Pages

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Does Race Matter? - 2

This is the second post with this title. Here's a link to the first, which is probably more thoughtful and in-depth than this one. Today I'm just adding some new examples.

We have a black President so it is clear that the US has come a long distance since I was in high school and segregation was the law in the South. But the fact that we have a black President has made those who still define themselves primarily by race feeling desperate. As I pointed out in the previous post with this title, White Supremacist groups are planning for a new civil war so they can be allowed to live with their racial compatriots.

While most people don't want to talk about it, I suspect everyone is expecting some crazy racist to take a shot at our President. The first thought I had, after the surprise of hearing Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize so early in his administration, was that perhaps they were afraid to wait too long since they only give Nobel Peace Prizes to living people. (There's an interesting account of how Gandhi did NOT win the Nobel Peace Prize on the Nobel site and how the decision was made not to award it posthumously.)

While most overt, "You can't come in because you're black" racism is gone, it's still buried deep in all our psyches. You can't have watched US movies and television and not come away with a feeling that blacks are, with some exceptions, not as good, not as desirable, and not as safe as whites. Even the most liberal whites, even blacks, have this buried deep in their souls. That's one of the reasons that Obama's election itself, even if he did nothing as President, was so significant. It symbolized that the US that elected Bush twice, was also capable of looking beyond race. I think the Peace Prize was justified simply because Obama's election changed world dynamics and the chances of peace in general. I had people in Thailand tell me that the fact that a black man was elected president of the US made them - as darker skinned people - feel more powerful and hopeful. Name anyone else who had a bigger impact on peace and reconciliation in the world.

If you doubt that racism still lives inside us all, consider your reaction to the idea of marrying outside your race, particularly if you are white and the other race is black. Yeah, it's ok for other people, but wouldn't you find some good, rational reasons why your daughter would be making her life far more difficult when she brings home her black fiance? Be honest. Even if you said, "No problem" didn't you hesitate just a little? If you didn't you're unusual.

Here's a study done by a computer dating company - OKCupid.
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.
My son sent OKCupid's report to me. Using their computer dating data base they studied how often people responded to others based on race. They controlled for other aspects and just focused on the race of the person sending the message. I'm trusting my son, who's far more statistically savvy than I am to have checked the data before sending it on. The tables of data are there for you to look at on the site. Here's the summary:
* Black women are sweethearts. Or just talkative. But either way, they are by far the most likely to reply to your first message. In many cases, their response rate is one and a half times the average, and overall black women reply about a quarter more often.
* White men get more responses. Whatever it is, white males just get more replies from almost every group. We were careful to preselect our data pool so that physical attractiveness (as measured by our site picture-rating utility) was roughly even across all the race/gender slices. For guys, we did likewise with height.
* White women prefer white men to the exclusion of everyone else—and Asian and Hispanic women prefer them even more exclusively. These three types of women only respond well to white men. More significantly, these groups’ reply rates to non-whites is terrible. Asian women write back non-white males at 21.9%, Hispanic women at 22.9%, and white women at 23.0%. It’s here where things get interesting, for white women in particular. If you look at the match-by-race table before this one, the “should-look-like” one, you see that white women have an above-average compatibility with almost every group. Yet they only reply well to guys who look like them. There’s more data on this towards the end of the post.
* Men don’t write black women back. Or rather, they write them back far less often than they should. Black women reply the most, yet get by far the fewest replies. Essentially every race—including other blacks—singles them out for the cold shoulder.
* White guys are shitty, but fairly even-handed about it. The average reply rate of non-white males is 48.1%, while white guys’ is only 40.5%. Basically, they write back about 20% less often. It’s ironic that white guys are worst responders, because as we saw above they get the most replies. That has apparently made them very self-absorbed. It’s interesting that white males do manage to reply to Middle Eastern women. Is there some kind of emergent fetish there? As Middle Easterners are becoming America’s next racial bogeyman, maybe there’s some kind of forbidden fruit thing going on. (Perhaps a reader more up-to-date on his or her Post-Colonial Theory can step in here? Just kidding. Don’t.)
That's the subtle racism - from people who wouldn't think twice about hiring someone of a different race and might never tell a racist joke. But despite how far we've come, out-and-out racism is still alive and well in little pockets, even among public officials who deny people their rights based on their race.

