I love a party, but I had to be away on that occasion and had to decline and thought no more of it.
“I have a thing for mixed-race girls…”
The next week, I scrolled though social media to find a photo album of the party and had a look-see. You can date me because I fit the job description! Take me for instance: My favourite colour is blue and I have a sweet tooth. They call it an anti-slut shaming podcast.
This fetish for POC and specifically black people has been going on for a while. In the s, the word negrophilia was coined to describe the growing white fascination with black culture.
List of interracial romance films
It is not celebrating black people. These women should be disgusted with themselves.
Corrinne Fisher and Krystyna Hutchinson, the women behind the podcast, issued a statement in regards to the episode in question. Here is our statement regarding the episode of our podcast: I understand that — but if you understand that racism is embedded in our society and as a white person you will benefit from that, you also need to understand that you exhibiting racist behaviours is inevitable.
A few weeks ago a girlfriend of mine, who happens to be a black woman, sent me a screenshot of an exchange she had with a man she came across on an online dating app. I'm accustomed to friends sharing their 'WTF' moments, and generally I love living vicariously through their dating experiences. My friend was in the early stages of a chat with a man she'd matched with and he straight away asked about her ethnicity — projecting his assumptions of her by focusing on her race.
How modern dating encourages racial prejudice - BBC Three
I made a documentary about the role race plays in online dating, Date My Race , a year ago. So I empathised with the frustration my friend felt by having to explain her blackness to this complete stranger. Dating is a challenge for most people, but it's even more challenging when you're from a racial minority background. If you're not being judged for what you look like, you're being asked to explain your 'difference'. For example, the data collected by one of the many online dating websites in Australia, Oasis.
They also found that the least contacted groups were black women and Asian men.
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And as if it wasn't interesting enough, black African men were unlikely to contact black African women. So, if black men aren't even looking at sisters in Australia based on these stats, the chances of dating within one's race by preference take a significant hit. I also met people that had specific racial preferences, and either dated only within their race or specifically sought out people of another race. The reasons varied, from unfamiliarity with certain races and cultures, to just down to what they found themselves attracted to.
Either way, both perspectives serve as a reminder that despite all the progress society has made towards racial and gender equality, there are those who still position black women at the bottom of the pile. Black women are constantly caught in limbo within this contradictory double narrative. In the increasingly interactive world of Tinder, Bumble and other various dating platforms, counterbalancing the open mindedness and vulnerability needed to disclose a complex part of yourself to a new acquaintance, alongside the need to maintain a protective emotional guard against potential prejudice, is exhausting yet inevitable.
Growing up I discovered that being a black girl meant existing as an emblem of defiance in the face of stereotyping. Growing into adulthood, I have discovered that dating as a black woman is both a blessing, enabling me to discover my own confidence and sexuality, and a curse, whereby one is handed hate on the path for love and companionship and exposed to the consequences of systematic racism, misogyny and prejudice.