Racial Divisons

Facebook vs. MySpace

Our last classroom discussion about homophily and racial divides in the online world was what prompted me to write this week's blog post. I once had an account on MySpace. I created my account in 2006 when I was a counselor at North Dakota Girls State. I worked with girls from around the state and throughout the week had become friends with many of them. At the end of the week they insisted that everyone get a MySpace account to keep in touch.

Soon after, Facebook accounts became available to high school students who didn't have an .edu e-mail address, and thus began an exodus from MySpace to Facebook. Not all my friends made with switch at the same time. Many just recently started using Facebook instead of Myspace stating that they enjoyed the ability to personalize their page with a background and music and more information about who they where.  It was these exact reasons that I preferred Facebook. I found all the different backgrounds and glitter texts to be nauseating as well as a sensory overload. I felt Facebook was more streamlined and simple and required less upkeep than a Facebook page.

Minorities on Facebook

This article from switched.com features quotes from Boyd’s article and offers an example of the racial divide that Boyd was addressing in her theory. In 2009 the New York Times ran an article called “Do You Know Anyone Still On MySpace?” However at the time that the article was published, statistically, Myspace and Facebook had the same number of members. But because most of the staff at the New York Times was on Facebook they assumed that the rest of their readers were too.  

However I can’t help but think that maybe the switch had something to do with the fact that Facebook was a concept first introduced at Harvard. Harvard is a historically and predominantly white school, next it was introduced to Ivy Leauge schools then top tier schools, could the fact that many of the people that were first using Facebook were white have something to do with the major move of white people from MySpace to Facebook.  

This article published February 14, 2011 at PsychCentral.com found that not only was there a racial divide in social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace but also in online dating sites. Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley looked at more than a million profiles from a variety of online dating sites. On their profiles members were able to choose if they wanted to be matched with people of their same race, a different race or if they would date a member of any race.

"They learned that whites overwhelmingly prefer to date members of their own race, while blacks, especially men are far more likely to cross the race barrier."

With further exploration of their data they found 

Interracial Marriage

that whites more than blacks, women more than men and old more than young participants stated a preference for a partner of the same race. 

But according to the most recent census and this CNN article, interracial marriages are at an all time high. Apparently, race is mattering less and less these days. Pew researchers are reporting that one in eight marriages are interracial or inter-ethnic. Studies have shown that support for interracial marriages is also increasing significantly. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, about 85% accept interracial marriages, according to a Pew study published in February. 

So although we, as a country, may not have reached complete acceptance of dating and friendship (consciously or subconsciously) the trend seems to be we are certainly on the way.