I split this week’s The Weigh In into two parts. One focuses on the medium of Internet dating and the second focuses on the “Digital Segregation.” Read on and make sure to follow the links to read up more on their respective sites.
On “Digital Segregation”:
“But as acceptable as online dating and inter-racial dating have ostensibly become, those looking for love are still sticking with those who look like them. U.S. Census data from 2000 shows that black-white couples make up just 1% of American marriages. Most frequent inter-racial couplings? Black hubby and white wife. And even black subscribers preferred black partners. Although they were ten times as likely to contact whites as whites were to contact blacks, overall, blacks sent online inquiries to people of their own race more often. Why are blacks more willing to take a chance on white folk? Mendelsohn speculates that blacks are simply acting like minority populations of any kind, trying to meld into the dominant structure. One of the best ways to do that, he contends, is through intermarriage.” Bonnie Rochman, from the article Love Isn’t Color Blind: White Online Daters Spurn Blacks, TIME.
In response to TIME’s article, Very Smart Brothas came up with three reasons why online dating really isn’t into black people:
1.Black people just aren’t into online dating either.
2. It’s not about online dating just not being that into black people much as it’s online dating just not being that into the type of black person who’d make this decision.
3. The type of people (black and other) interested in virtual dating and in actually meeting black people might not be found on the sites cited by these studies.
On Internet dating as a whole, Askpapi from Hello Beautiful muses about signing up for dating sites believing he shouldn’t leave his dating life in the hands of a mouse and keyboard:
Watch this video by Pinnk from Women Dating Black Men. Is his expounding just empty rhetoric or does he have a point about online dating and black women?
In defense of online dating, check out Amanda VanAllen’s Black Women Turn To Online Dating To Find Love (NYU Livewire).
Here she writes about Philadelphia Daily News columnist’s Jenice Armstrong’s experience with online dating, which garnered great results:
“Within a month of returning to Match.com, she received a message from Cameron Turner. He seemed to fit her criteria of a guy who could “teach a child to read one day and go scuba diving the next.”
“He just stood out,” Armstrong said. “I knew. I just knew. I mean, who goes online, puts up a profile and finds the perfect guy? We are coming up on five years now, and I still gush when I see him.”
He proposed in front of the statue of David while they were on an Italian vacation less than a year later.
She believes they only could have met online: they were unlikely to cross paths, since she lived in Philadelphia, and he in New Jersey.
“My husband does not go out to nightclubs or parties,” Armstrong said. “He’s the kind of guy who goes home and cuts his grass. I never would have met him otherwise.”
Although there are plenty of stories like Armstrong’s, online dating is still a stigma to some in the black community.”
She continues on to give a very accurate to online dating:
“If nothing else, online dating allows singles to meet people they otherwise wouldn’t have met, said Armstrong, even if they don’t form an intimate relationship.
‘People can be very judgmental,” she said. “They act like online dating is stooping so low. I see them as the same people who won’t buy anything online — but you get more options when you shop [both] online and at the mall.’”
In other words, Readers: give online dating a chance. Tell us what you think and don’t forget to comment!
Any research that neglects all angles is invalid. It's hard to figure that this is a legit estimation.
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