Black People Who Claim To Be Mixed Are Perceived To Be More Attractive By Others

Black People Who Claim To Be Mixed Are Perceived To Be More Attractive By Others

A new study shows that Black people who claim to be of mixed ancestry are more likely to be deemed attractive by their peers reports VOX:

Newly published research indicates that black people are perceived as more attractive if they claim to be multiracial, regardless of the way they look.

Let that sink in: All the study subjects had to do was say they had mixed ancestry and others gave them more points for good looks.

The researcher, Robert L. Reece, a doctoral candidate in sociology at Duke, told the Duke Research Blog that the results could be partially explained by the fact that people think “being exotic is a compelling idea.” But, he added, “It’s also partially just racism — the notion that black people are less attractive, so being partially not-black makes you more attractive.”

His data came from 3,200 interviews of self-identified black people (conducted by people of all different races) as part of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. After subjects answered a set of questions — including about their racial backgrounds — the people doing the interviews ranked their attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 5. The people who’d said they were multiracial got higher scores.

To be clear, this really wasn’t about actual appearance, or the familiar concept of colorism. Reece found that even black people with darker skin who identified as mixed-race were rated better-looking than those with lighter skin who said they were just black. He controlled for age, gender, eye color, and hair color, too, confirming that it truly was the simple claim of multiracial heritage that made a difference.

Read the entire study HERE. Why does being perceived as mixed-race or “exotical” make Black people feel better about themselves?