an article from The New York Times, in which the author, John Tierney, published a story about racial preferences in the dating world.

Moreover, the article cited a study titled Racial Preferences in Dating that documented the preferences of more than 400 participants in speed dating sessions at Columbia University. A quick reading of both the Times article and the Columbia study seemed to support my own anecdotal findings.

(Unfortunately while reading the Columbia study I was overcome by the academic verbiage that authors of such studies feel compelled to use. Do they teach “Boring Writing 101” at Ivy League institutions of higher learning? I found it impossible to read more than a few pages without getting a headache. Here is a sample sentence: “Rates of inter-racial marriages thus capture both preferences and socio-geographic segregation.” Huh?)

Anyway, here is what I found in 23 years of interviewing singles, and I will attempt to communicate in my best “non-academic” language. When we interviewed prospective members, we always asked what their preferences were in terms of meeting people of different races.

Overall, women of most races preferred to meet men of their own race. Most Caucasian women wanted only to meet Caucasian men, the exceptions being women who were more educated and well-traveled, who considered themselves somewhat “worldly.”

Of all the races, African-American women were the most insistent about wanting to meet only African-American men. But most of those women excluded black men who had recently moved to New England from Africa or the Caribbean.

The one major exception to the finding that women wanted to meet men of their own race was Asian women, a vast majority of whom stated that they strongly preferred meeting non-Asian men.

The primary explanation offered by most Asian women was that they wanted to be matched with tall men, and they insisted that practically all of the Asian men they knew were short. But when I would ask if they would be willing to meet an Asian man if he were tall, most would simply shake their head and say they would rather not.

And what about Indian women? To be honest the sample of Indian women who joined my dating service more than 23 years was too small to determine any general statements about them.

As for men, overall they were far more open to meeting women of other races. In fact, and I find this especially interesting, the race of women most in demand were, you guessed it, Asian women. Therefore, almost all of the Asian women in my dating service had a very high Dating Quotient.

When I asked men to explain their preferences for Asian women, many shrugged and admitted they were just extremely attracted to them. But I also believe that many of these men, consciously or subconsciously, wanted to meet women who fit the stereotype of the submissive “Geisha girl,” whose primary purpose is to entertain and please men.

Interestingly enough, though, most of the Asian women we interviewed could not have had personalities more opposite than that passive stereotype. Many had Ph.Ds., M.D.s, or law degrees, and were extremely assertive. (Especially when I tried in vain to persuade them to consider meeting Asian men!)

Unfortunately for African-American women, most of the African-American men who joined stated a strong preference for meeting either white or Asian women. Many expressed the identical view, “I don’t have to join a dating service to meet women of my own race.”

The two groups of men who were the most difficult to match (and therefore had the lowest DQ) were Asian men and Indian men. Like African men, this was especially true of Asian and Indian men who had grown up overseas and relocated to New England, usually to pursue careers either in computer science or medicine. In a few cases I could persuade women to meet men of different races, IF the men were totally “Americanized.”

Of course Asian men were difficult to match because, as I previously stated, the one group of women who did not want to meet men of their own race was Asian women.

As for Indian men, they were the hardest people to match of any group of men or women of any race. And, with so many Indian men moving into the Boston area for jobs in high tech, rarely a week passed without several inquiries from men from India or Pakistan.

One reason they were difficult to match is that only a handful of Indian women joined over the decades, compared to hundreds of Indian or Pakistani men. But another is that many women, even the self-described “worldly” ones, expressed the stereotypical belief that Indian men had antiquated views of women.

To some extent, these women were correct. For example, of all the men I spoke with who wanted to meet women much younger than themselves, the largest group was, in fact, Indian men. Many told me that it was quite common back “home” for men to date and marry women at least a decade younger than themselves. And they wondered why they could not do the same here … which further lowered their DQ.

So that is the story from my own anecdotal experiences. Again, I am sure there are exceptions to every statement I made in this column. On the other hand, if you want “scientific” proof of what I am stating, just Google and download a copy of Columbia University’s Racial Preferences in Dating study.

But I suggest that if you do, make sure you have a bottle of aspirin nearby.

[Vision]

or just plain nuts. (And most men in America are similarly screwed up.)

IMO, American women are more screwed up then the men. I say that from what I see day to day, in advertising and the media. To make my point, when was the last time you saw a movie about a guy who was trying to hurt his success with women? Never, but a move was put out a few years ago called something like "how to lose a guy in 10 days."

[Zhang Fei]

Speak for yourself.

That's not my personal view. I find women of all races and ethnicities attractive. I am merely stating what seems to be the view, on average, of major segments of the male population. Not everyone feels that way. You and I are exceptions. But a majority of the male population finds black women the least attractive of all the races. It is what it is.

[Vision]

Still, you're right. I could do a LOT worse. (Come to think of it I have done a lot worse!)

Chuckles.

[altura]

Statistics from mall walking. Lots of white girls with Black guys; the occasional Mexican girl with Black guy; almost no Black girls with white or Mexican guys.

