"But, if you're thinking about my baby ..."

... it still matters if you're black or white.

Sorry MJ.

Or maybe just white.

My eyebrow pitched when I took a deeper look into one study this NY Times article discussed regarding new research about interracial college roommates.

In the article, the reader is first introduced to Sam Boakye, a Ghana native who is a rising senior at Ohio State University. Here's how he felt entering his freshman year with a white roommate:

"If you're surrounded by whites, you have something to prove. You're pushed to do better, to challenge the stereotype that black people are not that smart."

A pseudo-vendetta, it seems, and I get it.

Now, the article notes how mixed pairings have shown to reduce prior prejudice, diversify friendships and even improve black students' grades. Yet those same duos break up during the year more often than same-race pairings.

Three times as often according to the study in question, conducted by Russel H. Fazio at Indiana University before shifting to Ohio State.

What bothered me is how blatantly one-sided his study was.

Here's how it broke down:

There were two "sub-studies".

In study one, researchers followed 58 white freshmen with black roommates and a comparable 57 white freshmen with white roommates.

Just whites.

Through several self-recording measures, researchers quantified the subjects' satisfaction with their black or white roommates. They explored variables like joint activities and cross-networking.

The findings showed subjects with white roommates were more satisfied than those with black roommates.

The main, summarizing variable "satisfaction with relationship" was ranked on a 10-point scale, with a higher number meaning more satisfaction.

And those average numbers were?

Subject with black roommate: 3.07

Subject with white roommate: 5.18

Statistically, yeah, they're different. But it looks like freshmen just generally think their roommates suck. As a freshman, I had numerous friends dropping a gender-appropriate bitch or douche when referencing their bunkmate.

And, man, I can affirm some of those.

Study one also reported that while just 5 of the white-white pairings failed, 16 of the white-black pairings peaced.

That's where study two pushed the bias further.

The goal of study two: do the white students' automatically activated racial attitudes predict the splits?

Just whites.

Again, 58 white freshmen with black roommates partook in a five-phase procedure. The fourth phase is what matters.

Subjects were repeatedly shown 48 head shot photographs of black, white, Asian and Hispanic male and female undergraduates.

The 16 black faces were always paired with a same-sex white face. Each time, the photos were accompanied by an adjective. The subject was then to immediately hit one of two buttons: good or bad. A racial word association of sorts.

This formed the entirety of their data on racial attitudes.

Is black and white really that black and white? I'd have to disagree, hard. But of course, the findings showed whites with "negative attitudes" wore on the roommate relationship.

Remarkably, only 25 of the 58 pairings remained intact by the end of the school year. That's approaching 50 percent.

Considering how the Times article seemed to celebrate the success of interracial roommates, Indiana University must not be on that train.

I suppose this realm of study is too young to produce definite, generalizable results, which I hardly think could happen anyway.

Really, though, I'm just floored by the lack of the black voice in the study. Here's the ridiculous concluding line of the study:

"If at all possible, simultaneously studying both roommates has the potential to provide important insights."

Is Fazio serious? If at all possible? I mean, the black kids were right there, in the rooms.

What's the research goal when framing whites as mega-contributors to mixed roommate failure? I imagine their black counterparts made notable impacts as well:

“Being a minority at Ohio State, we try to stay together, to build ourselves as a community,” Boakye said. “It’s different for white guys."

Sentiments like that might be (are absolutely) worth consideration.

And I'm not saying one party is more blameworthy than the other for these failed pairings. I've heard slurs and taunts - and all the other subtle jabs - from both posts, as I'm sure everyone (ever) has. I just think it's crucial to be impartial.

Or we can be a bit presumptuous like Phil Badaszewski, a hall director at Ohio State. He thinks interracial living situations "can be more interesting," a positive (I think) remark he followed with this contradiction:

“I had one student who chose to move out, who said they just didn’t like the roommate’s friends, who were too loud,” he said. “I thought there was a racial piece to it ..."

Or maybe they really were ear-piercing. White people are capable of being impolite banshees, too.

To him MJ would say, "Don't tell me you agree with me when I saw you kickin' dirt in my eye."

It stings.