OkCupid confirms it: Your race affects whether people write you back

The OkCupid blog published an analysis yesterday of the response rates from senders of various races. I absolutely love their introduction:

Welcome back, dorks. We’ve processed the messaging habits of almost a million people and are about to basically prove that, despite what you might’ve heard from the Obama campaign and organic cereal commercials, racism is alive and well. It would be awesome if the other major online dating players would go out on a limb and release their own race data, too. I can’t imagine they will: multi-million dollar enterprises rarely like to admit that the people paying them those millions act like turds. But being poor gives us a certain freedom. To alienate all our users. So there.

… The takeaway here is that although race shouldn’t matter in messaging, it does. A lot.

Since the three colors without gradients in their charts isn’t helpful, I redid their charts based on color percentiles; the top two values are bright green, the bottom two values are bright red and the 50th percentile is white:

Reply rates by race - Male Sender

Reply rates by race - Female Sender

What OkCupid found out

Because of eHarmony’s daily match limit, we need to be choosy who we set to receive as matches, especially if our current settings aren’t biting.

If you’re a man — and not white — remove “Asian”, “Hispanic” and “White Non-Hispanic” from your Match Settings. Statistically they won’t reply, anyway.
If you’re a woman — any woman — remove “White Non-Hispanic” from your Match Settings. Do I sense a white man ego in these two charts?
Men, say hello to Black women and Native American women. Statistically, they will respond.
Women, say hello to Middle Eastern men and Indian men. Statistically, more of them will write you back.
OkCupid women respond to 27.6% of men who say hello, and OkCupid men respond to 42% of women who say hello. One may expect similar results in eHarmony, particularly during a Free Communication Weekend.
The members who most likely reply to their own ethnicity are Middle Eastern men (56%), Indian men (55%), Native American women (35%) and Pacific Islander women (30%). If you belong to these races, you can probably tell us why.
The members who most refuse to reply to their own ethnicity are Asian women (22%), Middle Eastern women (23%), Hispanic/Latin women (24%), Black men (37%) and White men (41%)

OkCupid is a free site and is visited by 1.5 million Americans monthly, vs. eHarmony’s 3.9 million. OkCupid’s audience participation rate is 48+8%, understandably higher than eHarmony’s 45+5%. eHarmony’s response rates are likely lower, accordingly. Compare their visitor demographics here and here, both directly measured by Quantcast.

Note that eHarmony discloses that they programmed their system to send just the matches who are “most likely to communicate”, in addition to the compatibility dimensions. Ultimately, I hope they base it on response rate statistics, for the sake of their black women customers.

UPDATE: Just for fun

Just for entertainment, I made a chart combining the respective rates to see which races are pairing up in OkCupid. For example, sqrt( 32% × 63% ) = 45% between Native American guys and Middle Eastern girls.

Reply rates by race - Combined

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Comments 14

SingleGuyInNC wrote:
I’m not so sure okCupid is necessarily representative of the rates on the other services. It is interesting data but I’ve had a pretty lousy reply rate there. From what I’ve seen, I don’t think that it has a higher participation rate than eH.

I need to read this again when I have more brain power…
Posted 07 Oct 2009 at 11:09 pm ¶
Picturemann wrote:
After I read the article, I wondered why the article was couched as yet another “Black women as the world’s worst victim” piece. Clearly, according to OKCupid’s own numbers, it is black men who come off as being in the worst dating situation, not black women. But then, they couldn’t grab headlines and the attention of black women if they were to say that could they? Or maybe the owners of the OKCupid website (and the editors and managers of American media) simply don’t give a sh*t enough about black men to even notice or care.

Let’s go back and do the numbers again, this time comparing OKCupid’s figures for the response rates black men and women achieve when sending messages to potential mates of various racial and ethnic groups:

BLACK WOMEN BLACK MEN
Native American – 41% / Black – 28%
Other – 41% / Native American – 27%
Middle Eastern – 40% / Pacific Islanders – 25%
Black – 37% / Other – 24%
Indian – 37% / Indian – 21%
Hispanic – 36% / Middle Eastern – 21%
Pacific Islanders – 32% / White – 21%
White – 32% / Hispanic – 19%
Asian – 31% / Asian – 17%

In other words, even the LOWEST response rate received by black women from various racial and ethnic groups (31% from Asian men) was STILL higher than the HIGHEST response rate received by black men (28% from black women). But apparently the dating plight of black men is of no interest to OKCupid. Or, even worse, they assumed that the dating plight of black men would be of no interest to their readers- white, black or whatever. AND THEY WOULD PROBABLY BE RIGHT IN THAT UNFORTUNATE ASSUMPTION. After all, what is the value of black men in American society? Our value is close to ZERO (except, of course, when it comes to sports and entertainment). We can’t even claim “worst position” even in situations that clearly demonstrate that we are in the “worst position.”

