There is a pretty obvious solution to this problem which has been legal since 1967. It works well and the babies come out really cute. Weird how the NYT glosses that over...
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/race-attraction-2009-2014/
Relevant summary: Black women are subjected to substantial penalties in the dating market by men of other ethnicities. In fact, black women are the recipients of the highest inter-racial penalties of any racial pair measured by OkCupid.
(Although I generally agree with your point.)
It's also likely the case that the OkCupid research samples heavily from the US population. Interracial dating in the US is encumbered by massive historical baggage from the slavery era. For instance, black women in the US are the only group of women that I'm aware of that are more inclined to "marry down" than to "marry out".
It also completely ignores the fact that people in the black communities may not wish to date people from other races. it isn't a breading farm after all, people's choices matter a lot. If black woman want to date a black man, that is completely normal/understandable/a valid choice.
The stats back up that people prefer to date within their own race when they can. Ultimately I am just arguing that people's choice is important to the whole topic, if black women would prefer to date black men, pointing out that they could date white or asian men won't help the situation.
> The stats back up that people prefer to date within their own race when they can.
That's exactly what your data shows. If you look across all races, there is a clear bias towards people dating their own race. You can find exceptions, but those are within one or two data points, and the trend overall remains true.
> which shows that black women are more likely to reply to men now of her own race (and white men are almost at the top).
By just 2 points. And black men prefer black women. You did find an exception, but keep looking and the trend maintains.
Also, quick reminder that my original post focused on personal choice being important. Nobody suggesting forcing people to date a certain race, just that personal choice might get in the way of the "solution" to the problem the OP suggested (inter-racial marriage).
1. OKCupid is a worldwide site but they don't say whether they're correcting for that by limiting to the USA 2. They don't say anything about correcting for regional differences. 3. They say nothing about the message rates. What percentage of a black woman's incoming mail is from white men? If it's some small percentage, can one discount the novelty effect? 4. They don't correct for income. Since in the US, black men have the lowest income of any group, it's much more likely that a given the choice between a black man and a white man, the white man will have the higher income. 5. Likewise for education level of the sender. 6. Likewise for message content. Is it possible that black men send messages with different content than white men? 7. Finally, this only considers message rates, as if the goal of a dating site is only to get other people to return your messages.
This isn't any kind of a scientific study. Please don't act as though OKCupid has proven anything significant.
https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.2008.01135.x
>The theory of African American alienation is upheld, as African Americans are generally less willing to interracially date than other races and are especially less willing to date European Americans.
I think that claim is sufficiently substantiated that it ought not be called an "assumption."
- this may be exceedingly US centered, as in my country it is not quite as obvious. In fact, the word "race" does not even exist in my language (at least in the American meaning, the equivalent is only used for animals).
- I think questioning assumptions allows one to better discern what is inherited prejudice and what is a universal fact. As you may guess, I think this is an instance of the former and certainly not a permanent/immutable state of things. Furthermore, I think when one claims something is "substantiated", one should come with strong evidence.
This assumption is very much true in modern American society, though somewhat less so than previously.
There is: http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2003/03/14/Interracial-marriage-...
"Asian women had white husbands 3.08 times more often than Asian men had white wives. [...] Oddly enough, the 1990 ratios for black-white and white-Asian marriages were mirror images of each other."
I think it's more the other way around.
My observation, and I believe this is backed up by research, is that black women are more willing to date outside their race than other races are willing to date black women.
But yeah, people generally date within their race.
https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.2008.01135.x
>The theory of African American alienation is upheld, as African Americans are generally less willing to interracially date than other races and are especially less willing to date European Americans.
> black women are more willing to date outside their race than other races are willing to date black women
because both that statement and, "African Americans are generally less willing to interracially date than other races," could be true simultaneously.
I'm well aware people have choices and preferences - I personally prefer to date black and Indian women (and I even have subpreferences). But I'd probably go months without getting laid if I made black/Indian/34C or larger a hard requirement, and I don't think the NYT would portray me as a victim of anything other than my own choices.
And of course it is a valid choice for them to date whomever they want, but if they would only accept doctors with perfect tens and perfect abs then we would just shake our heads and ignore them. So why aren't we doing so now?
Heck there are a lot of single men in Silicon Valley who would be decent dating material - so why care so much about the color of that persons skin?
The fact that it isn't illegal doesn't mean that there aren't strong cultural forces working against it on both sides in many cases.
Centuries of slavery, followed by a century of overt de jure discrimination and segregation, followed by decades with a common overt racism and discrimination in both official and unofficial contexts even with notional legal equality were not produced by a white society which sees blacks as real equals, and have not produced a black society which sees whites as genuine partners.
There are exceptional segments of both black and white society, and norms against interracial marriage are certainly weaker now than they were when it first became legal, but they are still a real thing that is deeply ingrained in who very many people are. So, its not a simple solution with real people, even if it is in abstract theory.
This is a problem which any individual woman can solve for herself by being more tolerant.
