OkCupid Wonders “What If There Weren’t So Many White People?” (III)

Do all races prefer to date within their own ethnic group? And what does that mean for the dating world?

OkCupid's research into the racial bias and racial composition of its members found that white members of the online dating site prefer to message other white users. This preference might be intentional, or it might not. It might be caused by a racial bias - conscious or unconscious - or be a result of the fact that white members outnumber users of other ethnic backgrounds on the site. One thing, however, is clear from OkCupid's research: "Given equal choice, every race strongly prefers itself." The data looks like this:

Preference For Own Race vs. Random Individual Of Another Race

• Whites: 2.9x
• Blacks: 4.3x
• Latinos: 4.2x
• Asians: 11.5x

White members actually prefer themselves the least, in comparison to other ethnic groups, but they represent such a large percentage of the online dating population that it's impossible for white users to avoid connecting with other white users unless they are content with dating pools that are much, much smaller.

To see what would happen if circumstances were different, if another race outnumbered whites 19:1, the OkCupid team ran a simulation in which Asians were the dominant group, and all other users were in the minority. Under those circumstances, Asian users would send messages to other Asian users 98% percent of the time, and would also be the most popular message recipients for users of all other ethnic backgrounds (White senders: 74%, Latino senders: 71%, Black senders: 66%). Insularity, according to OkCupid's findings, is common across all cultures.

This insularity, Christian Rudder notes, becomes especially clear when you take a look at cities with larger non-white user bases. As their numbers increase, members of minority populations tend to become increasingly inward-looking. In the 150 cities with the most black users, black members send 2.5% more messages to each other for every 1% increase in the black population. In Baltimore, for instance, 1 out of every 5 users is black, but half of the messages from black users are sent to other black users - a rate that is more than twice what would be expected.

The hypothetical scenarios Rudder and OkCupid created for this experiment will not be hypothetical for much longer, and soon much of this data is likely to become reality. According to the Census Bureau, white people will no longer be the majority in the United States by approximately the year 2050, although that projection doesn't necessarily mean we have a post-racial future to look forward to. Even with increased equality amongst races, OkCupid's research indicates that "people still like to date someone who looks like they do," so that "even when white people aren't the majority, society will be as divided as ever."