The LA Times has a short AP piece in the paper today which shows us that racism, in its most blatant forms, is still alive and well in the US. A government official, a Justice of the Peace, in Louisiana regularly refuses to marry mixed race couples. I found a longer version of the AP story on The Grio:

A white Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.

Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.
Go to the Grio for the rest.



So Obama is one of those children this guy is concerned with. He's concerned, what, that they may become president? Or the black and white blood is mixed inside them? Blood is red.

Race does still matter. For some barely at all. For others, only when it gets close to family. For some it's still an all consuming issue and while most still mask it with other issues (people opposed naming 9th Avenue in Anchorage because "it would disturb the numerical integrity of the street names"), but some, like the justice of the peace in the story above, still believe the races shouldn't mix.

4 comments:

  1. Well, my opinion is that he doesn't deserve this prize. many better people didn't get this prize due to political or other reasons.

    I would find it the shame of the World, if he got it only because he is Afro-American. However sometimes weird people are nominated. I think Mussolini and Hitler were nominated to Nobel Prize but they didn't get it. Or a Hungarian example: Apponyi Albert (who made a nationality law called Lex Apponyi in 1907).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Like most people my age, I use the internet to reach out for new blood on the dating scene. And apparently, like most of the other women, I respond mostly to men of my own *race*. Funny how my race must change -- welsh, italian, creole, german-irish, russian-polish... The skin tones of my internet dates range from might-as-well-be-chocolate to fish-belly. Personally, I'm in the olive/don't wear yellow! range.

    What each sucessful internet contact began with, however, was the ability to communicate effectively. Yes, I've received lots of inquiries from men who identified as black. And every one of them -- without fail -- was a travesty of the english language. Three-fourths were rude and insinuating, usually from the first sentence. Which was also the last sentence. I'm willing to bet that your data sheets didn't bother noting just how much effort was put into those inquiries. But when we read our mail, you can bet that women do notice.

    The primary education provided in this country is pathetic; it has a social impact, not just an economic limit. I spent hours in public libraries learning what my teachers never had a chance to teach us. When I go out on a date, I want to be able to talk to someone who doesn't slur out the same dozen words again and again. I've been there, done that, wasn't impressed.

    It isn't racism to choose someone who is willing and able to communicate in print. Most replies from men who identify themselves as black are couched as casual hook-ups, have little to no personal information, and don't offer any conversational opening. The contact seems like an empty gesture, with no actual expectations attached.

    Look at the personal profiles of men on dating sites. How many of them consist of "I don't like to talk about myself/type/waste time writing a bunch of stuff"? These are not people looking for a relationship.

    I have a limit -- I've gone speechless around men who were out of my ballpark -- a hispanic doctor, a canuck agricultural theorist, a jewish-british taxi driver/poet. I'm thinking that if I were twice as awesome, President Obama would still be out of my league. Not to mention Powell, or Yo Yo Ma.

    If african-americans want instant access to dates, they can open a book. That's all I'm saying. Because ignorance is all that ever stops me from turning someone down.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ropi you said many better people didn't get the prize. So name a few who did more for world peace this past year than Obama. I'm not saying they aren't out there, but I hear people complaining without offering up better candidates. BTW, the year Gandhi was killed two days before they made their decision, the Nobel committee gave no Peace award, saying "no living person deserved it" as a roundabout way of saying that it belonged to Gandhi but they didn't give awards to people who weren't living.

    Anon 12:40: Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I know that in the post I linked to they did try to account for different match factors. They explicitly mentioned - for men - looks and height, but they didn't mention literacy. My sense, too, is that OKCupid is not your typical dating site. But as someone who's been married since electric typewriters were the norm, this is an area where I have only anecdotal experience.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You know so far a teacher who prevented the fight of two kids did more for peace than Obama.

    I don't think he deserves Noble Prize for not following the "fashion" that an US President must start a war and he has enough time to do so. Maybe overseas it is a new thing not to start a war in every 4th or 8th year but in Europe people play football as leasure time activity.

    ReplyDelete

Comments will be reviewed, not for content (except ads), but for style. Comments with personal insults, rambling tirades, and significant repetition will be deleted. Ads disguised as comments, unless closely related to the post and of value to readers (my call) will be deleted. Click here to learn to put links in your comment.