ASIAN AMERICAN INTERRACIAL DATING: REVISITED

not hot enough?

Every so often, I like to keep up with the current state of research on interracial dating/marriage patterns, especially as it relates to Asian Americans. I don't need to tell anyone within that community that it's a never-ending source of tension and controversy.

The problem I've long had with this debate - besides the over-heated attitudes you're likely to encounter from both men and women (but especially the men) is that it's long rested on anecdotal "evidence" that people use to trump the growing body of social research on the topic. I get it - for many people (*cough cough* the men especially), it's the quotidian experience of witnessing Asian American out-dating that stirs such visceral reactions; digging through academic research isn't their bag (even if may be mine).

I recently saw this piece, on Slate.com, written by Columbia Business School professor Ray Fisman, about a series of articles he and his collaborators are publishing based on data collected from speed-dating experiments in Chicago. Their proposed findings are quite fascinating, even though some of them simply confirm what most people already knew: straight men are into looks but are intimidated by women they find either smarter and/or more ambitious than they are. Likewise, women value intelligence over looks and don't have a problem with seeking out mates who are smarter or more ambitious.

However, part of what the study also looks at is interracial dating preferences. The complete study is available, in PDF form, here, and is worth looking at even for those who've never taken a course in quantitative data analysis.

Here are some of the highlights, especially as they relate to some of the assumptions people make re: gendered preferences for interracial dating.

1) For Slate, Fisman writes: "We also found that East Asian women did not discriminate against white men (only against black and Hispanic men). As a result, the white man-Asian woman pairing was the most common form of interracial dating—but because of the women's neutrality, not the men's pronounced preference."

This - I think - is a very interesting hypothesis and it's in line with other studies on Asian American dating preferences that suggest the high level of Asian female outmarriage has as much to do - if not more - with contact opportunities created by Asian American geographic/social integration than specific racial preferences, per se. Anyone who is interested to see other research on that hypothesis should read the works of OSU's Zhenchao Qian.

2) Fisman notes, in the study, that when adjusted for controls, most women - Asian and otherwise - exhibit a strong same race preference for their partners, significantly more so than men. In other words, men are fairly equal opportunity when it comes to who they date, unlike women:

"White women were more likely to choose white men; black women preferred black men; East Asian women preferred East Asian men; Hispanic women preferred Hispanic men. But men don't seem to discriminate based on race when it comes to dating. A woman's race had no effect on the men's choices."

That should come as some comfort to paranoid Asian men...but what Fisman notably excludes from the Slate piece is a rather despairing finding that appears in the study itself:

"For male partners, our main finding is that Asians generally receive
lower ratings than men of other races.20 In fact, when we run the regressions separately for each race, we find that even Asian women find white, black, and Hispanic men to be more attractive than Asian men. "

(No doubt, many a voice out there, right now, is saying, "no sh--, Sherlock.")

The upside, if there is one to this, is that when one controls for attractiveness, then the bias disappears. In other words, the main factor that makes Asian men less desirable is their perceived attractiveness (or lack thereof). Therefore, if you're a good looking Asian dude - rejoice! You are now on equal footing with other men.

3) However...guess what? That bias runs both ways:

"female Asian partners are consistently rated as less attractive, though we also find that black females receive significantly lower ratings relative to whites. As above, we find that when these regressions are run separately for each race, even Asian men find white, black, and Hispanic women to be more attractive than Asian women."

Basically Asians, in general, get low marks for their attractiveness rating from all races - ourselves included. Ouch.

By the way: one thing the study notes is that, least likely to be drawn to Asian men and women, on the basis of their attractiveness rating: Latinos. No explanation is given for this but pop theorists: go wild.

4) Lastly, on Slate, Fisman wrote, "We found no evidence of the stereotype of a white male preference for East Asian women." However, what needs to be said here is not that said preference doesn't exist at all...it's only that, measured against the white men in the study, there was no overall preference. That shouldn't be surprising; I think Fisman might have misunderstood the stereotype: it's not that white men - writ large - prefer East Asian women. The stereotype is that there's a "certain kind of white man" who prefers East Asian women. But that's a study for another time.

(I might have more to add to this later but it's some interesting ideas to mull over in the meantime).

--O.W.