I was at a party when I spied “Dataclysm1,” a number-crunching book written by OkCupid Co-Founder Christian Rudder, on an end table. Now, I try to avoid nerding out about dating stuff in my real life, but I love this book, so I couldn’t help but ask the party’s host what she thought of its many stats.
“Yeah, it’s interesting,” she said. “I didn’t realize how racist online dating can be. It’s definitely made me think twice about who I respond to online.”
OK, first of all, online dating isn’t racist — the book’s data reveals certain racial biases in online attractiveness (measured by likes and response rates), but online dating isn’t at fault for user behavior, though it may allow daters to be more deliberate about dating within a specific race.
Racial attitudes influence online dating in fundamental ways, and learning more about those patterns can help individuals be more conscious of their choices and feel more open to dating people of all races. In that spirit, we’ve put together a list of statistics about race and online dating.
1. White Men and Asian Women Have the Highest Response Rates
Racial biases are usually negative, but sometimes they involve giving preferential treatment to particular types of people. So the good news for white men and Asian women is that they are the most sought-after demographics on dating sites.
The bad news is that for Asian women in particular, that is often heavily tied to fetishization.
According to data from Facebook’s app Are You Interested, Asian women see much higher response rates2 from white (17.6%), Latino (15.8%), and Black (26%) men. Women, in general, see three times more interactions than men do, but Asian women were particularly successful at catching a man’s interest.
The fetishization of Asian women has a long history, going back to the 18th century at least.3 But since the Korean and Vietnam wars, American men’s fetishization of Asian women has become a clear part of American culture.
While many men likely are unaware that their consistent attraction to Asian women isn’t random, Asian women are often left to wonder whether their partners’ attraction to them is connected to their race. And what’s more: They’re at an increased risk of sexual violence and harassment as a result.4
Additionally, Asian, Hispanic, and white women all respond more frequently to white men. Maybe these guys are just really smooth talkers. Or, maybe patriarchal and white supremacist values have influenced women’s dating preferences.
It’s hard to tell from the raw data exactly what’s going on, but, at least for now, white men seem to have an advantage over Black, Hispanic, and Asian men.
2. Black Men and Women Have the Lowest Response Rates
Quartz’s researchers studied over 2.4 million heterosexual interactions on Are You Interested to determine if online daters had racial biases and what those were. Overall, they found Black men and Black women receive significantly fewer “I’m interested” ratings than other races do.
Although Black women responded the most positively toward Black men, all other races responded the least to this demographic.
And all men, regardless of race, responded the least to Black women.
Black women’s experience on dating apps can be so dismal that some Black women have experimented with putting their race as white, and shocker, they received better results.5
3. Most Men Prefer Asian Women, Except Asian Men
So you know how people say there’s an exception to every rule? Well, it’s true in online dating as well. The Quartz Media graphic shows men of all races — except Asian men — prefer Asian women. Asian men respond more to single Latina women, marking themselves as interested 19% of the time.
According to OkCupid’s internal data, Asian men receive fewer messages and matches overall, so maybe they simply shy away from Asian women’s highly competitive online dating profiles.
Maybe low self-esteem factors into Asian men’s dating decisions. As Zachary Schwartz, a 22-year-old journalist in the UK, said6, “Growing up as an Asian guy, you start to think certain ways about yourself… the phraseology used when I was growing up was ‘Asian guys don’t get girls.'”
Elise Hu of NPR summed it up best7 when she said, “The results of this study only perpetuate social problems for both sexes involved.”
4. Most Women Prefer White Men, Except Black Women
Black women were another notable exception in Quartz’s study of online attraction. Black women showed the most interest in Black men, while women of other races heavily preferred white men.
Black women seem most drawn to date prospects of their own race — even though Black men have a low interest rating of 16.5% for Black women.
5. Only 10% Would Date Someone With a Vocal Racial Bias
OkCupid has hundreds upon hundreds of personal questions that it uses to create a personality profile and match percentage for every user. The site has been collecting this data for years, so it can show how user opinions on specific issues have changed over time.
When it comes to racial attitudes, OkCupid users have professed to be less biased and more opposed to racism in general.
