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Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

That's because all the black men who don'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't many "WhiteSingles" websites or "EliteIvory" dating sites. There is no Caucasian Dating Network, because the broader world is the Caucasian Dating Network. [..]

Disagree. The reason there are no popular white-focused dating sites is because they would be hounded or sued out of business! It's "racist" for white people to congregate on a race-dependent basis, but acceptable for people of other races. I guess it's our payback for our ancestors being idiots in the distant past.

That said, I think racial segregation is a "problem" (though it's not always "racist", per se). The existence of dating sites exclusively for certain races is the issue here.

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 "Blacksinglesconnection" or "EliteNoire" (Are you shitting me? This really exists?) should be as distasteful to our society as a hypothetical "Whitesinglesconnection" would be.

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When your race makes up 13% of the larger population, the economics for a niche dating site will work out. At 75%, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Also, I can't speak from any racial perspective than that of a white man, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to date a woman who joined a whites-only dating site, and most of the women I've dated or been interested in dating haven't been white anyway.

Why is that? Would you refuse to date a Jewish woman who had signed up on Jdate? (Assume you met her outside of Jdate.)

I'm not Jewish, so her willingness to date me would indicate that she's fairly open-minded.

However, I think it's different when it's a "white people only" site because "white" isn't really an ethnicity or a single culture, so a person who would sign up for such a site is indicating an interest in skin color/race on its own, which is a bit crass. I don't have a problem with someone who is Jewish who wants to date only people who grew up in the same tradition (although I'm obviously not a match for her). For contrast, "white" isn't a culture or ethnicity; it's just a skin color. I have nothing in common with most people who would be identified as "white".

I guess we can keep on refining this. I know secular Jews who were raised by secular parents, who have jdate profiles.

What if, e.g., you're Norwegian and she's Polish, and she joins PoleDate.com. She obviously wants to date white people, but she's also open-minded enough to date a strange Northern barbarian.

If people who identify as various shades of not-white all have something in common, it would be unlikely for people who identify as white not to. Stuffwhitepeoplelike isn't Stuffblackpeopleandhispanicpeopleandasiansdontlike.

Er, stuffwhitepeoplelike is supposed to be funny precisely because there is no stereotype of what white people really like, isn't it?

I don't think so. In some conservative circles "SWPLs" is a shorthand for "White people who like sushi and NPR (and decry racism despite living in gated communities)".

I thought that abbreviation was particular to the MRA scene.

Common misconception: Gates don't keep black/colored people out, they keep poor people out.

In my experience, modulo cleaning staff that's the same thing.

Since we're vaguely on the topic of 'identity', and hopefully deeply enough in a thread not to be in anyone else's way, I'll toss in an offtopic reaction to 'pw0ncakes'.

In this thread and others, your comments are solid and intelligent. I want to vote them up. But your username throws me: it's probably intended as parody, but for me it still signifies irreverent 'script-kiddie', whether ironic or not.

So while you're welcome to choose your own online identity, and while other people might be better able to disassociate your content from your username, you might want to consider whether your chosen name sends the message you want to be sending.

If it already does, well, more power to you! Apologies for the impropriety.

If he's trying to sell his start-up, then maybe he should pick a different name (and even then, it really wouldn't bother me)

But he hasn't got a link in his profile, nor is he self-posting, so why should he care what message he's sending?

If you're interested, I've written a Greasemonkey script at < http://userscripts.org/scripts/review/67722 > to remove usernames. I find they add unnecessary sources of potential bias to what are otherwise relatively anonymous comments.

Just because they are on a white people only site doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't open minded. I might, but it could just as well be that they are attempting to broaden their exposure simply by visiting more sites. It's possible that 'whites only' dating site would attract a wealthier demographic, which would make it an attractive place to look for a partner even if one wasn't especially racist..

because "white" isn't really an ethnicity or a single culture

I know you're focusing on the "Jewish" route, but neither is "black" by that benchmark. Some guy from the middle of the Sudan shares as little (or less) cultural or ethnic heritage with a black guy of Jamaican descent living in Los Angeles.. as an average white Russian does with an average white American.

