We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audience is coming from. To find out more or to opt-out, please read our. In addition, please read our , which has also been updated and became effective May 23rd, 2018. By choosing I Accept, you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. A used-car has created either one blatantly racist dating site or one extremely calculated attempt to rile our collective outrage. Sam Russell is the 53-year-old mastermind behind , a dating site whose title explains its purpose. Though anyone can join Russell's site, its exclusionary title and apparent focus has. But Russell doesn't believe he's being racist. Russell's views and comments have fueled internet outrage, to the point that what he's doing feels a bit like performance art; he may even be saying stereotypically racist things to incite anger and draw more attention to his site. Do white people need Where White People Meet? The reason people are talking about the dating site is that there doesn't seem to be a need for it. White people still represent the majority of Americans, and in the dating world, there are benefits to being white. In 2009, OkCupid found that from potential mates. It also found that white women tend to reply to white men and exclude nonwhite men. The same data was collected again in 2014, and the numbers stayed consistent: OkCupid The boxes represent people's preferences versus the average; the bottom right box, for example, shows that white women rate white men as 19 percent more attractive than the average guy. These numbers reveal a strong bias against black women and Asian, black, and Latino men. They reveal that people tend to rate their own race more highly. And they reveal that there's an attractiveness benefit to being a white man. Rudder doesn't believe it's outright racism that drives this trend. Instead, he , he believes it's cultural, and because white culture is so dominant, it skews what we find attractive toward whiteness: Beauty is a cultural idea as much as a physical one, and the standard is of course set by the dominant culture. In fact it goes a long way towards undoing any bias against you. With this kind of upper hand, the concept of Where White People Meet is sort of puzzling. The thought being: Why do white people need a dating site that's specifically for them when they've already cornered so many other dating sites? The Washington Post's Caitlin Dewey just that. His reply isn't really steeped in the idea of service, but rather in the idea that because spaces for nonwhite people exist, spaces for white people should also exist. Many of them only have one member: Where White People Meet Where White People Meet doesn't seem to be a place where white people are meeting. It's unclear whether this will change in the future, but it seems not all white people are free to meet on Where White People Meet. Despite the site's apparent lack of users and interactions, Russell told the Washington Post that 100,000 people visited the site on Sunday and that 1,033 registered to browse the site for free. Where White People Meet is perfect bait for internet outrage With a lack of activity on the site but plenty of mainstream news coverage of its existence the , , and the Washington Post are among outlets that have written about it , it seems like Where White People Meet could very well be an attempt by Russell to. Currently, about the ridiculousness of the site than there are active users. It's not unlike the or the that sparked debate toward the end of 2015. Indeed, it gives people an opportunity to prove they're smarter, more well-informed, and not as racist as Where White People Meet is. But the outrage that's sprung up in response to the website doesn't really further the conversation about the casual racism that OkCupid has found is inherent in dating. That's probably not a topic people really want to discuss on Facebook, in 140 characters on Twitter, or, as OkCupid's data has shown, in general. It's easier to simply profess your anger over Russell's silly site. And that's something he definitely understands. Where do white people meet if they're not on Where White People Meet?
