Shopping for a Partner and Interracial Relationships

In class we talked about how dating is a method of shopping for a mate. The popularization of dating websites has in a way created a marketplace for shoppers to find exactly what they are looking for. People can choose partners based on race, religion, and personal interests. So it would seem that dating is more like shopping because people go on dating websites to find that right person the same way they go to the mall to find that perfect outfit. As we saw from the statistics from one dating website, I feel that this method of dating only perpetuates racism. Because dating websites allow a person to meet many more people than one would in daily life, I think that people become pickier and use stricter standards for finding a partner. For example, as the statistics from lecture showed white women were most likely to respond white men than any other group of males. The dating websites make it easier for people to completely exclude certain people based on their race and religion. Therefore, I think that this method for dating is only hurting our society because it encourages people of the same race and religion to be together, when interracial relationships have proven to benefit society by lessening distinctions between groups, reducing prejudice, and spurring economic and political change as well. Interracial relationships are good because they can teach family members and friends to be accepting of other races. If blacks only ever married blacks and whites only ever married whites it would only perpetuate racism. I’m not saying that dating websites completely eliminate the possibility for interracial relationships because there still are people who are open to interracial relationships or even prefer interracial relationships. I just believe that websites allow for people to be more selective. I think that if I went on a dating website I would put my preferences for a white catholic male. Not because I am racist or closed minded, but because when given the option out of hundreds of men it is what I would prefer based on my own race and religion. However, in my daily life I do not go around judging men on this premise because I am more open to different races and religions when I am meeting someone in person.

As I have said before, interracial relationships can be beneficial to society for multiple reasons, yet there still seems to be a bit of a taboo surrounding interracial relationships, particularly relationships between white men and black women. In lecture we saw that the statistics from the dating website showed black women getting the lowest response rate out of all groups of men, especially white males, and this is not the first time I have heard of this. One of my white female friends has always been known to date black men. Many of her friends are black males, yet she does not have any black female friends. She said to me once that it was “nasty” for a black girl and a white guy to date. I think she even preferred to see black men with white women over black women. So if she thought it wasn’t acceptable for black women to date white men or black men, then where does this leave black females? One girl in class mentioned how the reason for this could date back to when blacks were enslaved. I think that this is one logical theory, but I believe a better explanation is the exchange hypothesis. I completely agree with the exchange hypothesis in that people are more likely to overlook someone’s race if they have a higher economic status. White women are more likely to marry a black man if he has a higher education and economic status. I think one of the reasons we don’t see relationships between white men and black women that much is because white men are usually more educated and don’t have the need to use the exchange hypothesis, whereas it may be easier for a less educated white woman to marry an educated black man than an educated white man. Also less black females have higher education so the exchange hypothesis does not even work if they do not have a higher economic status that would lead a white male to overlook race. Therefore, this whole hypothesis comes down the importance of education. An education gives people a better chance of marrying outside of their own race, and because fewer black women have a higher education, it is more of a taboo for a white man and black woman to be together.