"Black" means as many things as "white" does. "Jewish" does too, though not to quite as wide a gamut (but compare a black Ethiopian Jew to a Zionist from the Jewish Autonomous Oblast - the shared "culture" or "ethnicity" there is stretched almost to breaking point away from religion).

I think people draw a distinction, valid or not, between "looking for similar people" and "excluding different people." The former is seen as more acceptable. For a group that is a small percentage of the population, a niche dating site is acceptable because it helps them find other people in that group. For a group that is a large percentage of the population, any generic dating site will help them find other people in the same group, so a niche site only makes sense as a tool of exclusion.

Here's the thing: Publicly racist white-supremacists are almost always poor, ignorant, and ugly.* Any video you see of the KKK will have some yokel standing in front of a trailer (hilarious amount of garbage strewn across the yard included), overdue for a shave and a shower, proclaiming the greatness of a race he barely belongs to.

I know more than a few racist doctors, lawyers, and architects, but they wouldn't go within miles of a racist organization. Those people just aren't of the same class. It's also an enormous waste of time.

So is your issue the fact that they're racist, or the fact that they're underclass racists? There is a distinction to be made.

Does exclusively dating white people make you racist if you are in no other way racist? I know a girl from New Zealand who is greatly offended by racist remarks and attitudes, but who would never actually date someone outside her race. I suppose that no more makes you racist than not dating men makes you a homophobe (if you're a man, obviously).

*Go read stormfront sometime, it'll disturb you, regardless of how racist you may or may not be, and you'll discover the underclass that I speak of. Erudition & social refinement do not exist there.

Why should it be hideous?

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.

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?

But a gay dating site that didn'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.

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's why it's illegal to deny a job applicant based on those attributes.

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's own race. It is not sexist to only date people of one's preferred gender. It is not bad to want to date people that share your culture, your religion, your world view.

It is not bad or distasteful to have segregated dating sites.

First, if race-specific dating sites aren't offensive to you (and to me, they ARE) then why not race-specific bars? Or race-specific public transport?

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.

There's no biological reason for a straight man to date a gay man. There's also no biological reason, however, for a straight white man to avoid non-white women. If one has a personal preference, that's OK to exercise passively, but holing yourself up in a segregated community is rather anachronistic.

If there should be racially based dating sites, should there be bars/leisure facilities/supermarkets for white/black people to hang out who don't like being in the company of people of other races? My opinion is "hell no", but if you disagree, well that's your opinion.

(I'm sure people have dated folks with incompatible sexual preferences in the past, but that's pretty much incompatible with the whole idea of dating.)

First, if race-specific dating sites aren't offensive to you (and to me, they ARE) then why not race-specific bars? Or race-specific public transport?

Because wanting to fuck someone is different than being willing to share a bus with them. Relationships are the deepest and most personal human activity, and that activity is vastly different from public infrastructure (public transit, stores, bars, etc.)

It's more ethically acceptable to discriminate racially when it's about really serious stuff?

There's a vast gulf between saying "I prefer white/black people and tend to only look for that type I prefer" and saying "I will ONLY date white/black people so gimme a whites/blacks only dating site."

I tend to work better (in an employment sense) with men, but I'd never dream of using a "men only" employment/freelance site or similar as there are some women who've turned out to be awesome to work with. I wouldn't let my personal preferences draw me into the tunnel vision of blind discrimination.

I am only speculating, as I am not into single-race dating sites (and for some reason, have never seriously dated anyone of the same race; but that's coincidence, not preference). But I think the issue is that there is absolutely no rational reason why you could possibly not want to share a public space with someone of a different race. When you're on the train, you don't have to interact, you just have to sit there. So the fact that other people are there is irrelevant, which makes their race even more irrelevant.

