‘That’s just my preference’ with a Kanye style shrug has become the norm in our dating reality. I watch people squirm as they try to justify why they only date a certain other race. Whilst matchmaking guys have almost physically tried to fight me for their right to want someone who looks more like a KarKrash Kym than an India Irie. Do you, Boo Boo. After all it’s your penis that will have to get her off. But, let’s talk about why preferences are actually prejudice and stop pretending that it’s anything less insidious.
Pro Black
So yesterday a dude I’m matching wanted to argue with me that he’s pro black despite his preference being for mixed race or light skinned women. I asked him how he reconciled the two and he didn’t have an answer except that there was some black but he just wanted his woman to look less black. He then went on to wax lyrical about Mediterranean women and how family oriented the Eastern European women he’d met were. I asked him about black women and he was all, meh, not for me really? ‘I just don’t find them attractive. But I want someone with curves.’
To be clear, being pro black isn’t anti white. It’s not about being political about your own black situation only. Like feminism, it’s not meant to be about equality and choice but only for women that think and act like you. It’s for all women. Similarly, pro blackness doesn’t mean you don’t date outside of your race. But to exclude people who look like you? There’s something deeper going on here.
Apps and Dating Sites
So straight away apps and Dating Sites are about your prejudice. Nobody bothers to read all of the profiles anymore. We are literally just swiping based on physical characteristics. Aside from Catfishing many are duped by a good Iphone filter alone because, we are visual creatures. Instant gratification dating means we don’t take the time to do more than look at their face and think, nah!
Let me be clear, I am yet to take a decent selfie. I don’t understand lighting and angles and smiling whilst pressing the button. I put this down to being left handed and phones being built for the right handed masses out there but, it’s really an inherent inability to invest that much into a snap. I know I’m being judged on looks and that for some reason I have to put in more effort to get beyond prejudices. So I don’t bother with apps. It only brings me uncles who swipe on everyone.
Unconscious Bias
Your preferences are yours but, make them based on thought not a subconscious desire you’ve been brainwashed into thinking is beauty or wifey or whatever. Unconscious bias is your responsibility. So now you’re out there in these streets thinking beards are more masculine (they’re germ collectors which often hide a weak chin but ok, hipster chaser) or that weaves are bad but the only natural hair you ‘like’ needs to come from a shampoo commercial. You’re given interracial families on advertisements as the norm but one black family and OfCom get complaints about the discrimination. And then we wonder why Black Women are deemed undesirable unless they’re white featured or light complexioned?
Even porn is obsessed with long flowing hair and whiteness. Aside from the fetishization of the ‘native African’ porn which is really poorly produced by the way, there are few short haired women in porn. Porn is also obsessed with the interracial trope of BM / WM but, that’s for another day.