How Racist Is Online Dating?
What Is Love? Muramasa via Wikimedia Commons How racist are Americans when it comes to selecting a mate? Though the rate of interracial marriages in the U.S. has doubled in the past 30 years, according to online dating habits, we're still pretty racist. Surprise! But. A new study of racism in OkCupid messaging finds a little bit of hope in a sea of largely same-race interactions. To examine how racial prejudice affects our romantic decisions, Kevin Lewis, a sociologist at the University of California at San Diego, analyzed messages sent by more than 126,000 OkCupid users over a two-and-a-half month period. He only included heterosexual interactions between users who self-identified with the site's five largest racial categories: Black, White, Asian (East Asian), Hispanic/Latino and Indian. He found that people from all racial...