In 2008, about 27% of OkCupid users reported that they would date someone with a vocal racial bias. In 2014, only 10% of users said they’d be willing to entertain a racist date. That’s progress!
6. 35% of People Strongly Prefer to Date Within Their Own Race
OkCupid found a steady decline in the number of people who said they would prefer to date someone of their own race. In 2008, 42% of OkCupid users said they’d prefer to keep to their own when dating. By 2014, that number had dropped to around 35% of users.
The blog post concludes, “Answers to match questions have been getting significantly less biased over time.”
Side note: The person’s race does influence his or her answer to this question because 85% of non-whites said they’d prefer to date outside their race versus just 65% of white people who said the same.
7. Less Than 6% Say Interracial Marriage Is a Bad Idea
Furthermore, in 2021, Gallup saw an uptick in users answering yes to whether they approve of interracial marriage between Black and white people from 87% in 2013.8 When Gallup started the poll in 1958, just 4% said they approved.
The user base‘s response to this question is pretty overwhelmingly in favor of interracial marriage. According to OkCupid’s 2017 question audit, only 1% of users skipped this question9. Everyone else felt pretty decided about their opinions on the matter.
Clearly, most people think this is a no-brainer. The interracial question is ranked among the 10 least skipped questions on the site.
Interestingly, Gallup has found that the difference in approval rates of interracial marriage between different races has declined. White and non-white Americans now have similar rates of approval of interracial marriage. Previously, white Americans were more likely to disapprove.
Perhaps now, many of the holdouts of people who do not approve of interracial marriages are simply the most culturally conservative in any community, in addition to those who do not approve of interracial relationships out of common racism.
Gallup also found that the generational gap in approval of interracial marriage is shrinking fast. “In 1991, 27% of U.S. adults aged 50 and older approved of interracial marriages, compared with 91% today,” Gallup’s Justin McCarthy wrote.
Hostility toward interracial relationships can’t just be chalked up to generational differences.
Of course, people are free to lie in their answers to these questions, and, given that a majority of users say they’d refuse to date a racist person, it’s probably in everyone’s best interest to answer in favor of interracial marriage and avoid offending or enraging strangers on the internet.
Still, it’s encouraging to see so many people categorically accept interracial marriage, which was illegal in the US until 1967.10
On Dating Sites, Your Racial Preference Matters
“Dataclysm” is a wonderfully thoughtful and eye-opening assessment of how people date in the modern age. Its studies prompt readers to reassess their online dating behavior and see themselves as part of a larger social framework.
Singles can become part of the solution by stepping outside their comfort zones and sending a message to someone they may have otherwise overlooked.
Some stats about racial biases on dating sites aren’t so encouraging (especially if you’re a Black woman or an Asian man), but none of these numbers are set in stone. We have the power to change our dating habits and make online dating a more welcoming space for people of all races.
Online dating gives us the ability to lead with our biases by filtering matches by ethnicity or appearance and creating a deliberately narrow dating pool.
But we also have the chance to broaden our horizons and meet people we never would in our daily lives, cutting through boundaries of class, creed, and, yes, race.
Even if it’s not love at first sight, you should give someone a chance to change your mind and win you over. Who knows? You might just get a great date out of it.
- https://www.amazon.com/Dataclysm-Identity-What-Online-Offline-Selves/dp/0385347391 ↩︎
- https://qz.com/149342/the-uncomfortable-racial-preferences-revealed-by-online-dating ↩︎
- https://ncaatogether.org/2021/03/23/fetishization-of-east-and-southeast-asian-women/ ↩︎
- https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/17/us/asian-women-misogyny-spa-shootings-trnd ↩︎
- https://www.thecut.com/article/changed-race-white-hinge-dating-apps.html ↩︎
- https://www.bbc.com/bbcthree/article/83fb8f3e-f1f6-4df9-ab5c-14e856ce486b ↩︎
- https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/11/30/247530095/are-you-interested-dating-odds-favor-white-men-asian-women ↩︎
- https://news.gallup.com/poll/354638/approval-interracial-marriage-new-high.aspx ↩︎
- https://theblog.okcupid.com/the-most-important-questions-on-okcupid-32e80bad0854 ↩︎
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_United_States ↩︎
