From iSteve 2007: “Sailer’s Law of Female Journalism: The most heartfelt articles by female journalists tend to be demands that social values be overturned in order that, Come the Revolution, the journalist herself will be considered hotter-looking.”
Emi Kolawole writes for the Washington Post:
I quit online dating for a number of reasons. Chief among them was that I did not want to participate in platforms where users are given tools to discriminate based on race.
Regardless of the type of app or site, online dating works better for some than others — a lot better, in fact. If you’re a black woman, as I am, or an Asian man, OkCupid data shows that you’re likely to receive fewer matches and messages.
My experience reflected this trend. It became glaringly obvious that I was getting far fewer matches and messages while online dating than my non-black friends.
The people who design and create these sites and tools are working to address this disparity in user experience, but their attempts and failures show just how deeply ingrained racism is in our society.
Comments at WP:
* Okay – so take away the racial preferences in searches.
It won’t change a thing.
If you have a photo, anyone with a preference can decide based on that. That’s all it is – a preference. If you are rotund and you’re looking for a date with a hot aerobics instructor, you’ll probably be disappointed – because the aerobic instructors have preferences too, and it’s a rare aerobic instructor who wants an out of shape guy, right?
Online dating is like window shopping, except the mannequins don’t get upset if you don’t walk in and make a purchase when you’re window shopping.
It’s a means to potentially get a date. Outcomes are never guaranteed.
* We are bombarded by media telling us race is the most important issue of the day (unless it’s man-made global warming).
But when people go on-line to find a date/spouse/partner, follow suit and make race important it’s a scandal?
I’m mixed-race and I don’t ever consider race a factor in dealing with people on any level. Race hucksters writing for this very paper have said promoting “color-blindness” is not only offensive but actually racist.
MLK must be spinning at about 78 RPM.
* So people aren’t allowed to have dating preferences now?
* Lots of people (most?) want to date within their own racial group. For a lot of reasons, none of which are relevant. You’re entitled to select dating partners from your “type”, whatever that may be.
I get that it’s tough on black women, because in many cases even the black men don’t want to date them. But it makes no sense complaining about the online dating mechanism when the problem lies in peoples’ feelings about what they want.
What’s the alternative? Make online dating racially blind, so that you don’t find out what race your date is until you actually meet him/her, have to spend time in a bar or restaurant, and pay for drinks/dinner for someone you know you’re never going to be in a long term relationship with? Yeah, that makes sense.
* It sounds to me like online dating is the messenger, and nothing else. I’ve dated a few black women, and I have to say that it’s really not a mystery to me why some people would be averse, based on my experiences. I know that’s not even close to a representative sample…but the way our brains work, we don’t do double-blind studies with statistically-valid sample sizes when we assess compatibility based on past experiences. We just don’t.
* Not to be critical, but based on the writer’s photo for the article, maybe she should go for a look a little more flattering than “the Barack Obama.”
* Looks are still the predominant factor, and if you don’t believe me, read “Date Lab.”
* Whether online dating is a success or not depends on your expectations, I think. As a black woman in her early 50s I frankly didn’t expect much. What surprised me, however, was the number of white men who sent me flirts and who wantes to communicate. Even on targeted black sites, white men reached out. I’m not opposed to dating outside of my race, but the amount of interest was unexpected. I’ve chatted with some interesting men of different backgrounds and races. If a friendship develops, great. If a serious relationship happens, then that’s a blessing. But you can’t go into online dating expecting to be blessed. Will people discriminate? Of course, and you will too in order to narrow who you wish to meet, regardless of race. You’ll be better off in the end if you don’t focus on the negative.
