<story><title>The Black Damsel In Dating Distress: A Response to OkCupid&apos;s Conclusions</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/03/the-black-damsel-in-dating-distress/37085/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>petercooper</author><text>&lt;i&gt;That&apos;s because all the black men who don&apos;t want to date white women are on the African American Dating Network or Blacksinglesconnection. There simply is no real white corollary.  Stormfront excluded, there aren&apos;t many &quot;WhiteSingles&quot; websites or &quot;EliteIvory&quot; dating sites. There is no Caucasian Dating Network, because the broader world is the Caucasian Dating Network. [..]&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Disagree. The reason there are no popular white-focused dating sites is because they would be hounded or sued out of business! It&apos;s &quot;racist&quot; for white people to congregate on a race-dependent basis, but acceptable for people of other races. I guess it&apos;s our payback for our ancestors being idiots in the distant past.&lt;p&gt;That said, I think racial segregation is a &quot;problem&quot; (though it&apos;s not always &quot;racist&quot;, per se). The existence of dating sites exclusively for certain races is the issue here.&lt;p&gt;We need to go one way or the other. We ignore race and discourage its use as a demographic tool, or we celebrate it and allow people to silo as they see fit. Our society seems to have mostly chosen to ignore race and consider it a non-issue, so &quot;Blacksinglesconnection&quot; or &quot;EliteNoire&quot; (Are you &lt;i&gt;shitting&lt;/i&gt; me? This really exists?) should be as distasteful to our society as a hypothetical &quot;Whitesinglesconnection&quot; would be.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jbooth</author><text>When your race makes up 13% of the larger population, the economics for a niche dating site will work out.  At 75%, it doesn&apos;t make a whole lot of sense.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Black Damsel In Dating Distress: A Response to OkCupid&apos;s Conclusions</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/03/the-black-damsel-in-dating-distress/37085/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>petercooper</author><text>&lt;i&gt;That&apos;s because all the black men who don&apos;t want to date white women are on the African American Dating Network or Blacksinglesconnection. There simply is no real white corollary.  Stormfront excluded, there aren&apos;t many &quot;WhiteSingles&quot; websites or &quot;EliteIvory&quot; dating sites. There is no Caucasian Dating Network, because the broader world is the Caucasian Dating Network. [..]&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Disagree. The reason there are no popular white-focused dating sites is because they would be hounded or sued out of business! It&apos;s &quot;racist&quot; for white people to congregate on a race-dependent basis, but acceptable for people of other races. I guess it&apos;s our payback for our ancestors being idiots in the distant past.&lt;p&gt;That said, I think racial segregation is a &quot;problem&quot; (though it&apos;s not always &quot;racist&quot;, per se). The existence of dating sites exclusively for certain races is the issue here.&lt;p&gt;We need to go one way or the other. We ignore race and discourage its use as a demographic tool, or we celebrate it and allow people to silo as they see fit. Our society seems to have mostly chosen to ignore race and consider it a non-issue, so &quot;Blacksinglesconnection&quot; or &quot;EliteNoire&quot; (Are you &lt;i&gt;shitting&lt;/i&gt; me? This really exists?) should be as distasteful to our society as a hypothetical &quot;Whitesinglesconnection&quot; would be.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>henrikschroder</author><text>Why should it be hideous?&lt;p&gt;Let me try an analogy. Discrimination based on sexual orientation is illegal in a lot of places, and seen as equally bad as discrimination based on race.&lt;p&gt;But there are plenty of dating sites that are exclusively targeted to gay men or lesbian women. If you think that race segregating dating sites are bad, then what are dating sites that segregate on sexual orientation? Are they also bad?&lt;p&gt;But a gay dating site that didn&apos;t segregate on sexual orientation would be completely useless! And to the extent gay men are members of non-segregating dating sites, they will definitely filter out all the women and be filtered out by all the straight men, so in essence they would self-segregate.&lt;p&gt;We have anti-discrimination laws because race or gender or sexual orientation are irrelevant in some areas, such as the ability to perform a job. That&apos;s why it&apos;s illegal to deny a job applicant based on those attributes.&lt;p&gt;But when it comes to dating, those attributes are relevant! Incredibly relevant! Everyone has preferences when it comes to dating, and it not racist to only date people of one&apos;s own race. It is not sexist to only date people of one&apos;s preferred gender. It is not bad to want to date people that share your culture, your religion, your world view.&lt;p&gt;It is not bad or distasteful to have segregated dating sites.</text></comment>