The Black Damsel In Dating Distress: A Response to OkCupid's Conclusions

You clearly do not belong to any minority, because if you did, you would understand how incredibly nice it is to be in an environment where you're not. A lot of people that belong to a minority clearly see value in services that target their niche, and it's very difficult to explain this to people that don't.

There is an ocean of difference between targeting a niche, and discriminating a group. A race-specific bar, i.e. one that targets a race or culture or nationality or sexuality is perfectly ok. Denying service to a group is not ok, that's discrimination, but that's not what we're talking about here. The niche dating sites we were discussing aren't discriminating, they're targeting a niche, and that has to be ok.

No, because dating is entirely about sexual orientation. Straight men date straight women. Gay men date gay men. And so on. When it comes to race, however, that argument doesn't hold up.

Yes it does, because dating is about physical attraction for most people, and unless you are extremely desperate, you have physical preferences. Some people likes blondes. Some people like brunettes. Some people like black hair. Is that bad? Some people like whites, some people like blacks, some people like asians. Is that bad? Is that racism? Should we condemn it? How?!?

And since some people have those preferences, why not have niche dating sites that caters to them?

The OK Cupid article displays righteous indignation for no good reason, and I'm disappointed that the articles critiquing it still seem to accept this basic premise.

Yeah, happened to me. Doesn't affect my opinion. Racism, subconscious or not, as a concept that's relevant to me anyway, implies judging people's character for reasons other than their merits. Judging attractiveness doesn't really have to do with judging character. Attractiveness is an automatic response, and a lot of it has to do with looks, which is one of the few places I would say race is quite relevant. (for an amusing example, I know an Asian girl who isn't into Asian guys)

Attraction can be influenced by getting to know people, and I wouldn't discourage it, it makes for a less divided society and perhaps less disgruntled black women and all that. That's fine. But I shouldn't feel like I'm doing anything wrong, whatsoever, for choosing to stick with what my preferences are right now. It makes me mad that OK Cupid tries to make me feel guilty about it. And it scares me to think that this righteous tide is going to start making people decide to date people they don't really want to date. That sort of thing is personal and sacred, and should stay clear of any politics.

EDIT: I should add this nuance. I can see the argument of wanting to encourage people to get to know each other. But supposing you do that, and you still don't find those women attractive? Then you're not "guilty" of not trying, and I think that this article makes the presumption of that guilt.

Dating is different, you are going to be spending most of your time with this person, and you are going to be putting parts of your body into parts of theirs. It would be nice if everyone was so enlightened as to not care about race, but there is 10,000+ years of evolutionary pressure pushing things the other direction. So while I wouldn't limit myself to one race, I am not going to look down on people who do. What matters about "racism" is not what you think, it's how you act. You may hate all $foo people, but if you hire a $foo person because he is more qualified than the $bar people, you've done your duty to society. Who you choose to fuck, though, is less important to society as a whole, and your deeper thoughts become more acceptable to act on.

Basically, it doesn't hurt anyone to discriminate against who you date. There are 5.9999 billion other people the person you discriminated against can date. But if you open a public establishment that only white people are allowed to visit, then you are hurting thousands of people that don't have the option to just go somewhere else (geographical reasons or otherwise). Harming other people is what's bad. If you don't harm anyone, then you aren't doing anything wrong. (Sure, it's bad if you walk past a dying person and don't help them. But it's not as bad as shoving your knife into them and taking their wallet.)