OKCupid engaged in what the magicians call “misdirection.” They suckered the public into looking in one direction when they should have been looking in another direction. American media does this all the time when it comes to the plight of black men as compared to that of black women. For example, based on the media stories to come out in past years about rates of HIV/AIDS you would be right to assume that black women suffer from higher rates of HIV/AIDS than black men– and you would be wrong. In fact, the rate for black women is 60.6 (cases per 100,000), while that of black men is 136.8 (see the CDC website and this page in particular: http://twurl.nl/b6qxvp).

Moreover, the folks at OKCupid even decided to point out that black women were not even valued by black men, when it comes to the responses they received from potential mates (“Essentially every race—including other blacks—singles them out for the cold shoulder.”) Yet a perusal of OKCupid’s own numbers would show that when it comes to responding to potential mates, black men respond LEAST to black women AND black women respond LEAST to black men. The rate of response from black women to black men is higher than vice-versa, but black men and women are BOTH LAST on each other’s agendas. See for yourself:

BLACK WOMEN BLACK MEN
Pacific Islanders – 39% / Pacific Islander – 57%
White – 38% / Asian – 55%
Middle Eastern – 37% / Middle Eastern – 55%
Native American – 34% / Other – 52%
Asian – 34% / Indian – 51%
Indian – 34% / White – 51%
Other – 32% / Native American – 50%
Hispanic – 31% / Hispanic – 46%
Black – 28% / Black – 37%

That the folks at OKCupid could write an entire blog on the subject of race and dating and single out the plight of black women while ignoring that of black men is despicable. Sadly, it is also typical. Or perhaps the across-the-board stereotype of the “no good black man” is so profoundly and thoroughly ingrained that their pathetic response rate from potential mates is to be expected and is, therefore, of no consequence.

And that SUCKS
Posted 19 Oct 2009 at 4:01 pm ¶
eharmonyblog wrote:
Picturemann, I have two comments on your observations:

1. The charts show that men’s messages get far less replies than women’s messages. “Replies to Black men < Replies to Black women" is just like everybody else.

2. In the analysis, I made sure I didn't elaborate which races get the least response from everyone, but since you brought it up, Asian, Black and Indian males almost equally have the plight of getting the least response. White flight, yes?

What you wrote inspired me to copy the overall race stats from the original okcupid post to my charts, and then add gradients of their own, too.
Posted 19 Oct 2009 at 5:03 pm ¶
Picturemann wrote:
eharmonyblog:

Your failed to deal with my basic thesis: that black women were set up in the original article to be in the “worst” dating situation when, in fact, it was black men who were in the worst dating situation– as measured by responses they received from various groups. Your attempt to ignore this and instead argue that black men are in a situation that is similar to other minority males seems a bit disingenuous. The numbers are the numbers, and assuming this was an honest study, the numbers don’t lie.

Furthermore, In order for black men to be “just like everybody else” the numbers would have to be exactly the same for everyone. They were not: instead there were clear, and perhaps, statistically significant differences. In fact, I think I will go back and do some chi-squares and Analysis of Variance on the data: the results should be interesting.
Posted 19 Oct 2009 at 8:31 pm ¶
eharmonyblog wrote:
1. Asian men (22.2), Black men (21.7) and Indian men (20.8) have almost equally the worst reply rates in OkCupid. I won’t go as far as calling it “worst dating situation” though.

OkCupid only said that black women are disadvantaged because they are obviously the only red band in a sea of green (2nd chart). Meanwhile, in the first chart, Asian men, Black men and Indian men obviously have more bright red boxes than the other men. I still do not see why you insist that Black men are more disadvantaged than Asian men and Indian men in the data.

I hope you’re not color blind, seeing only what you want to see.

