Love Is Blind...Or Is It? The Economy of Race among Gay and Straight Daters

Jennifer H. Lundquist, University of Massachusetts
Ken-Hou Lin, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

A drawback to research on interracial couplings is that it almost exclusively studies heterosexual relationships. However, compelling new evidence from analyses using the Census show that interracial cohabitation is significantly more common among the gay population. It is unclear how much of this reflects weaker racial preference or more limited dating markets. This paper brings unique unique interaction level data rather than couple-level data to bear on what might be driving this interesting trend. We examine the behavior of white gay and straight online daters who have access to a large market of potential partners by modeling dyadic messaging behaviors via a fitted series of generalized estimating equations. Results show that preference behavior is highly gendered, and does not line up cleanly by gay or straight identity. We find that lesbians and straight men show the weakest same-race preference, followed by gay men, while straight women show the strongest same-race preference.