Is Love (Color) Blind?: The Economy of Race among Gay and Straight Daters

A drawback to research on interracial couplings is that it almost exclusively studies heterosexual relationships. However, compelling new evidence from analyses using the Census shows that interracial relationships are 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 examines the interactions of white gay and straight online daters who have access to a large market of potential partners by modeling dyadic messaging behaviors. Results show that racial preferences are highly gendered, and do not line up neatly by gay or straight identity. White lesbians and straight men show the weakest same-race preference, followed by gay men, while straight women show the strongest same-race preference. Put differently, minority men are discriminated to a greater degree than minority women in both same-sex and different-sex dating markets. These results suggest that white gay men’s higher rates of interracial cohabitation are driven more by constrained dating markets, while lesbians’ appear to be driven by more open racial preferences.