That’s the conclusion of a commenter to this post on OK Cupid’s blog about response rates and how they are affected by race. (That link, by the way, is for the gays. The het one is here.) Black women and gay Black men are (surprise!!!) the undesirables. Now, I was on OK Cupid, briefly, just for shiggles and my experience was largely one of boredom. The majority of the users are white and there are plenty I shared common interests with, but none responded even though I looked fantastic in all my pics. Heh.
One thing the post points out is that while most users do not object to interracial marriages and relationships, their behavior on the site indicates a strong, nearly exclusive, preference for suitors of the same (white) race. I don’t find this surprising, disappointing or even particularly racist. People like what they like. And while I understand it’s unlikely that I’ll meet someone of another race on a dating site (again, it was for shiggles; I’m at odds with dating and hookup sites in general) I’m pretty confident that when people meet me in person the results are different. White dudes, historically, have shown interest in me in social settings. It’s just that, in those scenarios, I wasn’t interested in meeting any man, was in a relationship, or just wasn’t ready to jump across and explore.
People act differently online. That’s just what it is. The takeaway is that HTML codes are not good indicators of one’s desirability.