The Bachelor

I should preface this post by saying that I've never watched "The Bachelor" or any of the other such programs that have tarnished the airwaves over the last decade.

The other day I came across a Newsweek article entitled "A Black President Before a Black 'Bachelor'?" It was the TV critic's review of the current season of ABC's "The Bachelor" and the critic, Joshua Alston, chose to focus on the glaring fact that the "bachelor" has been white in each of the show's 14 seasons. (Side note: 14 seasons? I had no idea, but that just seems like 13 too many.) Mr. Alston writes about how he realized it would be silly to call the producers to ask about this because he knows that Americans overwhelmingly marry within their own race. He goes on to say,

White people are the majority in this country and, therefore, the best audience to target from a ratings standpoint, and there's risk in alienating viewers who may have less enlightened views on interracial couples. Could they cast a black man? Sure. Would it be smart to? Probably not. The Bachelor is one of many pop-culture artifacts that highlight the uncomfortable gap between the way we'd like to think of racial integration and the way it actually is. Just as people of different races don't often date each other or worship together, we also don't read many of the same books, or like many of the same movies, or adore many of the same celebrities. Certainly not as much as we'd like to believe.

Read the article and, if you've not already read them, my two previous posts about race (here and here). Then, let me know what you think. I'm curious to know if you think that the online dating world reflects the larger, nationwide trends written about in the Newsweek piece or if it is more liberal or conservative.

Race and Online Dating

Since I received so many comments on my post "Online Dating Experiment," I thought I'd write a new post responding to them all, rather than replying to the comments.

First, in the spirit of full-disclosure, I've now dated 16 guys from the dating site and all but one—who was Asian—were white. Given that whites are quickly becoming a minority in my area, this is, perhaps, a bit strange.

Second, from what I remember—as a reminder, it's been over two years now—I've received messages from a few Asian guys, a few Indian guys, and one or two black guys. However, as is true for all of the messages from white guys, I only respond if I'm interested.

Third, as Kia discovered in her experiment, relying heavily on pictures can be a bad thing. While the dating site that I'm on doesn't require users to post pictures, it is possible to choose to only be shown profiles of the people who have. I've made this choice because, as I've mentioned in previous posts, profiles without pictures could belong to absolutely anyone. (Of course people can post fake pictures or fake profile information—and they do—but it's harder to post a whole bunch of fake pictures.) Unfortunately, by choosing this option, it's all to easy to eliminate people from a search based solely on appearance. I've eliminated people with 90+% matches a number of times simply because I don't find them attractive. Am I a bad person for this? Probably to some degree.

All that said, don't people do this in real life too? As Ily pointed out in her comment about the movie "Medicine for Melancholy," people choose to hang out at places that have "their kind of people"—people with whom they expect to get along—and by doing that, they often end up ignoring large portions of the population.

Fourth, as Carolyn wrote, dating sites encourage people to list their race. Mine has a number of boxes one can check, but one doesn't have to specify one's race. I would wager that the vast majority do, based on what I've seen, but some don't. It's definitely possible to search profiles based on race, but then the people who don't select a race (or two or three) obviously don't show up in those searches.

I hope that you will all continue to comment on this topic and share your own experiences (if you feel comfortable doing so).