You're listening to Comedy Central. Welcome to Beyond the Scenes. This is the podcast that goes deeper into segments and topics that already aired on the Daily Show. This is what you think need to think of this podcasts all right, So Beyond the Scenes is like when you were a kid and you went to the movie theaters, right, you know, we all snuck in the movie, and then you sneak in one movie, and then after your first movie, you
sneak into another movie for a bonus double feature. So now you get to watch and Sino Man and Sister act all in one day while eating snacks you brought from home because you only had enough money for one movie ticket. So yeah, that's what this podcast is like. I'm Roy Wood Junior. Today we are talking about a piece that aired originally in twenty sixteen about online dating and sexual racism and when dating preferences became a form of discrimination.
Roll the clip, People of color, A law of our problems stem from racism, and.
Now minorities that are having trouble getting laid are blaming their lack of game on something called sexual racism.
Sexism.
We sat down with very sexy cry baby Zach Stafford, who says that most people trying to smash on online dating platforms are sexually racist.
When someone says something like, you know, I don't date black people. I'm talking about all black people, that would be referred to as sexual racism.
How is not dating someone because of a skin color any different to not want to date someone because they're not attracted to them.
Not wanting to date someone because of skin color. That's kind of the definition of racism.
Yeah, but all dating is discrimination, That's what it is. Like this guy's too douchey, this dude's too sure.
This woman won't pee on me. I mean what I mean, she wouldn't pee by in the you.
Said p on me.
It's called water sports.
So sure looking for.
A term, Yeah, you know that, Yeah, I know, you know that.
All we're talking about is the fact that but we do think about race when we're thinking about desire, and sometimes it can be detrimental to people.
Today, I'm joined by Daily Show correspondent and huge NBA basketball fan and star of music and movies and films, Ronnie Chang. How you doing. I miss you friend.
Hey, good to see you.
Man.
You can come back to the office.
You know, maybe I don't know to come back.
In, and if you actually miss me, you would come back in.
But then, you know what, it's just good to see your virtually friend. We're also joined by the author of the book The Dating Divide, Race and Desire in the Era of Online Romance, Jennifer Lumquis. How are you doing today?
Hi there, I'm very happy to be here.
Thanks for having me, and I apologize in advance of running and I get to arguing. Just know that that's what we do with each other. It's all in love. And lastly, we're joined by certified dating coach Domana Hoffman. Demana, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
Royn.
Now Ronnie as I called, this was a piece that you did with Jessica Williams, and you know, we started talking about the preferences with regards to black women and Asian people on the dating apps. Walk us through this segment and where the idea to talk about sexual racism came from.
Yeah, I remember where the pitch came from, but I think it was sparked by this article talking about the two least desired racist on a dating app. So the stats were what sparked the conversation because it wasn't a feeling,
it was like some hot data. And as you know, Roy, it's very rare to actually do a doubleheader with two correspondents and one piece, so very rare, right, And we had, luckily, thanks to diverse hiring policies, we had an African American woman correspondent and we had an Asian man correspondent, which were the two least desired demographics on the dating app. So we were like, this is perfect, let's go talk about it. It fit like legos, so we just went
to go do to peace. We needed to talk to someone with inside of information about how online datos behave.
Like Christian Rudder, he co founded okay Cupid and wrote a whole book about dating statistics.
We looked at who people messaged, who they matched with, who they responded to.
So you're like Edward Snowden, but for trying to put pens in the genes sort of.
Yes, there is kind of a systemic racial bias pretty much on every dating site I've ever looked at. Really Yeah, For instance, we found that that eighty two percent of non black men have some bias against black women, and Asian men get the fewest messages and the worst ratings of any group of guys.
When you came to America. What did it feel like to find out that you were amongst the least desired groups when it comes to dating. Now you're a married man, let's add that for context. How did it feel running? How did it feel? No, least desired?
Okay, okay, relax on a First of all, that was news to me. Obviously in Asia, Asian men on the least designed demographic. I think, although I have no I have no stats to back that up, so maybe someone should do a data study in Asia on that. But I guess I can be vulnerable and admit it was like, oh what it felt bad? And I was curious why. I also something instinctively. Also, I wasn't that surprised just the way Asian men I kind of portrayed in media.
