Racial Preferences in Internet Dating: A Comparison of Four Birth Cohorts (The Silent Generation (Individuals Born in 1942 Or Before), The Baby Boomers (Those Born Between 1943 and 1960), Generation X (Those Born Between 1961 and 1981), and the Millennium Generation (Those Born After 1981)) (Report‪)‬

Few would dispute that dating preferences are consistently shaped by various social institutions and psychological factors (Dalmage 2006; Gullickson 2006; Yancey 2002). This is especially true for interracial relationships. In a society that has created and maintained a racial hierarchy for centuries, crossing the color-line when selecting a mate has met with varying levels of approbation (Barnett 1963; Childs 2002; Zabel 1964). For instance, between 1876 and 1964, the era generally known as "Jim Crow," individuals were actively discouraged from mixing interracially. During this period, roughly thirty-eight states had anti-miscegenation laws in place to aggressively punish racial/ethnic transgressors. Even in the late 1960s, the twilight of Jim Crow, public support for prohibiting race mixing ran high, as over 72% of Southern whites and 42% of northern whites supported a ban on interracial relationships (Kennedy 1997). Combined with strong feelings of prejudice, these discriminatory laws were effective at enforcing racial homophily. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 legally dismantled Jim Crow. Nevertheless, public attitudes about racial mixing have been somewhat more resistant to change (Dalmage 2006). One measure of the improvement of race relations in the United States is interracial marriage, and researchers continue to take the pulse of American race relations by investigating interracial marriage patterns (Jacobs and Labov 2002; Johnson and Jacobson 2005; Miller, Olson, and Fazio 2004; Tucker and Mitchell-Kernan 1995). Many social scientists argue that mixed marriage rates act as a barometer of racial tolerance and acceptance (see e.g., Aldridge 1978; Blau 1994; Gordon 1964), and, as a result, most studies of intimate interracial relations have focused on marriage rather than dating. Although the amount of research on interracial dating is starting to increase, a lacuna continues to exist in the literature concerning the topic. Because there is no necessary correspondence between interracial dating and interracial marriage, what we know about intermarriage may not generalize to interracial daters (Fujino 1997; Yancey 2002).