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.)

Suppose you are the last person to get on a train before it reaches capacity. You are more likely to interact with someone who is on the same train than someone who isn't. If you prefer to interact with people of the same race, you would be better off if your train had been restricted to only people of your race. Similar logic applies to a full bar or any workplace. If you prefer to date people of a certain race, you also prefer to interact with people of that race compared to others of your desired gender since less intimate interactions are a prerequisite for dating.

"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."

No such pressure exists. Cross-breeding is usually evolutionarily advantageous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_vigor

"There are 5.9999 billion other people the person you discriminated against can date."

The same exact logic applies to jobs. Sure, the job you get may not pay as much or might not be in the location you would prefer, but the mate you end up with might not make as much money or be nearby either. Eliminating potential mates from consideration based on their race is just as bad as throwing out the resumes of an entire race because you think they're not likely to be qualified for the job. It does hurt people. Mating is a market just like everything else in life, and if you reduce demand for someone's product due to something as arbitrary as melanin level, then you're reducing their equilibrium price and requiring them to make more compromises when it comes to choosing a mate.

No one expects you to sleep with someone just to give them a helping hand, but that shouldn't be expected with jobs either.

If one has a personal preference, that's OK to exercise passively, but holing yourself up in a segregated community is rather anachronistic.

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?

I don't think everyone finds it "incredibly nice". There is strong social pressure from a lot of minority groups for people who "belong" to the group to conform to certain social expectations with regard to the group. If they don't, they're often seen as essentially race traitors, and there's lots of abuse directed at them. This is even true for non-physically-noticeable subgroups, e.g. Russian-Americans who choose not to associate with the Russian-American community or its institutions, but it's worse for people who are visibly part of a subgroup that they choose not to be an active part of.

You clearly do not belong to any minority

Unless you're demographically perfect in some way, everyone belongs to a minority in some way or another. I'm a rare southerner in a northern town - I don't want to socialize with "other" southerners, because that has nothing to do with my identity. I don't see a need to fraternize with people who are "like" me, beyond sharing a language and them not being religious nutcases.

The niche dating sites we were discussing aren't discriminating, they're targeting a niche, and that has to be ok.

Even when they say things like "exclusively for black people" (e.g. http://allblackdating.com/)?

Some people likes blondes. Some people like brunettes. Some people like black hair. Is that bad?

You can exercise preferences within open systems. It doesn't require discriminatory silos. The concept of a dating site "exclusively for blondes" is as ridiculous as a dating site "exclusively for whites." If you have preferences (and, sure, we all do) you can filter and exercise those within larger, non discriminatory systems like OKCupid.

Some people like whites, some people like blacks, some people like asians. Is that bad? Is that racism?

Often. If I didn't want to hire an Asian because I didn't "like Asians", that would be racist. If I didn't like a particular Asian for some reason, that's not (necessarily) racist.

I understand that people might have preferences on the race of people they date, but closing their minds to even seeing people of other races come up on their dating site sends a bad signal.

You've got that example the wrong way round.

Homosexuality is in the minority, so are black people (in the societies we are discussing).

So the counter example would be a "straights only" website. Which almost certainly would cause an outcry if you said it explicitly.

It is to Morgan Freeman, as he explained to Mike Wallace:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=1131418n

"You're going to relegate my history to a month? What about White History Month? Black History is American History. I'm going to stop calling you a white man, and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man."

That makes sense in the context of history, but not in the broader scope of our social interactions. As long as outward appearances are significantly predictive of one's culture, humans aren't going to just disregard that predictive value unless they're making an effort to do so.

I doubt that there are many people who are purely racist and judge people solely on their skin color. However, when you combine skin color with other outward indicators of class, you have a fairly valuable predictor of behavior.

Skin color isn't any more an indicator of class than shoe size or fingernail length. To show this, one need only think about the consequences of skin color actually being an indicator of class.

