Interracial Dating Study: Blacks are Least Desirable ; Whites Most Wanted, even by ‘Honorary Whites’

The millennial generation has been touted as being the bomb demographic that is most open-minded, more fluid, more diverse and less likely to stereotype individuals, but a new study found that when it comes to interracial dating, most, including bi-racial people, consider Blacks the least desirable to date, and Whites the most desirable.

The research, published in Ethnic and Racial Studies, suggests that, in America, at least, a person’s race still plays a big role in who gets asked out on a date.

The study, “Differing shades of Colour: Online dating preferences of biracial individuals”, examined the profiles and racial preferences of 1,200 men and women on the US version of the dating site Match.com.

It found that while close to 90% of daters would date someone outside their own race and ethnicity (87%), an overwhelming majority of non-White daters said they’d prefer to date a White person (91%).

Hispanics followed at 81%, Other was 71%, then Asians at 67% and bringing up the rear were Blacks at 62%).

The rational for the study was to determine whether our more racially and ethnically diverse nation was more open when it comes to interracial dating.

“Although the increasing numbers of biracial people seemingly suggest that the United States is becoming a more racially and ethnically diverse nation, by investigating the dating preferences of biracial individuals, we are able to assess whether racial/ethnic boundaries are truly blurring,” stated Allison R. McGrath of Vanderbilt University who lead the study with her colleagues at the school.

Products of interracial relationships ideally view racial categories as being fluid and malleable are less likely to stereotype people and are more willing to interact with people who are different from themselves.

They are also more likely to date inter racially, but still, even they prefer Whites.

An overwhelming majority of those who self-identified as bi-racial indicated that they were seeking partners who were White (92%), followed closely by respondents who reported they were willing to date Hispanics (81%) and ‘others’ (71%).

And once the bi-racial person him or herself was half White (Asian-white, Hispanic-white, and other-white, for example), that person was even more likely to prefer to date someone from their White side, than the non-White side.

The authors pointed to the “social exchange theory” as an explanation. That hypothesis essentially states that people may consciously select or exclude potential dating partners based on their perceived socio-cultural status.

“Daters essentially ‘trade’ in personal, social, and cultural capital to find a romantic partner with characteristics that they believe will fulfill their own needs and desires,” McGrath and her colleagues explain. “In the case of race, individuals who possess the highest level of perceived status may choose to date across color lines if they also perceive some form of surplus (e.g. money or education) that would make the ‘romantic exchange’ equitable”.

Another interesting side note was that certain groups of bi-racial people are considered “Honorary Whites” and they are more likely to consider themselves pure White, the more they are treated as such in society.

Honorary Whites are the second tier of the “triracial hierarchy”, a relatively new racial stratification that inserts half-white people in between the usual Black-White dynamic. [It is reminiscent of a less formal permeation of South Africa’s coloureds].

Honorary Whites, in recent research, include Asians and light-skinned Hispanics, half Native American/half White and half Asian/half White biracial people.

Based on the social exchange theory, the reason the half White bi-racial people prefer to date members from their “White side” is that they are looking to “trade up’, or date within their own group, rather than date “downwards” by seeking partners who are in the ‘collective black’ group (e.g. blacks and dark-skinned Hispanics), which are considered a “lower racial class”, per the academic research in this area.

Since the US Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws in the 1967 landmark civil rights case Loving v. Virginia, the number of interracial marriages has rapidly increased; it is now estimated that one-in-seven new marriages in the United States is interracial or interethnic.

This increase in mixed-race couples has also led to a rise in the number of biracial individuals.

The study also found the more education a person had, the more likely they were to consider interracial dating.

“This willingness may be due to increased exposure to cultural diversity in collegiate environments, as well as increased tolerance that is associated with higher education curricula,” the report noted.

In sum, the lesson to be learned in all of this is that it must suck to be a black person looking for love online. No one wants you. Dang!