New study confirms that people have major racial prejudices when it comes to dating

Only 62 percent of single-race people would date a black person.

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Interracial dating may have become more socially acceptable in recent years, but we still have a long way to go, according to new research.

A new study asked 1,200 users of popular dating site Match about their racial dating preferences. 

Eighty-seven percent of people were willing to date outside their own race—which might seem encouraging, but that still leaves 13 percent who weren't. Plus, the breakdown of which races people were willing to date is troubling. 

Researchers categorized results between biracial people and those who were only of one race, known as "monoracial." When asked if they'd be open to dating someone white, 91 percent of monoracial people and 92 percent of biracial people said they were. But that number was lower when it came to dating other races.

Eighty-one percent of monoracial people were willing to date Hispanics, 67 percent were willing to date Asians, and 62 percent were willing to date blacks. Eighty-one percent of biracial daters were also willing to date Hispanics, and 71 percent were willing to date people who were not white or Hispanic. 

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"Although our findings indicate that biracial individuals are more likely to seek potential partners outside of their same racial/ethnic identity, their dating preferences also reflect a distinct racial hierarchy that may account for why some racial/ethnic categories are more desirable than others," the study's authors concluded.

These findings are in line with OKCupid's data, which show that members of every racial group on the site except black people rate white people as more attractive than average, and black people as less attractive. And a recent study found that white men who claimed to be "colorblind" were especially unlikely to be attracted to black women. 

It appears that ​even when people claim not to care about race, they often make an exception when it comes to their own love lives.

The authors did not immediately return NTRSCTN's request for comment.

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