* I too am tired of the racial discourse. But, as an ethnic woman in DC (of Indian descent), I think the author is right – compared to my white peers, I received barely any indications of interest through online dating (even though I am slim, athletic, and look good). But – I don’t think it’s an online dating problem. I think it’s just that men in general aren’t really interested in ethnic women, or women of color. This holds true outside the online world – all of my white female friends have gotten married, and had little trouble attracting interest – no matter their weight, looks, or (often toxic) personalities. Most of my ethnic female friends – many of whom are beautiful, articulate, and fun to be around – have received zero interest from men (even men of their own race – all of whom prefer white women, because it is a status symbol).
I don’t want to begrudge anyone their personal tastes – the heart wants what the heart wants. I also think men are rarely adventurous – they usually want what they grew up with and are familiar with. I think the advent of Michelle Obama on the political scene was helpful – I noticed a lot of white guys I work with (all of whom are married to white women) mentioning that she is “hot”. After the Obamas arrived in the White House, I also noticed more white guys walking around with black women – a sight I have rarely seen before.
I think the biggest problem for ethnic women and black women is that our men, after tasting success, immediately race after the ultimate status symbol: a white woman. Indian men (from India) are usually pretty loyal – they prefer dating their own women, unless a white woman chases them down. But I have noticed that a lot of Indian guys born and brought up here prefer white women. I think it’s part of an attempt to assimilate (especially in the post 9/11 era), but I also think it’s a status symbol reach.
* I wonder how the writer did with the responses she received. After about five minutes of listening to her complaining about how unfair life is, they moved on.
* #BlackDatesMatter
* “If you’re a black woman, as I am, or an Asian man, OkCupid data shows that you’re likely to receive fewer matches and messages.”
Oh get over yourself. Its not a black woman thing, or at least not entirely. The data also bears out that if you’re not a very attractive woman, you get less matches and messages. Or if you’re overweight. Or if you _________.
The very nature of online dating is that it does allow people to be pickier about who they match with and message–regardless of what criteria is used. That being said, if a man is weeding out black women, less attractive women, heavier women, unathletic women, etc., its also unlikely those same men would talk to the black/heavy/unattractive/etc women in real life.
This isn’t a black woman issue in online dating. Its that, despite all kinds of advances forwards, there are still plenty of people who don’t necessarily have much interest in dating outside of their race–and that applies in-person and online.
Stop making EVERYTHING a race issue. Especially when it comes to love/dating, sometimes things are PREFERENCE issues, and there’s nothing inherently evil with preferring X over Y. In fact, I’d argue there’s something worse about expecting people to get X and Y equal shots, regardless of what their personal preference may be, when it comes to PERSONAL issues like dating.
* I do think that people are allowed to have a physical “type.” For some people that may mean tall, regardless of race. For others that may mean one race only, regardless of height. I’m sure the author’s experience with online dating has been way more than frustrating, but this is not employment or housing discrimination we’re talking about.
Jan. 2, 2014, Dennis Prager said on his radio show: “I don’t like any ethnic neighborhood. I don’t think it’s the American ideal.”
“I don’t think black neighborhoods are healthy for blacks. I don’t think Mexican neighborhoods are healthy for Mexicans. They’re comfortable.”
Feb. 13, 2014, Dennis said: “A lot of people feel more comfortable with one of their own, unfortunately, racially, ethnically, whatever, I understand that, but that’s where the mind must conquer feelings, particularly if you are religious. Religion must conquer all other feelings or else religion is crap. Either we are all God’s children irrespective of our race or we are not.”
“That you feel more comfortable with people who look like you may well be your human response but it should not be your God-centered response… If religion doesn’t teach us values, it is utterly worthless… Values should always trump feelings.”
A black woman calls in. “Within black culture, you are taught from childhood that you are not to marry white people but then you grow up and you see all these black men marrying white people… When black guys go to college, they will not leave with a black girl. They will only marry a white woman.”
Dennis: “[Maybe] it is time for black women to date white men. Doesn’t love trump race?”
“I didn’t expect this [stand for pro-interracial marriage] to be controversial. I expected to do one segment and move on.”
