The data behind a distinct form of racism in online dating

The Dating Divide is the first comprehensive look at digital-sexual racism, a distinct form of racism that is mediated and amplified through the impersonal and anonymous context of online dating. Drawing on large-scale behavioral data from a mainstream dating website, extensive archival research, and more than seventy-five in-depth interviews with daters of diverse racial backgrounds and sexual identities, Curington, Lundquist, and Lin illustrate how the seemingly open space of the internet interacts with the loss of social inhibition in cyberspace contexts, fostering openly expressed forms of sexual racism that are rarely exposed in face-to-face encounters. The Dating Divide is a fascinating look at how a contemporary conflux of individualization, consumerism, and the proliferation of digital technologies has given rise to a unique form of gendered racism in the era of swiping right--or left.

The internet is often heralded as an equalizer, a seemingly level playing field, but the digital world also acts as an extension of and platform for the insidious prejudices and divisive impulses that affect social politics in the real world. Shedding light on how every click, swipe, or message can be linked to the history of racism and courtship in the United States, this compelling study uses data to show the racial biases at play in digital dating spaces.

Celeste Vaughan Curington is Assistant Professor of Sociology at North Carolina State University.

Celeste received her PhD from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and a 2016-2017 American Sociological Association Minority Fellow. Her several lines of research examine race, class and gender through the lens of care labor and migration, family, housing and assortative mating. Her published work has appeared in the American Sociological Review, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, and the London School of Economics USAPP American Politics and Policy Blog, as well as in several media outlets such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine, and NBC.

Her dissertation ethnography centered on the position of African transnational migrants to Lisbon, Portugal, at a time of economic crisis, care deficit, and increased anti-immigrant sentiment. She analyzes Cape Verdean eldercare workers’ struggles and resiliencies as paid and unpaid caregivers, migrants, mothers and racialized workers in a former colonial metropole.

Her other areas of research include residential segregation and neighborhood choice, multiracial identity, and online mate selection. She is currently pursuing two collaborative projects - one uses data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (LAFANS) and the US Census to examine the locational attainment of interracial households, and the other is an interview study that centers on interracial couples’ neighborhood choices. Celeste has received support from the American Sociological Association, the National Science Foundation, and the UMass Graduate School.

Source: celestevaughancurington.com