Sexual · Question 38 of 100

What “Had sexual intercourse with someone of a different race?” means

Item 38 on the 100-question Rice Purity Test reads “Had sexual intercourse with someone of a different race?”. Here is what the wording covers, where readers reasonably disagree about it, and exactly how much it moves your score.

Guidance written and reviewed 2026-07-26

Adult and sensitive content

The full checklist is intended for adults aged 18 and over and includes explicit topics. You may leave any item unchecked, exit the test, or delete saved checks. An unchecked item is scored the same whether the experience did not occur or you preferred not to answer.

What the question is asking

Item 38 asks whether you have had intercourse with someone of a different race from your own. It records a demographic fact about a partner and, unlike almost every other item on the list, it describes nothing you did.

Where people disagree about what counts

This is the item most often criticised in modern discussion of the checklist, and several contemporary versions of the test drop it entirely. It presupposes that race is a fixed category with clear boundaries, it is meaningless for takers of mixed heritage, and it treats a partner's identity as if it were an experience. It is retained here because this site reproduces the historical 100-item list rather than editing it, but it carries no more weight than any other box and no reader should treat checking or not checking it as meaningful.

The test is self-scored and nobody else ever sees your answer, so the only thing that matters is applying one reading consistently across the whole checklist.

How item 38 fits with the items around it

Item 38 sits between the counting item at 37 and the partner-count items at 39 and 40. It belongs to the partner block by placement rather than by logic: the items around it describe how many people, while this one describes who.

Item 37, before this one Had sexual intercourse with two different people within 24 hours? Item 39, after this one Had sexual intercourse with three or more people?

How it affects the score

Every question has the same one-point effect. Checking item 38 subtracts one point from the starting score of 100. Leaving it unchecked subtracts nothing, and no item on the checklist is weighted more heavily than any other.

Final score = 100 − total checked boxes

The final number never identifies this answer or any other individual answer — it is a count, so it discards which items were selected the moment it is calculated. Read the full scoring guide or look up an exact result on the 0–100 score chart.

Questions about item 38

Why is item 38 on the Rice Purity Test?

It is part of the historical 100-item list that circulated for decades. Many newer versions of the test remove it, and it is widely criticised for treating a partner's identity as an experience.

What if I am of mixed heritage?

The item does not account for that, which is one of the reasons it is considered poorly written. There is no correct answer available, and leaving it unchecked is scored identically to answering no.

Does checking item 38 mean anything about me?

No. No single item on this checklist means anything on its own, and this one records a fact about a partner rather than about the person taking the test.

Privacy and choice

The interactive test saves checked numeric question IDs in the current browser's local storage so it can restore progress. The quiz does not submit those checked IDs to the site's server.

Use the delete control to remove saved progress, or clear this site's data in your browser settings. See the storage and privacy methodology for exact behavior.