“This notion about we want to preserve the culture. That’s a very dangerous idea that race and culture are identical. Race is race and culture is culture. What culture does a black atheist and a black evangelical share? Recipes?”
“Either we believe we are all God’s children and character matters infinitely more than skin color or we don’t. If you are religious, then you must ask, what does my religion teach?”
Interracial marriage is growing steadily. From the 1960 to the 1990 Census, white – East Asian married couples increased almost tenfold, while black – white couples quadrupled. The reasons are obvious: greater integration and the decline of white racism. More subtly, interracial marriages are increasingly recognized as epitomizing what our society values most in a marriage: the triumph of true love over convenience and prudence. Nor is it surprising that white – Asian marriages outnumber black – white marriages: the social distance between whites and Asians is now far smaller than the distance between blacks and whites. What’s fascinating, however, is that in recent years a startling number of nonwhites — especially Asian men and black women — have become bitterly opposed to intermarriage.
This is a painful topic to explore honestly, so nobody does. Still, it’s important because interracial marriages are a leading indicator of what life will be like in the even more diverse and integrated twenty-first century. Intermarriages show that integration can churn up unexpected racial conflicts by spotlighting enduring differences between the races.
Blonde British beauty Lowri Turner married an Indian the second time round and she writes:
“She’s getting very dark, isn’t she?” This is what one of my friends recently said about my much adored – 12-week-old daughter.
She didn’t mean to be rude. But it was a comment that struck me with the force of a jab to the stomach.
Immediately, I was overwhelmed by a confusion of emotions. I felt protective, insulted, worried, ashamed, guilty, all at once. The reason? My lovely, wriggly, smiley baby is mixed race.
Now, I think of myself as pretty ‘right on’. My home is on the border of the London Republic of Hackney. I’ve been to the Notting Hill Carnival, even if I found the music a bit loud. Yet now I realise what a ‘white’ world I inhabit.
I am white and I have two sons from my first marriage who are both milky complexioned and golden haired. My twin sister, who I spend a lot of time with, has a Danish partner. As a consequence, she has
two boys who are also pale skinned and flaxen haired.Into this positively Scandinavian next generation, I have now injected a tiny, dark-skinned, dark-haired girl. To say she
stands out is an understatement.
Jared Taylor writes June 19, 2012:
Some bi-racial children really don’t know which way to turn. It is fashionable to claim that the “tragic mulatto” is a racist myth, but science has tracked him down. Dr. J. Richard Udry’s 2003 study of 90,000 middle- and high-school students found that black/white and white/Asian children were more likely to be depressed, sleep badly, skip school, smoke, drink, consider suicide, and have sex than children of just one race.[Health and Behavior Risks of Adolescents with Mixed-Race Identity, American Journal of Public Health, November 2003]
The authors of a 2008 study reached the same conclusion:
“When it comes to engaging in risky/anti-social adolescent behavior . . . mixed race adolescents are stark outliers compared to both blacks and whites. . . . Mixed race adolescents—not having a natural peer group—need to engage in more risky behaviors to be accepted.” [ “The Plight of Mixed Race Adolescents,” NBER Working Paper No. 14192, July, 2008.]
Other research on white/Asian children found that they were twice as likely as mono-racial children—34 percent vs. 17 percent—to suffer from psychological disorders such as anxiety, depression or drug abuse. (Bi-Racial Asian Americans More Likely to Suffer Psychological Disorder, UCDavis, August 18, 2008)
Instead of moving smoothly between both groups, many mixed-race children don’t feel comfortable in either. When they go to college, such “outcasts,” as they sometimes call themselves, start their own student groups. Harvard, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, UCLA, Bryn Mawr and other campuses have groups with names such as ReMixed, Half and Half, and Mixed Student Union. (The Risks of Multiracial Identification, by Naomi Schaefer Riley, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 10, 2006.)