Given a random sampling among a race, if skin color was an accurate indicator of class, you should be able to predict the same class (other than middle class) for each sample, and ultimately be right more than you were wrong. But you can't: http://www.census.gov/prod/2009pubs/p60-236.pdf

Furthermore, I posit that class isn't even a predictor of behavior in the macro-sense. That is, across all classes the proportion of people who behave foolishly, is a constant. The difference money makes is in the degree of associated risk with the behaviors that occur, not in the number of occurrences of the behaviors themselves.

In America, skin color is a good predictor of class. The barometer isn't being right more than you're wrong; it's being more accurate than assuming everyone earns the average income. You will be able to make a more accurate guess of an American's income if you know their race.

When you add in clothing, hair and accent, it'd be pretty difficult to misidentify someone's class, or more importantly, culture. Identifying members of subcultures with criminal tendencies is a skill that anyone who has walked around in a city late at night has put to use.

Class isn't a great predictor of behavior, but culture is. Moreover, I think it's safe to assume that people with lower incomes commit violent crime, for instance, at a higher rate than the rest of society. All other things being equal, the better the risk to reward ratio of an action, the more likely someone is to take it.

A "good" predictor must be useful, correct? Well, then how can it be useful if it is wrong more than it is right....?

Simply stated, being right more than one is wrong is the same thing as being more accurate than a random assignment (as we approach a large number of "trials") if the outcomes are equally likely. And that is the point - race tells you nothing more significant about class then guessing does (if we remove 'middle class' as a selection), and class tells you nothing significant about behavior.

Also, you seem to be conflating 'class' and 'culture' now. Culture is a much, much better indicator of behavior than class, as culture speaks to beliefs and value judgements. As such, they are not interchangable ideas (that is, the propostion that 'Skin color is a good predictor of culture' is not the same as the one you made prior, 'Skin color is a good predictor of class' - but is probably just as fallacious).

Clothing and hair (God only knows what you meant by 'accent.' Care to clarify?) in isolation are strong enough indicators of culture, that race quite literally adds nothing to their accuracy - the same can be said of 'style of dress' and 'price of car driven,' for class. Race is superfluous.

"And that is the point - race tells you nothing more significant about class then guessing does"

That's just mathematically incorrect. Different races have different average incomes. If you guess that average for each person, you'll be more accurate than guessing the overall average for everyone. If you're measuring at such a coarse level as upper/middle/lower class, then sure, that doesn't help. Since we're not relying on race alone, we don't need that kind of accuracy.

"Also, you seem to be conflating 'class' and 'culture' now."

I don't think culture and class are interchangeable. I think class is an indicator of culture, which I would then use to predict someone's behavior. I probably should've made that clear earlier. In America, any skin color except for white is a pretty good indicator of culture. Racial comedy is fairly large industry that only succeeds because it does a decent job of poking fun at behaviors that correlate with race.

"God only knows what you meant by 'accent.' Care to clarify?"

If someone speaks the Queen's English, you'll assign different probabilities to behaviors than if they spoke inner-city English.

I think race is useful in addition to the other indicators, but neither of us have any data on this, so I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree.

You continue to shift terms, so it makes it more difficult to pin you down.

My math is pretty solid - socio-economic classes are defined by values in intervals. So guessing the average income for each race would be guessing what interval? It would be guessing middle class for each race! Remember, you stated the proposition that, 'race is a good class indicator' - thus, we don't care about variance in the interval called middle class...

That is why I explicitly removed it from my analysis - if the only information(class-related) you get from a person's skin color is that they are middle-class, then you have effectively received no information. Certainly you can't be suggesting that those in the middle-class are more likely to commit crimes - can you be?

First of all, socioeconomic classes are artificial constructs. There's no reason to believe that there are large discontinuities in the probabilities of certain behaviors as income increases, though that is likely the case around poverty level.