I kind of uh suspected as much. But uh. But again, it was nice to have like hot data instead of just going off, you know, being a sensitive vibe and having the hot data and being like, well, you know, the data kind of proves it. So what was it To answer your question? It didn't feel good?
What was more shocking finding out about Asian men or Black women in terms of I mean, I'm even more surprised.
Hey, I'm we're having an honest conversation here, So if I get in trouble for this, sure, But honestly, I was surprised that black women were on the list with us because because yes, yeah, again for me, as a complete ignorant person, I'm not a sociologist or anything. I tie a lot of this what we're talking about right now, the dating preferences to pop culture and storytelling, because that's my industry, is telling stories and movies and TV shows
and so on. So for me, like black women always portrayed, I mean, better than Asian men in my opinion. There's certain heroes in American pop culture like Beyonce.
Even going back to Pam Greer and the Foxy Brown era.
Right, So so because of that, I'm not saying I'm right, but I'm just saying because of that, I was surprised to learn that black women were on the on the same tier as I.
Have you have you ever used a dating app?
I have.
I'll be honest, I'll speak freely. I've lived a life.
Have you No? I got I got attached before the dating app boom, So I skipped that whole thing, that whole era school. So I had to join dating apps for this segment, you know. Yeah, I mean.
That's interesting. You've met your wife the old fashioned way through the personal ads in the newspaper. I respect that bro.
I met her old school, the old school a meeting her in at university. You get more school than that.
College costs too much to meet a wife.
Now you can't.
So Ronnie, did you download all the dating apps?
Yeah? I joined the dating apps for the first time in my life with my then fiance's permission. I also went to join the Rayah, which was like the super exclusive one for.
Hot such a celebrity, and I couldn't get in.
I couldn't get in. I got all, I got all the famous people I knew to like recommend me, and I couldn't get in there. So I mean, that's some bias right there. If there was ever a proof of racial bias, the fact that I couldn't get in this even though I had I think I.
Got social capital.
I don't want to blow up anyone spot by saying who recommended me? But I got some heavy hitters to recommend me for Riyah. I couldn't get in, but every I joined Grinder, Tinder, Bumble, everything, and just to see what would happened.
Wait, what Grinder?
What was going on with gay Man too?
Let's see what thorough reporter over there? That's good. I put my Daily Show headshot in it. So I think that biased a lot of things, because then we started getting a lot of you know, are you the guy from the Daily Show. At the end of this segment, we actually had a phone number. It's one of the one times when we were experimenting with expanded field pizzas that exist beyond just a piece, and so we had a phone number for people call in to tell us
their stories about racial bias. And we got a ton of phone calls, which was really interesting, and I think we recorded it. I don't know where that ever went. We never did anything with it, but we had a bunch of people call in, and some people called in from jail, some people called in from I mean, it was if that was all TV show on its own, Yeah, tell us about racial bias. But yeah, dating apps are crazy.
I think the only dat nap I ever did seriously was e Harmony back when that was the one back in the day getting your forty point personality profile, and basically it was like fifty essay questions you have to answer, yeah, and then if you like someone's picture, you could see three of their questions, and then if they liked three of your questions, you could see five more of their questions.
And like basically even the Internet was old school back then, you know what I mean.
But what it actually it created a different environment, I would say on dating apps because the barrier for entry was so high, like you had to have serious intent if you were going to fill out the fifty point questions, and it really took hours.
Yeah, college application.
We've seen a huge change in the number people using dating apps just really since I mean, okaycub it has been has been around since two thousand and four, but ever since Tinder launched in twenty twelve. That really changed the game because it made the barrier for entry so low. It was free to join. You could just upload a couple of pictures from your Facebook profile or whatever, and
you were on. And so the variance in the variety in the kind of messages you would get and who you would meet expanded, the speed of dating expanded, and so that's that's when it got crazy.
And the stigma stigma.
Stigma decreased, certainly.
Jennifer, Let's start with the base level, define sexual racism for everyone, and how do dating apps exacerbate this issue?
In our book we talk about digital sexual racism. There is this normalized racial preference that people think of as very individual level preferences. Dating apps and the online digital dating market are one of the only spheres left in modern day US society where it is perfectly acceptable to articulate you know what your preference is, how you might want to how you might you want to limit your
searches based on race. So in education, employment, housing, many other spheres, we know that these are this is legally wrong and morally wrong, but in dating markets it's become acceptable.