Miscegenation can be dangerous: Lynn Barkley Burnett and Jonathan Adler, the authors of a 2005 study on domestic violence in the United States, found that “the incidence of spousal homicide is 7.7 times higher in interracial marriages compared to intraracial marriages.” The chances of being killed by your spouse are small, to be sure, but an older study found that white men who married black women were 21.4 times more likely to be killed by their spouses than white men who married white women. A white woman increased her risk of being killed 12.4 times by marrying a black man. (Fatal Violence Among Spouses in the United States, 1976-85, By James A. Mercy and Linda Saltzman American Journal of Public Health, May, 1989.)
…We have the opposite situation today: A ruling class that promotes miscegenation and reviles anyone who opposes it. Together with our mass immigration policies, this spells doom for the survival of whites and their culture.
Comments to Steve Sailer in 2007:
* After watching the video all I saw was a typical example of black parenting. It’s all too common to see black women smacking and cursing at their children in public, hard to imagine what goes on at home.
* It never, ever looks natural, and yet 99.9% of them try anyway. Even Michelle Obama, with all that money and power at her disposal, couldn’t make it look natural. This must mean that it simply can’t be done.
I’ve heard black women talk about “long hair” the way teenage boys talk about chicks and the way people on diets talk about chocolate. I’ve heard their tone of voice actually change to fit the apparent importance of this subject in their minds. By the way, it’s also known as “good hair”.
If you’re unfamiliar with that culture, if you’re reading this blog comment from Finland or somewhere like that, then there is probably no way you could truly appreciate the amount of envy that straight hair inspires in some people. It has to be seen and heard to be believed.
By the way, am I alone in finding that article’s use of the phrase “black hair” a bit off-putting? Black hair is what Catherine Zeta-Jones has. I’m sure she’s happy with it.
* Hard wired libido, not social values (or race), determines who looks hot. All heterosexual men want the same thing: a thin to medium build woman with a large bust, narrow waist, light skin, younger than 26, no taller than 5’7, round face, large eyes, small well shaped ears, pert noses, voice no lower than contralto, straight or slightly wavy thick hair, well arched eyebrows (but not Chandra Levy thick), fine body hair, etc, etc. Not too many women fit the bill, maybe 1 – 2%. Needless to say most men take what they can get; then again, most men aren’t prizes, either.
Disney does a marvelous job teaching little girls one of life’s hardest lessons for women: to the hot chicks go all the spoils.
* “Sister, farewell, and remember that modesty, as it makes the most homely virgin amiable and charming, so the want of it infallibly renders the most perfect beauty disagreeable and odious. But when that brightest of female virtues shines among other perfections of body and mind in the same person, it makes the woman more lovely than an angel.” (Benjamin Franklin)
* These types of articles are absolutely hilarious in my opinion, but then again, most of a woman’s power comes from her looks, so I can see why they are so important for women.
* There is probably no better way to insult a Latin American woman than to suggest she has “bad hair”(pelo malo), which means her hair is kinky.
The more black a Latin American country is, the more insulting it is. That is why it is especially insulting in the mulatto Dominican Republic, and more like a sarcastic kind of compliment in majority white Argentina.
It would also be insulting in Puerto Rico, some central American and northern South American countries too.
Dominican women invest a lot of time, energy, and money(if they have it), trying to make themselves look as white as possible. They usually require a lot of work, but are often in denial over their obvious black heritage, largely due to the hatred Dominicans feel for the even blacker Haitians, with whom they share the island of Hispaniola. It’s the Haitians who are African they say, not the Hispanic Dominicans.
“According to a study by the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, about 90% of the contemporary Dominican population has African ancestry to varying degrees.[73] However, most Dominicans do not self-identify as black, in contrast to people of African ancestry in other countries. A variety of terms are used to represent a range of skintones, such as morena (brown), canela (red/brown) [“cinnamon”], India (Indian), blanca oscura (dark white), and trigueño (literally “wheat colored”, which is the English equivalent of olive skin),[74] among others.”