From the census document you linked to, here are average household incomes by race:

Asian: $86,185

White, non-Hispanic: $74,102

Hispanic: $51,572

Black: $46,533

If you don't think there are substantial differences there, then we're not going to agree on anything.

[Edit: Moved up a node to reflect the actual reply]

1. Socio-econonic classes are artificial constructs - so what? The point is that race is demonstrably unable to map the set of 'people' to the set of 'classes.'

2. If you are not able to accurately quote the figures from the pdf I linked to prior, then what is the likelyhood you even read it?

The ACTUAL median incomes can be found on pages 6-7:

Asian: $65,637

White, non-Hispanic: $55,530

Average: $50,000

Black: $34,218

The differences fall in the interval known as middle-class as I said before - so for the purposes of this discussion, they are not substantial.

Skin color isn't any more an indicator of class than shoe size or fingernail length.

Actually, long fingernails on a woman are typically used to signal "I don't do manual labor" and is very much intended as a class indicator. It's part of the appeal of long nails. As I understand it, there is lots of historical precedent across a number of cultures for this.

Even if I were to allow that the discussion be gender-biased, I'm afraid this wouldn't be accurate...

The very poor tend to have poor grooming habits, both in frequency and quality. As such, access to nail clippers is extremely limited...

Further, the nature of living in extreme poverty forbids the biting of one's nails; you would be shocked at the amount of dirt and grime that gathers there after just a few days without access to a bathroom or running water.

I am aware that it is not entirely gender-based. However, a quick google turns up this:

http://www.efingernails.com/fingernails-history/

Fingernails became shorter and the colours less intense during the 1980's when women became more interested in their work.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/feed/a41653-1999d...

Thorsten Veblen wrote in his classic "The Theory of the Leisure Class" (1899). "It not only shows that the wearer is able to consume a relatively large value, but it argues at the same time that he consumes without producing." Like the constrictive corset of Veblen's time, long nails today signal which women are too rich and too feminine (wouldn't want the little darling to break a nail) to perform manual labor.

Both of those links engender the proposition that fingernail length is indeed NOT a good indicator of class.

The class status of women as a whole rose significantly in the 80's as women's pay relative to men's rose from 1980 to 1990 (from 60.2% to 71.6%):

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/03/nyregion/03women.html?ex=1...

It is not as simple as that. Women going to work in large numbers means they stopped being part of a "leisure class". A non-working wife is a status symbol. It means the man makes enough that his wife doesn't need to work. Nothing is sweepingly one thing or the other. But, in general, long fingernails have historically been a status symbol/class indicator -- long, clean, well-groomed and often decorated (painted, treated with henna, etc), not long and filthy.

Long fingernails are also a fairly strong "sex" symbol. One prostitute wrote in her biography that she could work at the mall by wearing very high heels and long, red fingernails. I will also add that long nails are an indicator of health (trying not to turn every discussion towards my medical condition, but my genetic disorder is how I know this one so well) -- and that tends to be linked to class in that wealthier classes tend to be better fed.

How quickly a beachhead can become a ghetto.

petercooper has a very valid point. A whitedating.com site would cause an uproar, even if it was done as tastefully as possible. The anti-racist reactive culture we have is too quick to jump on something like that.

Note: I'm not white.

irishsinglesnetwork.com italianosingles.com jdate.com ldsromances.com (kind of a stretch, but how many black mormons are there, really?) ...

The reason they have a "black singles site" is because Black people were bred for their physical abilities rather than their nationality, by their slavemasters. Which is why it's nearly impossible to have 10th or 15th generation Sudanese-american people, for example. Whereas you can trace some white roots back to the Mayflower. Because white people had a choice. I mean, now black people of course have a choice too, but for a really really REALLY long time, they didn't.

they would be hounded or sued out of business

Evidence for this? What would be the legal basis for a lawsuit?

Who says you need a legal basis to sue someone? Winning is another matter, perhaps, but baseless litigation is a popular pass-time in the USA.

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