Crappy studies on interracial love

A blog post in the NY Times brings up a study on interracial dating and its correlation to height.

We argue that a simple preference for a taller husband (or shorter wife) can explain part of the gender-specifi…c asymmetries across ethnic groups in the propensity to outmarry. Blacks are taller than Asians, and their height distribution is closer to whites. Because they are taller, black men have better prospects on the white marriage market than Asian men. For women, the reverse is true. Because Asians are relatively short on average, women fare substantially better on the white marriage market than black women.

As ridiculous as this study seems, the comments are much more telling. To nobody’s surprise, the first comment is in regards to varying penis sizes amongst men of different ethnicities.

A male is judged fit and competitive not only by his height, but also by the size of his reproductive attributes. I don’t mean to feed stereotypes, but those are statistically proven trends – Black males are more endowed than white males, and Asian males – less (including Southeast Asian). It makes sense, therefore, that a white woman would go up from white to Black, but not down to Asian, and… poor Black women have no higher aim to go for.

- DM

Please don’t be such a size queen. Alas, the hits keep on coming.

OK, maybe it’s a lot to do with culture and diet. But white women are bigger, smoke more, drink more, argue more, play sports more often, take big strides when walking, etc. compared with Asian women. Seriously, a lot of my Thai friends (I’m in Thailand) see foreign women and think that they’re transvestites. As an Asian man, wouldn’t you want someone MORE feminine than you?? Would you date someone that (on the surface) reminds you of a man? Or for black women, wouldn’t you want someone more masculine than you.

- Ryan Coughlin

I’m kind of speechless, but that usually is the case with articles meant to pander to extremely vitriolic comments rather than intellectual discussion.