I remember my mother telling me about this friend of hers from boarding school over 30 years ago, this mulatto girl whose parents were from Haiti(obviously from the tiny mulatto elite). One day my mom suggested something about her friend’s hair, she doesn’t remember exactly what she said but implied it was thick or kinky, and her friend blew up. She was crying, and yelling and screaming at my mom at the top of her lungs, denying she had “bad hair”, and that her hair wasn’t kinky.
It’s easy to understand why mulattoes, especially female mulattoes would have psychological issues over their mixed heritage, even more so than pure black African women. The “tragic mulatto” used to be a popular theme in American literature. It appears we may have the most powerful tragic mulatto story yet, but this time being played out in the highest office in the land(thanks to Steve for showing us how race-obsessed our president is – rare is the mulatto who isn’t race-obsessed).
It is a strange irony that some of the biggest anti-black racists in the world are often black themselves.
* The author is a lazy woman (lesbian?) who doesn’t want to go to the effort to make herself attractive. Regardless of color there are many painful and unpleasant procedures all women undergo (waxing to name one) to beautify themselves. It’s just part of the package that comes when the dice come up XX. Accept it or resign yourself to having a vibrator for a boyfriend.
* I remember a girl at school. A blonde haired, blue eyed lovely. So far out of my league that the light from her league would take a million years to reach mine. She was covered in hair, very fine and very blonde. She could totally get away with it in a way even slightly darker haired girls just could not.
* Black women are blaming white people for the fact that straight hair is naturally more aesthetically pleasing than kinky hair.
While this should both sadden and surprise me, it doesn’t. Every worse trait blacks exhibit (IQ, lack of inhibition, kinky hair) will be attributed to white racism.
* From the Toronto Sun: Psychiatrists agree Melissa Todorovic is unique among teenaged offenders.
She never met Stefanie Rengel but engineered her horrific murder by inciting her thuggish boyfriend through threats of ending their turbulent affair or cutting him off sexually.
Atypical of young offenders, who often come from broken homes fractured by abusive or alcoholic parents, Todorovic excelled as a straight-A student and comes from a supportive, middle-class family.
Her teachers sang her praises as a “wonderful role model” in elementary school.
She was obsessed with her looks. She thought her breasts were too small and her lips were too thin.
She spent and still spends inordinate amounts of time straightening her naturally wavy brown hair.
Zoran and Rachel Todorovic are hard-working, loving parents who provided their daughter with a stable home.
She suffered no abuse and has a good rapport, especially with her mother, a nurse.
As a teenager, Todorovic is too young to diagnose for personality disorders, according to psychiatrists Philip Klassen and Julian Gojer, who assessed her prior to yesterday’s sentencing.
“Melissa exhibits marked anti-social tendencies in the single domain of intimate relations, while otherwise functioning normally,” Gojer noted in his assessment.
Gojer said Todorovic was diagnosed with Body Dysmorphic Disorder — an obsession with one’s looks — and certain anxieties along with obsessive compulsive issues.
“She has been consumed by her Body Dysmorphic Disorder and Bulimia Nervosa that have led to the development of low self-esteem, negative self-image in terms of physical attraction,” Gojer wrote.
She sought boyfriends, not for love or affection, but to obtain acceptance and boost her self-worth, Gojer said.
Todorovic’s lack of remorse stems from her immaturity. She doesn’t pose a risk to the community as long as she undergoes therapy, Gojer added.
Klassen said the convicted murderer sees herself as the victim and “presented as someone more self-pitying than remorseful.”
Unlike the typical young offender who acts impulsively, Todorovic persisted over months until Rengel was murdered, Klassen told the judge.
“I believe those struggles with territoriality and sexual jealousy are likely to persist,” Klassen wrote.
“She continues to minimize and/or deny her personal role or responsibility in the death of Stefanie and manifests … more self-pity than remorse.”