2. Replies to Asian men (from 21 to 34) < Replies to Asian women (from 41 to 55)
Replies to Black men (from 17 to 29) < Replies to Black women (from 31 to 41)
<snip>
Replies to White men (from 29 to 38) < Replies to White women (from 41 to 51)

Black men get fewer replies than Black women, just like other races. But, yes, do go ahead and calculate if there is any statistical significance between the differences. The biggest gap I immediately see is between Middle Eastern women (49.5) and Middle Eastern men (25.7).
Posted 19 Oct 2009 at 11:36 pm ¶
bmcali wrote:
This 1 goes out 2 Pictureman,hey I’m a bw and I think you are just hurt by the numbers,but it no big deal I dont take it seriously for one bit. I dont need to go online to meet pple and when I did meet pple online I never had a prob getting a date. I just dated white boys,hispanic boys or whtever. Nobody thinking about u anyways. However no matter what preassumptions tht I may have about black men,it wouldnt stop from responding to their message bc I know their potenital my black father raised me and he is the greatest man alive ,beside my bro. So that is the only thing that angers me is that black men and black women are at war when we should be friends regardless of who we fall n love with. After all we share the same past and story so why hate on eachother.All those stereotypes are created by the media and we it and than assume the position its as simple as that. Peace,love,and happiness brotha. “Don’t hate on black women next time think about how r mother, took the time to raise you and wipe ur tears and ask urself r black women really that bad.”-BM
Posted 16 Mar 2010 at 9:41 pm ¶
Picturemann wrote:
bmcali:

You seem pretty stupid. Or perhaps you’re not capable of reading or comprehending.

It was the article published by OKCupid that said Black women were the last to be picked– I just pointed out that the data suggests that Black men tended to be picked last also, and that the OKCupid piece seemed to have ignored this.

You turned this into a big ego trip and went on a tirade against a brother (me) but ignored the white men, Asians etc. who were spotlighted by the OKCupid article as people who ignore Black women.

I would call this behavior strange, but in fact it is typical: A pathetic black woman going an ego trip about an article that in fact spotlighted the fact that black women are LAST on everyone’s list of choices. This is how black women often deflect things that make them feel like shit– by pointing at black men and laughing (when they should be looking at THEMSELVES). It’s like no-income, homeless white man who tells himself, “Things may be messed up for me, but at least I’m not a black man.”

Maybe your “attitude” is the explanation for OKCupid citing black women as “last” on everyone’s list.

Get a life and a brain. And please learn how to read. Moreover, STOP trying to build your self-esteem at the expense of black men– you are making black women look bad.
Posted 31 Mar 2010 at 8:25 pm ¶
bmcali wrote:
Wow! first of all I’m really flatter that you spent ur precious time replying to my comment. You are probably rite, Pictureman maybe I did misread your comment and if I did.My bad, you dont have to take what i say so dam seriously you don’t even know me,so who cares. The fact that you replied at all shows that perhaps you are just as hurt about this issue as I am. I don’t claim to have all the answers. I don’t exactly know what I said in my comment,but I saying this now I have an great amount of respect for black men. OK! so you know absolutely nothing about me, My father raised me he is my hero and my brother is currenting attending Corneil in New York, so i have grew up around a lot of educated black men, I know what a good black man looks like. I don’t judge,but it seems like black men hate black women, I mean you have already labeled me as a stupid black women, because i offended you for some shit i said a month ago. You have to understand the complexities of how media systematically brainwashes a group of people to believe they are stupid,worthless,and a waste of time. I’m fine with myself, but i worry about all those little black girls and boys that are receivng the wrong message from society. Who is going to set them straight when they see black women and black men at eachother’s throat. In other words just like you have experinces,with judgemental black women, I have the same experinces with black men. Its not a competition of who suffers the most, its a matter of who will be the first one to stop this self hate the black women or black men. I’m reading a book by Michael Eric Dyson “Why I Love Black Women” it give you some perspective on what the hell all those crazy black women are complaining about. We black women, just like your mother need some recognition, thats all. Because i know that no one would ever want to be a black man, but i know for a fact that every1 would love to date a black man. Please pick one topic at a time we are talking in terms of dating,not other issues with in the black community.PEACE OUT PLAYA AND YOU MAKE BLACK MEN LOOK BAD. HAVE A LIFE AND DONT GET YOUR PANTIES N A TWIST HOMEBOY.
Posted 01 Apr 2010 at 3:33 am ¶
iceyroads wrote:
How sad.You can’t make people change what makes them happy because you think its unfair that some one is attracted to what ever.
Posted 26 Apr 2010 at 5:37 pm ¶
jeff wrote:
Online dating sites are a total joke. You’re lucky if you even manage to get a reply from anyone at all.