Where does race fit into the pre assumed cultural compatibilities because I would assume a lot of us gravitate towards the particular race, because we believe particular cultural software is already pre installed if you will, with certain people. Where does that line stop and discrimination begin?
Or is it all?
Or is it all because we may have always stopped Oh no, yes, I'm just sitting to black people. I'm only into that. But has that always been a form of discriminatory behavior When you think.
About always the history in the United States, we had very rigidly enforced anti missogonation laws which kept people from different races from intermixing with one another. So it's very difficult to tell what sort of the natural inclinations it would be because so much of our history was about keeping the races, as particularly whites.
From mixing with other races.
So that was really one of the questions that animated our research, which was we know that, for example, interracial dating interracial marriage rates are much lower than if you were to randomly, you know, assort the population and with
one another. And so the question has always been among social scientists, is this because we live in such a segregated society still today, that we just don't come into interaction with one another to you know, become friends and eventually start dating one another.
And how much of this is about preference?
Right?
And so that's why digital dating markets are so such a fascinating space because you know, in theory, there is no racial segregation in digital dating markets. And you know, in our case, we had millions and millions of online dating interactions that we analyzed, and we also interviewed seventy eight daters, and we're able to see not just what they said, but what they do in the online space.
And there are a lot of preferences that define how people interact with one another, so you know, they essentially bring segregation with them.
Do the apps? How do the apps have to perpetuate it? Because I guess I'm if I'm clicking. Well, let me use Instagram as an example. Not necessarily a dating app, but it can be if you're courageous enough to jump in those dms. It's an app where you can accidentally click on a picture of a particular thing, and then for the next four weeks, Instagram just shows you more
pictures of that particular thing. Even if it was an accident that you clicked on a woman in a bikinian, you really love your girl and you wanted to note that in its natural fault. All of this, I'm sorry, How did the apps help to perpetuate the issue?
Yeah?
So, in addition to particularly the larger dating companies that allow people to search by race, et cetera, there's also the algorithms, like what you're talking about, and algorithms are really black boxes in terms of we don't know what's inside of them. It's information that dating companies hold close to their chest. Algorithms can both be actually have race in the algorithm, or it can be machine learning, which is what are what is the average user interested in?
Or who have you looked at specifically, and then that's all you see.
From there on out.
And then what I'll say another aspect of digital sexual racism is that you have a setting where what's known as online disinhibition effect, where you have people who interact with each other online tend to be much more, say, rude or honest than they would be in a face to face environment. And so you have these desegregated spaces. But then you also have situations where people are being exposed to misogyny and definitely racial misogyny in many cases.
And so it's not that it didn't exist before, but it's so visible, right that I think that that can be just really shocking for especially women in general, but especially you know, Asian and black and Latino women on these sites, and you know the fact that it's like such an assembly line, right, dating can really feel once you've seen you start to lose your facial recognition ability as you're swiping and swiping, and so I think it's
very easy to dehumanize others. So you have all of these factors that interact with each other with fast moving technologies that have not only reiffy and make more visible sexual racism, but also I think are manifesting in new ways.
So Demona, you're OKQP It's official dating Coach. Now, this segment is about six years old. What can you update USNG with regardless to the stats and trends that you're seeing amongst online datas is it still Asian and Black women at the back of the pack or have the numbers increased? Is there a little more equality? Did the Black Instagram squares work? Demona?
I'm not going to comment on the Black Instagram squares, but what I could say.
It came together, Demonia.
