We’re in the midst of a cultural sea change to one of the most central institutions in the life of the nation.American attitudes on interracial relationships have taken an enormous step forward in the last two decades.
And according to a recent study out of Australia on online dating apps, people who display a marked romantic preference for one race are more likely to be racist.
Researchers found that 64% of the gay men they studied said it was acceptable to state a racial preference on these apps, and 70% believe it is totally fine to list racial preferences.
More than 80 percent of whites — even the 48 percent of males and 28 percent of females who said they were indifferent to race — sent messages to whites and just three percent contacted blacks.” Read the article here, and please share your comments below. I can’t tell you how many white men’s profiles I’ve seen listing a preference for Asian women! I prefer lighter skin, the same way so many men prefer lighter hair (blondes). I have NO PROBLEM being friends and colleagues with black men (or women); I simply prefer certain physical characteristics just like most people do.
As a white woman I’ve gotten a lot of attention from black men.
And yet, while the actual number of interracial relationships in the United States is certainly climbing, the overwhelming majority of Americans are in relationships with another person of their same race.
In 2010, only about 15 percent of new marriages were interracial—bringing the total number up to 8.4 percent from 3.2 percent in 1980.There’s a good chance, however, the growing prevalence of online dating may actually be having the effect of breaking down racial barriers instead of erecting new ones.People of the same race are inevitably going to have at least some shared experiences, simply because, in many ways, they are treated the same by the culture at large. So it would make sense that, outside of physical characteristics like skin color and eye shape, Asian people would have significantly more in common with Asian people, and black people would be more compatible with black people, and so on.Based on random matching alone, the expected proportion of interracial relationships in the United States should be as high as 44 percent.This disparity indicates there’s still a considerable disconnect between what people think is “acceptable” when it comes to dating versus what they actually do themselves. On one hand, it may be that people tend to pick mates from their real-life social groups—people with whom they live, work, socialize, and go to school—and in the U. The other option, of course, is that most people, when given the choice, still prefer to be in relationships with someone who looks a lot like them, regardless of what they may tell a pollster.It’s a feeling akin to being looked over at a meat counter; it leaves me stunned that my skin can so quickly repel a person who didn’t even get to know me at all.