Ama Yawson, co-founder of http://www.loveessence.com/ a dating site for black women and all men, penned a letter of encouragement to single black women looking for love.

Dear Triumphant Scientifically Attractive Marriageable Single Black Woman,

Sweet kisses? Tender caresses? Inspiring words? Early morning love-making sessions with the person who has promised to love and support you through poverty and wealth, sickness and health as long as you both shall live?

Yes, yes, and more yes. That is exactly what you deserve if your heart so desires.

So to the extent that the negative media surrounding black women’s beauty and relationship prospects, or what Ariana Proehl refers to as the “Tragic Scientifically Unattractive Unmarriageable Single Black Woman Narrative,” has led you to consider giving up on love for one millisecond, I pray that you will reconsider.

Yes, I understand that during the past two years the media has been throwing spears in your direction. Pop singer John Mayer proclaimed that his white supremacist penis won’t allow him to date or mate with a black woman. Our own black brother NFL player, Albert Haynesworth exclaimed that he can’t remember the last time he dated a black woman. Quack scientist Satoshi Kanazawa published an article with “scientific evidence” that black women were less attractive than other women. Countless academics continue to pontificate on the African-American marriage decline while citing black male incarceration rates and high-school drop-out rates to explain the dearth of eligible black men to marry you. It is enough to make you vomit, lose hope and decide to solely focus on other things such as community or political activism.

But I have a question for you.

When have you ever allowed the stereotypes, negative statistics or euro-centric notions of beauty heralded by the mass media to define you or circumscribe your aspirations?

Read the rest of Yawson’s inspiring letter at Black Voices.com.

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• What’s Your Secret? 40-Something Women Who Look 30-Something
• NFL Player Loses Wife and Mother of Two to Suspected Brain Aneurysm
• Madonna, Chelsea Handler and White Woman Privilege
• Does Beyoncé’s Loreal Campaign Offend You?
• Ray J Discusses Relationships with ‘KK’ and Whitney in New Tell-All Book
• Who Deserves The Blame For Whitney Houston’s Demise?
• 10 Common Natural Hair Habits You Should Stop…Now

Lately any time someone asks if I am single, I can pretty much guarantee they’re going to follow that question up with another one—have you tried online dating? I typically respond with a no, because black men aren’t on match.com or eHarmony. (I have absolutely no data to prove that, it’s just an assumption I have about online dating and the type of prospects I would find on these sites.) Although the thinking behind the surge in online dating sites was to simplify the whole process, it’s become clear that the same social norms that are at play when it comes to in-person dating are also at work online—at least when it comes to certain preferences like race.

If you typically meet white, black, Asian, or Latino dates in person, most likely you’re going to look for people of those same ethnicities online. If you’re going online to find “something new,” it may not be any easier than if you were to try the same at a bar, museum, or play. A new study from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, found that more than 80 percent of the communication initiated by whites was to other whites on online dating sites, while only 3 percent went to blacks. Black members of the same site, on the other hand, were more open to dating whites and were ten times more likely to contact whites.

The results vary slightly from a 2009 analysis of okcupid.com, which found that men of all races wrote back to black women at a rate of 20 percent less than the average. I wouldn’t go as far as to suggest that this means black women are the least desirable of any race online (as this writer does); rather I think this is reflective of the fact that the interracial dating trend hasn’t yet caught on online. Let’s be honest.