It's time, Kumaya, we're all on this together. And you know, especially within the pandemic, we've seen that there's been an increase in online dating overall, and that actually was a tool that helped people stay connected at a time when you weren't even going to class in college in person, so your options for meeting someone were really limited. But as someone who met my own person, I met my husband online way before it was cool roy back in
probably Ronnie was meeting his wife in college. I was an early adopter of online dating, and as a black woman, I can say I was not surprised by the stats that came out in Christian Rutter's book and Dataclysm. But what I will say is that those stats you reported on it in twenty sixteen, but the data is now over ten years old. So there has been a huge cultural shift overall. And I've always seen dating apps not
as the problem. We want to put all of our frustration with dating culture, with the pandemic with race, with everything on the dating app. But the dating app is really just the tool. And as someone who is in an interracial marriage with someone that I met on a dating app, I know that it is a tool that actually can bridge worlds when used in that way. But it is an amplifier, and so whatever beliefs that you come into dating apps with, those are going to be
amplified because it's have it your way. You can manipulate the app, you can't impact the algorithms. I can't give you all the secret sauce, but I can tell you. Just like you said, clicking on certain people will populate the app with more people who look like that. But this is a place where people show up with their biases, with their preferences, And this is something that in my
own practice as a dating coach, I've been unpacking. I wrote an article for the Washington Post on racism and dating because I feel that for too long we have allowed people to hide behind their dating preference and we have not encouraged them to examine where those preferences come from. This is a problem in America and it's really time that we pulled back the curtain and examine that.
Let's go to a break. We'll be right back. We're more beyond the scenes. For why do you think people are so hesitant to have a conversation around this? Because does this sex and dating and romance aspect of this make it a factor, Because if you go off a cliff into pornography, it's no. No. But I'm serious, Ronnie. See Ronnie, so you're trying to make me look bad.
No, No, I'm doing it because I remember your piece you did on the racism.
Racism and porn Yes, where people didn't even want to like No, no, I not want to date black. So you knew where we were going. See, that's why we're friends. You're and my friend again running that's nice, safe, But this idea that it's so taboo because even in pornography, there is racism when it comes to the preference of the type of porn that some people want to see, so much so that porn stars won't do scenes, won't do interracial scenes for fear that it hurts their money.
So what you're saying is obviously happening. But why are people hesitant to have the conversation around the racism factor when it comes to dating.
People are very very defensive about being called out for their sexual preferences, have anything having anything to do with racial preference. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that we as Americans were very individually oriented, and we think of our personal preferences as somehow separate from the public sphere, and that the personal is not political, and yet the personal is political. Is essentially what Demana was arguing in that and what we
argue in our book. Racial preferences continue to maintain the status quo and discrimination. For example, you know, when our book came out. I remember, I don't know if you're familiar with Campus Reform, it's a kind of a right wing student newspaper that's funded by a lot of it's funded by a lot of right wing organizations. And when they had a little piece on our book which was came out on Valentine's Day and said Happy Valentine's you're a racist. You know, that's how they summarize what our
book said. But essentially, we're not arguing that individuals are racist for having a sexual preference. What we are arguing is that we live in a racist society. We live in a white supremacy, and so we are fooling ourselves to think that just as race as a social construction, that our racial preferences are not also socially constructed and are essentially imprints from centuries of racial marginalization. We live
in a racial hierarchy, and we still do. Daters, I think it's just very aware for them to have awareness about this, to think about it, to ask themselves, why why do I have a racial preference? Often the white daters we interviewed were hesitant to admit racial preferences, although it would often come out later. These are two hour interviews, So there are lots of ways of getting at different.
Kinds of questions.
But we would hear things like I did date a Latino once, but you know, I found that he was really a machismo, and so now I don't date Latinos at all.
Right, so.
The one individual suddenly defines the entire race, right, And so that was kind of something common that we would hear. Or someone would say, oh, you know, I a white person, I've never dated, you know, a black woman before, but you know I would totally date with Beyonce, or a woman might say I would totally.
Date that like K pop dude. So there's an exceptionalism that play there for sure.
Well, I think it's also about we get we learn relationally, I believe, and so through these relationships that we have and through interactions that we have with people of different backgrounds,
we start to form different opinions. So you know, someone might say, well, you know, I don't deal with black people, or like, you know, they have certain beliefs about black people, but they're like, oh, but my neighbor Gary across the street, Well he's cool, Well he's fine, Well Beyonce, because you know, I listen to our music, and I see, you know, I've watch Lemonade album. You know whatever. Now I have
a different association with her. And so, you know what I was arguing in the Washington Post piece, which was very controversial, I did get I got a lot of hate mail, but I got a few people who said, thank you for just opening my eyes to the fact that I have power in how in what happens with culture as a whole, and I can personally choose to look at this differently and to look at the opportunity in forming a relationship with someone of a different background
or even just exploring. Just having the conversation is what gets us there. But I think what the dissonance that's coming up is that people overall want to believe, well, I'm not racist. There was a Gallup poll that looked at approval of interracial marriages, and the most recent poll said ninety four percent approve of interracial marriage between black and white. This is a huge difference from like, prior to nineteen fifty eight when they first did this, did
the study only four percent? Yeah, but you know, it really wasn't that long ago. Just four percent of people said that they approved of black and white marriage. So we approve of it, but not necessarily for me. And so as communities open up and tools like online dating and social media allow us to have access to other cultures, other people who are different than us, we are learning, and we're learning actually pretty quickly.