This really is a simple solution that works with real people. I do it almost exclusively, albeit for semi-superficial reasons [1]. The closest I've ever had to a serious relationship with a person of my own race was a middle eastern woman who self-identified as "white". The world hasn't ended and no one really cares who I date.
[1] I prefer the appearance of black and Indian women to other races. I also find most western women completely un-dateable and excluding western women gives me a mainly non-white dating pool.
The majority of people (black and otherwise) look for romantic partners that are much like themselves. That means same race, same ethnicity, same socioeconomic status, same religion, same sort of background (upbringing, culture, values, etc.). There are conscious and subconscious and cultural reasons why it may be desirable for people to do this and it is pretty socially acceptable to only date within your own race (and religion... etc.). Even just mere proximity leads to same race relationships.
The article was specifically speaking about black women who are looking in the dating pool for a black partner (which is probably the majority of black woman) not to advocate black women look elsewhere for partners.
This doesn't seem to be the case in Canada. My sister is married to an Indian fellow. My girlfriend was born in Xiamen. During high school a huge percentage of relationships were mixed race. Canada is a melting pot and it seems to work well.
One anecdote
> My girlfriend
Another anecdote
> During high school a huge percentage
Now we're talking percentages, which is better. But you'd still need something better than your recollections (and probably something more specific than "huge").
Obviously, there are plenty of mixed-race relationships, and plenty of them are happy. But there is research that seems to indicate that there is something to what the parent comment was suggesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_attraction#Simila...
Same article claims that in the US in 2010 the rate was 8.4%.
All right, let's run this scenario forward in time. You meet a nice black lady, you fall in love, get married, and have a son. Now, while I hope things will be better in future, chances are that many structural racial disparities will still exist 10, 15, 20 years from now, though hopefully to a lesser degree.
So your hypothetical son comes to you in the year 2030 and says 'Dad, quite a lot of people express hostility towards me on the basis that I'm black. Help me out.'
What are you going to say? Tell him that it's a solved problem as far as you are concerned? Or tell him to just ignore the issue (even though it might be quite a pressing problem for him)?
It's hard to escape the impression that you haven't really thought through the ramifications of this particular situation. Likewise, I suspect the reason that black women aren't just shrugging their shoulders and electing to marry outside their own ethnicity is at least partly because they're painfully aware that their offspring are likely to run into the same sort of problems they've faced themselves.
As for requiring some specific experience to be a good parent, I find the idea a bit ridiculous. There are a variety of problems I haven't experienced and likely can't solve for my son. Experiencing racism from the larger society is, while not something I can solve, something I have experienced. So what?
Now you switch to saying that the problem was black women saying "I can't get a date that matches my extremely specific qualifications". So finding a life partner is now just a matter of getting a date, and preferring someone of your own race is now an 'extremely specific qualification'...and you think I've lost the thread?
And yes, if that was my son's problem, I'd tell him to either lift and be awesome or accept being forever alone.
The hypothetical problem I presented was 'Dad, quite a lot of people express hostility towards me on the basis that I'm black. Help me out.' as opposed to 'I can't get a date that matches my extremely specific qualifications.' While the latter problem could be an instance of the former, they're far from being identical. You'll forgive me if I don't go the effort of providing Venn diagrams to support this claim.
As for requiring some specific experience to be a good parent, I find the idea a bit ridiculous.
That's not what I'm suggesting, and is wholly an invention on your part. What I said was that you don't seem to have through through the sort of problems that your offspring would be likely to encounter; my thesis is that this lack of apparent concern would be a major disincentive to marriage for a lot of black women insofar as they're looking beyond their short-term personal desire and thinking about things like family formation...as discussed in the original article.
So would the children of two black parents. So no benefit there.
...and preferring someone of your own race is now an 'extremely specific qualification'...and you think I've lost the thread?
Given that 20% of the people who want this will be forever alone, yes it is.
The hypothetical problem I presented was 'Dad, quite a lot of people express hostility towards me on the basis that I'm black. Help me out.' as opposed to...
I'll remind you that you asked whether I would "Tell him that it's a solved problem" - recall that according to me, the solved problem is "I want to date a person satisfying $rare_condition but I can't find such people, so now I'm forever alone". Has nothing to do with third parties being unkind.
Also note: a black parent can't fix racism by third parties either. So again, no benefit to intra-racial marriage.
What I said was that you don't seem to have through through the sort of problems that your offspring would be likely to encounter; my thesis is that this lack of apparent concern...family formation...
I'm not quite sure why you come to the conclusion that either I or family oriented non-black men have not thought through some particular problem. Could you explain?
(My post is fairly agnostic on this issue, which is why my attempt at a charitable interpretation led me in the direction of shared experiences.)
Redrafting the premise after someone has disputed your conclusion looks awfully like an attempt to move the goalposts, and this isn't the first time I've had this argument with you.
If that's not your intention, then I strongly suggest you put more effort into into articulating such assumptions up front. Since you didn't bother, I naturally assumed that the problem you were declaring to be solved was the one discussed in the article, rather than your highly idiosyncratic view of it.