NEW STUDY CONFIRMS HARD TIMES FOR BLACK WOMEN IN ONLINE DATING

 *Damn, it’s hard out here for a black woman trying to find love online.

Yes it is and in the wake of EURweb associate Cory A. Haywood’s controversial essays on black women and white men, comes news of a report that black women are the least likely to be contacted for online dating

Here’s what NPR is reporting:

When it comes to dating the rules aren’t always black and white. And when you add race into the equation things can become even more complicated.

The online dating website “Are You Interested” analyzed over 2.4 million interactions on their site and found that Asian women are more likely to get a message from a man of any race—unless those men are Asian.

AYI also found that white men are pursued the most by women of all races—except black women, who are least likely to get a message from anyone.

“I think it’s very disheartening for African-American women” said Beauty Shop guest and The Root.com contributing editor Demetria Lucas. “It’s always the same result and it’s always about how no one’s reaching out for black women. It can get very depressing for someone who is looking for love.”

OK, but what keeps online dating segregated? Check out this report from Time on the situation:
Online dating — as well as regular dating — is a very segregated activity, but a new study suggests that it may not take much to break racial and ethnic barriers.

As much as we like to think that America is a postracial society, Americans still prefer to date someone from their race. Studies have shown that this preference is stronger than almost any other when it comes to finding mates, although it’s not entirely clear why.

But an intriguing new study of online dating by sociologist Kevin Lewis at the University of California, San Diego, and published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that people might be limiting their choices out of a fear that they’re not attractive to other races.

Lewis examined the interactions of 126,134 newly signed-up members of the online-dating website OKCupid over two and a half months. He found that, indeed, most people very rarely strayed beyond their own ethnicity in reaching out to potential dates. And if they did, they were less likely to get a response than from people of their same race. White folks, both male and female, overwhelmingly made more contact with whites, which is hardly surprising since there are more white people on the site to choose from. White folks were the most likely to seek out people of another race. Minority groups (those who identify themselves on OKCupid as black, Hispanic, Indian or Asian) were much more likely to stay in their own racial lane when in search of mates online.