The other thing about this piece that was interesting was that it was like me and Jessica formed, like this union between two demographics that don't speak out for each other enough, which is Asian men and black women. Like, we didn't really have a chance to have each other's backs, so to speak, in many issues, but this is one thing where we're like, now, screw this, and then we went to go we went to go fight people about it. I always think of Royd did another piece on Surprise
Surprise racism. You did this early piece of Jordan Klepper about I remember what the least bias pleaset bias. Yeah, And one of the things I goll away from that that always stuck with me was this idea that when you accuse people of being racist, it really shuts down
the conversation because people get defensive about it. Yeah, but there are right, but if you just say, hey, you might be racially biased, it kind of gives people a chance to talk about it, which ultimately is what we're doing right here, because you can't force people to date people they don't want to date. It's not at end of the day. It's something they have to decide inside.
So if you're trying to change people's minds, if you're trying to extend an olive branch, you know, the only way to do it is to meet them in a place where they're not being accused of, you know, being awful people. The other aspect of this is that as an Asian man, for me to come out, you know, I love doing a daily show in these segments because we get to make fun of it and talk about serious issues. But for me to come out and be like,
no one, no one's dating me. This is disgusting. You guys are because you guys aren't dating me, you guys should date me. Like. Not only is that weird, it's also off putting and counterproductive in my opinion, to the ultimate goal of trying to get people date you. So that's all you're in this weird cnstory too. Wait complaining about it as I can't speak to black women, but I expect to have the same experience as an Asian guy, Complaining about it is counterproductive, so you can't even have
a conversation. You just have to like deal with it. And you know, and you know, the numbers kind of confirm what I see in Western society a lot, you know, a lot of Asian A lot of Asian people in America are immigrants, not all of them, obviously, we've got eight generations the third generation Asian people. But the immigrant people who come you can see, like, you know, the Asian daughters in the family all have like white husbands, and the Asian men will have like Asian wives, you know,
and that's totally fine. You see a trend coming. And some of that I think has to do with the social capital that you possess in the country, your ability to navigate the systems and be successful in institutions, you know, based on your language, based on your institutional knowledge of the place, and a lot of immigrants don't have that, and so therefore, you know, that kind of worth in society is kind of decreased in a way, which which is I think there's a correlation between that and the
dating status that we see.
That's such a great point and one of the things that I always found really interesting about the data is that Asian American men on average have higher average incomes than any other racial group, including white men.
Which is often.
Is often, you know, a parameter that women are looking for in a mate, And indeed, we interviewed plenty of women who actually are fully aware of this and had preferences around Asian men, And so when we talk about the statistics, that's a wholly different situation than the individual And I will say that it was so fascinating to do the huge statistical overview and see some pretty sobering findings, and then to talk to individuals who, you know, maybe
one of these groups who statistically are ignored, but themselves have you know, are pretty resilient and have have had success stories.
They've it's just been a little harder, but.
They kept with it. They kept with it.
Well, that's right, they hung in there.
Let me ask you, Jennifer and Damona d'mona especially. You tell me whether or not I'm a racist. You tell me whether or not I'm guilty of sexual racism. I am forty three years old. Every open committed relationship I've ever been in has been with a black woman. I've had sex with other racist But if we're talking just straight up legit. Yes, you were my girlfriend. Hey everyone, this is my girlfriend. Hey, mama, meet my girlfriend. It's
always been a black woman. I went out with a white woman one time and we had some good ass VI went out a couple of times, good ass vibes, but I remember being out to eat and as a black man, this was my first time being out with a white woman like this, and just I could not keep my eyes off of whether or not people were watching us. That was thing one, the public perception of
it that made it uncomfortable. The other thing was as I knew I wanted to have children, and this thought of, Okay, if I'm raising what is essentially a black child, but he only has half of the pre installed blackness at the house, can this woman help me usher this black child through circumstances that I'm not sure that she has experienced or can see from a perspective that would be beneficial to the upbringing it Because I could be Kumbaya,
but the world is not. So you know what, I like you, but I don't think we can date because people are looking at us weird and Applebee's and maybe I'm just being paranoid about that. But that was the only time that I've ever come close to dating inter racially, and I could not get past the kid aspect of that. Is that a factor in some people running I see you looking at Roy.