I actually met 2 of my EX’s online but that was a LOOOONG time ago, maybe 12+ years ago on AOL when being online was still very new and there wasn’t 100 million men to every 4 females around.

a/s/l anyone??????
Posted 30 May 2010 at 10:25 am ¶
John wrote:
@jeff…

Hmmm… 100 million to 4? Where are you getting your statistics from?

From the stats I have seen, eH is one of the more gender balanced commercial personals site…

You met 2 of your ex-es online – yet you think it is a joke. So, you equate 12 old experience with today in Internet time? That’s like telling Noah he was an idiot for building the ark out of wood, because carbon fiber is way better . . . get it?
Posted 30 May 2010 at 12:26 pm ¶
stephanie wrote:
I hate to ad to this but I just help myself.
The above exchange is ridiculous.
Can we get through one day w/o some issue-having, WHINY a**, black-woman hating ‘brotha’ crying ‘Woe is me’ dragging everyone into their inner turmoil.
I mean, really…

The mods tried to reason with PICTUREMAN and he’s still whining. “I feel that this is disengenuous’
Do you undersand the meaning of the word: inconsequential?

Also, did you even read BMCALI’S message, PICTUREMAN? She’s saying not to take it that seriously. That she would respond, regardless. She wasn’t doing anything at your expense to make you or other black men look bad. YOU went into this long ‘thing’ about statistics and negative media portayals. SHE mentioned that these stereotypes and preconceived notions hurt. That, while she harbored a few, she was raised by a loving father and knew better.
That she doesn’t buy into these notions.
That is all. She was trying to ‘support’ you.
*laugh*

Meanwhile, you’re ranting about ‘nasty attitudes’ and ‘what constitutes so-called typical behavior for a ‘black women’?
Dude…quit bring a fag. Why are so emotional?
*laugh*
(and there’s no homosexual connotation in that statement so – no offense, gay community. Just a way that I describe b*tch/p*ssylike behavior on the part of a supposed ‘man’)

PICTUREMAN, I wish that we could paint your kind your ‘rightful’ and desired color, strip you of your ‘Black Card’ and banish you from the ‘black community’. Sellout! It’s a sad crying shame when black folks actually ‘stereotype’ their own. Pathetic. SMH.

I’m sorry that every woman you date is a b*tch –but don’t project your crap onto every woman you don’t know. Some pointers: Grow your crybaby a** up, understand that you are 50% of your dysfunctional relationships and take responsibilty for the individuals that you allow into your life.
But I guess that sounds too much like common sense, huh? You’re the self-professed ‘smart’ one. You tell me.

If *you* don’t date black women — believe me, it’s no loss, imo. Get on. One can see your issues from a mile away. Unlike BM, I’m not begging for men like you to see the goodness of ‘black women everywhere’. I dont’ care. There’s a whole world of males out there and I have problem getting them. *shrug*
DO continue to date and shuffle your nasty attitude in the direction of nonblack women, though. <— …which is a portion of the reason why other racial/ethnic groups don't want 'black men' dating their women, I might add. It's true. Non-blacks don't even have to look at statistics. They need only observe the ways in which the few stupid (but vocal and whiny) 'black men' SHAMELESSLY attack, belittle and mistreat their 'own'…
It's very telling.
I don't agree with the generalization but I understand the apprehension. I mean, at the end of the day, life's too short. Why complicate matters by dealing with someone's weird racial baggage and strange (backwards) mental pathology?
*shrug*
Seriously….what the heck kind of man actually 'beefs' and, dare I say it, *COMPETES* with a bunch of wo-men, anyway?

*shrug*

Anyway, I'm on the site to meet black men (I recently relocated to a city where there are like, .3%. I'm DYING *laugh*) but I get nothing but non-blacks. Not that it's a problem or anything. I would just prefer black.
*sigh*
I may have to move…
Posted 31 Jul 2010 at 8:26 pm ¶
Kayla wrote:
Eharmony sucks ’cause they are too elitist. I tried in earnest but they guys there are just too damn picky and full of themselves. Okcupid, on the other hand, has a wider field, so you gotta do more of the picking, but hey! I got dates!!:> Thank you all at OKcupid.
Posted 19 Oct 2010 at 7:32 pm ¶
abubbleshooter wrote:
OkCupid confirms it: Your race affects whether people write you back • eHarmony Blog is a remarkable share. Thanks a lot for this writing.
Posted 01 Feb 2012 at 10:15 am ¶

eHarmony Blog.com

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