Which Race Is App To Date Other Races White Women Or White Men Whene They Are In Their 70s

By Mahesh Sharma

Updated February 15, 2016 — 1.49pm

When I first joined Tinder, in the summer of 2013, it was like gaining entry to the VIP section of an exclusive Justin Hemmes nightclub: a hidden oasis where everything felt so new, so exciting, yet so innocent. I matched, chatted and sexted with girls — pretty girls — of all colours and creeds. For the first time in my life, I was able to experience what it meant to have what had always come so effortlessly to many of my white mates.

But things changed when I returned to the app a year later, when the barriers to online dating were well-and-truly broken down. The vocal, open invitations that had previously been enthusiastically extended my way were replaced by letters of rejection in the form of a non-response. I was back to being denied entry by the Ivy nightclub bouncers, relegated to hearing day-old details of my mates' tales of their successful Tinder conquests.

The science shows certain groups getting pushed to the bottom of the pile on Tinder, but societal attitudes mean talking about it is taboo. Credit:Andy Zakeli

I tried everything to change the way I presented myself — smiling and smouldering looks, casual and dramatic poses, flamboyant and conservative clothes, playful and intense introductions — but was always dismissed in the same fashion: immediately and without explanation.

After spending nearly all my life reinventing my personality in order to impress others and adapting my values to fit in, it turned out the one thing I couldn't change was the only thing that mattered: my race.

The most effective way I found to keep people from skipping right over me was to fully embrace the stereotypes they already believed.

The data

In 2014, OKCupid released a study confirming that a racial bias was present in our dating preferences. It found non-black men applied a penalty to black women; and all women preferred men of their own race but they otherwise penalised both Asian and black men.

The sample drew on the behaviour of 25 million accounts between 2009 and 2014, when there was a decrease in the number of people who said they preferred to date someone of their own race.

"And yet the underlying behaviour has stayed the same," the report said.

At an added disadvantage

Macquarie University senior lecturer Dr Ian Stephen said that some of the biggest predictors of who we end up with is what our parents look like and the people we encounter in the neighbourhoods in which we grow up.

He said the online landscape as described by OKCupid — primarily consisting of white people who typically prefer their own race — additionally disadvantages people who are already discriminated against.

"The response rate is going to be much lower because you're from that much smaller group," he said. "If you're in one of those less favoured groups, a black woman or an Asian man, it's going to put you at an added disadvantage: not only do you have smaller potential pool to start with but also you have people deliberately, or subconsciously, discriminating against you as well."

He agreed this could have a compounding, negative effect, especially in apps like Tinder — where 'popular' accounts are promoted and 'disliked' accounts are dropped to the bottom of the pile.

Institutionalised generalisations

Emma Tessler, founder of New York-based matchmaking website, The Dating Ring, which sets people up on dates, said the OKCupid data is consistent with their her service's experience. She said this is not limited to online dating but is reflective of society's biases. Dating websites and apps like Tinder have created such a vast pool of potential partners — millions of matches — that people have to start to generalise and draw the line somewhere, she said.

"People think of things like attraction as purely biological but not thinking of societal suggestibility," Ms Tessler said. "People tell me 'listen, I know it sounds terrible but I'm just not attracted to Asian men.' Is it just a coincidence that every single person says that? It's a crazy thing to say. It's like guys who say they're not attracted to women who aren't really skinny — as though that isn't totally societal."

Bias confirmed

Clinical psychologist Dr Vincent Fogliati said that since the civil rights movements of the 60s and 70s people are much less willing to publicly share, or admit to harbouring, racial stereotypes. But researchers have "developed ingenious ways to detect that some bias is lurking there."

He said that one method, immediate word associations, demonstrated that people with underlying racist attitudes — people who denied they were racist — took longer to associate positive words, such as 'good' and 'warm,' with people or groups of the opposite race.

He agreed this immediate response mechanism was similar to the interface of Tinder and online dating apps where people make snap judgments based on a picture.

Dr Fogliati said stereotypes are necessary as a survival mechanism, however stereotypes — untested or incorrect — can quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy: that is, we become biased to the things that confirm our beliefs — also known as confirmation bias.

"If someone's depressed and has a negative view of themselves, if they have that belief they're more inclined to notice things in that environment that reinforce that belief, rather than in contrast to it."

Denying your experience

University of Western Sydney lecturer Dr Alana Lentin said that society has entered a period of "post racialism," where everyone believes that racial thinking is a thing of the past.

"It's the idea of those people who tell you 'you're not getting matches because you're not doing it right.' This is how racism operates today: those with white, racial privilege defining what racism is, so anything you say about your own experience becomes relativised."

She said that society needs to acknowledge there's a problem before it can start to find a solution.

"White privilege teaches people they have the right to speak more than everyone else and everyone else has to listen. It's not fair (if you want to use that terminology). It's time we start thinking about those things. The first level of anti racist struggle is listening."

Playing the Race Card

It was only when I played the race card that I found some modicum of success on online dating websites and Tinder. My yoga photos were a big hit among the spiritually-inclined white girls who were third eye-curious. However, as soon as I asked for a date, or to meet up, the conversation would go dead. Who knows, maybe it was my fault after all?