This is simply an observation and not intended to be racist but typically Black features can be attractive on a guy, but not so attractive on a girl.

[Vision]

Women were quite feminine, and not embarrassed to be desired for being so.

Well said and more evidence women are more screwed up then men. Only in the bluest of blue states do men attack other men for being masculine.

[Riverman94610]

My mom was of the same”stick to your own kind and life will be easier”type that yours was.
Didn’t take her advice but I understood where she was coming from.
What she never understood was that”my own kind”sure didn’t treat me very KIND.When you are rejected as an outcast,you seek other outcasts to bond with.
Sure didn’t make life easier but it made it a lot more fun.

[Vision]

I never have found a black woman who didn’t insist she wanted only to date and marry a black man.

Come to Maryland. They trip over themselves to get the attention of an attractive white guy.

[Riverman94610]

The scene is a locker room at work where many black males hang out and”chop it up”.One says to all in the circle,”Have you ever known an emotionally stable black woman?”
The room falls silent for fifteen seconds.Of course no one could name one,including white me.
Everyone has a good laugh,especially knowing that most likely in the adjoining women’s locker room,a bunch of the”sisters”are engaged in a black man bashing session.

[DTogo]

I think you nailed it.

[rabscuttle385]

Hey now. My mom grew up in South Cotabato. The odd thing (well, for the Philippines) is that her family was Protestant, not Roman Catholic.

[Polybius]

I don’t know how to put this politely so I’m not even going to try. ... THey actually want to be americans and not some stupid a$$ hyphenated american. ......This hyper desire to assimilate also happened with irish and german immigrants. My grandmother who was part irish shunned her irish ancestry and actually denied it. She was darned near ashamed of it. She was a WASP and any talk otherwise was fightin words to her. That sounds strange today, but it is true.

So, being a WASP, or at least pretending you are, makes you more "American"?

If your name was O'Flaherty and you fought and bled for the Union in the Irish Brigade, you had to be ashamed of your Irish heritage in other to be considered a "real American" like those Anglo-Saxon Protestants that had English ancestry and English surnames?

Should the memorial to the dead of the Irish Brigade that died for the Union at Gettysburg, dedicated on July 2, 1888, have been less "Irish" so that they would not be considered "some stupid a$$ hyphenated americans"?

Should Joe DiMaggio have changed his name to "Joe Harrington" and denied he was Italian in order to be considered more "American"?

Maybe your grandmother's shame at her Irish ancestry had to do with how Irish were viewed at the time by the WASPs in America.

The Irish were routinely caricatured in nationwide publications such as Harper's Weekly as ignorant, violent drunks with ape-like faces.

And don't even bring up how the WASPs saw how the Catholics were polluting the American Republic.

Maybe your great-great-grandfather was one of those gallant Union soldiers that proudly gave his life for America at Gettysburg under both Old Glory and the green battle flag of the Irish Brigade that honored their Irish heritage.

Maybe, yelling the Irish Brigade's battle cry of "faugh a ballagh" ("clear the way"), he distinguished himself at the Wheatfield at Gettysburg with the rest of the Irish Brigade in that battle that saved the United States of America making him as much of a "real American" as you can possibly be.

.

But, who knows? Since he was not a WASP celebrating his English ancestry, your grandmother thought he was therefore not a "real American" and denied he ever existed.

By denying him, she then "assimilated". Maybe she changed her name from "O'Flaherty" to a more "American" name like "Jones" or "Wilson".

And, in doing so, she lost her real American heritage.

Denying the heritage of your ancestors does not make you more "American". It only makes you unworthy of your ancestors.

[null and void]

“We’ll take the niggers and the chinks, but we won’t take the Irish!” - Blazing Saddles...

[gcruse]

” No, they often come from bigoted parents.”

My stereotypes came about from experience, fortified by predictability.

[SauronOfMordor]

Another quality of Asian women is that they generally age well. My friend is married to a Chinese woman in her 50’s but looks 30-ish

[WFTR]

This is simply an observation and not intended to be racist but typically Black features can be attractive on a guy, but not so attractive on a girl.

I understand what you are saying about men's not being as attracted to heavier facial features, but I wonder why the black women who came to this guy's service weren't interested in men of other races. Are they not attracted to other races physically? Do they not like some personality trait that they perceive in men of other races?

Bill

[SauronOfMordor]

More fortunately there's a FReeperette, I'm quite interested in. She just might be the one. Unfortunately, she's thousands of miles away. *sigh*.

Over the long term, the cost of relocating is cheaper than settling for somebody who isn't the one. If there's chemistry there, get on a plane and visit. If the chemistry catches fire, get a refund on the return ticket.

[BurbankKarl]

[SauronOfMordor]

One says to all in the circle,”Have you ever known an emotionally stable black woman?” The room falls silent for fifteen seconds.

My friend ended his relationship with his black girlfriend when, out of the blue, she told him "If you cheat on me, I'm going to stick a knife in you"

[California Patriot]

Women are less concerned about looks and more concerned about vibes.

[California Patriot]

Definitely. White women over 45 are lucky if they look good, even if they’ve tried.