You suck.
I'm just being terrible.
You're being terrible. Also, man, well, I can't have your good boyfriend or bad boyfriend because one you care so much about what other people think instead of person you're dating. Then too, kid, then too, You're like, it's extrapolating so far ahead about your kid in like when he's ten years he or she's ten years old? What am I gonna do? So you're both like you're thinking, there's.
No dating algorithm that can tell me what her racial blind spots are.
No.
I mean that's the whole point though, Isn't that the point of dating. It's it's to be able to have those conversations and have those explorations and look, it's not in your head, Roy, Like I have had that same experience being somewhere with my white husband and being very aware people are looking at us or I'm feeling uncomfortable of being a person of color in that space. But it's something that I've chosen to walk through because the benefit is so much greater than all of those other
challenges that I've had to go through. Having the relationship to me is worth worth more than that. But there was something and you said that was really interesting to me when you said you've never introduced anyone other than a black woman to your mom. To me, that might be the foundation of it, is that these expectations are so deeply ingrained from family, from community.
Why don't you know why?
Girl?
Is it not my mom? But there's a lot of do you think being a byproduct of a black home, like how much of what we were raised in influences what we seek out in love? Because you talk about say a lot.
I want to know what Jennifer has to say from her research.
Though I thought Damona's basically saying there's a lot of trouble, but though the white privilege is worth it.
About it, we're joking about it. But I feel like that in a way, that is something also to examine, Like anything plus white equals privilege in a lot and so that is not in any way a factor in
why I decided to partner, but it is something. It is something to examine, and it is something I will admit, Roy that comes up in our relationship where there are blind spots that my husband has because he hasn't walked in my shoes, he hasn't had the experiences of being a black woman in America, and he is being he's being educated by being in a relationship with me and being encouraged to look at things through a different lens.
Absolutely, I've heard Roy, all the things you just said. I've heard that a lot.
And in fact, I remember when Grinder, after George Floyd's murder removed their racial filtering categories because they realize that this is a problem. Most other dating websites have not, But there are a lot of folks in the black community who really resisted that and spoke out to that and said, you know, I want to be able to find people within my own community. I don't want to lose that opportunity to be able to filter out, you know, people who objectify me or fetishize me.
Who are you know, different races.
I want to look for black men because we share, we know what it's like to be a black person of a very white society.
Is that racist? I would argue that it's not. It's about familiarity and survival.
And you know, one thing that I always found really interesting too, and some of our research is there's a very strong black love emphasis within the Black community.
You don't find that as much in the Asian community.
And I think some of that has to do with the fact that, you know, the Asian American community is really really heterogeneous. You have people from many many generations in different countries, et cetera. So there's not the same level of solidarity in a white world, although I think that that's changing. But that I think that the way you feel, the way you felt about that is completely legitimate, and I hear it from a lot of people, all.
Right, not racist close, not quite all the way, but still a little bit of bias sees a little bit of a blind spot. After the break, I want to talk about what are the other things that contribute to our biases when it comes to dating. Ronnie, thank you for joining us. I know you've got to bounce and go do important rich Asian man stuff, so.
I gotta go do some daily show stuff right now. Okay, the opposite of rich Asian man stuff. But thanks, but thanks, yeah, thanks much for having me. It's great to speak to you experts who actually can back up what me and Jessica experienced or were researching from just a layperson's point of view. But I think the ultimate goal of all this is, as as Jennifer and Daemona was saying, is that you know, you can't force people to who they
don't want to date. But I think the idea behind this conversation is to hopefully have people kind of expand their horizons a little bit and open themselves up to dating other people in the hopes of increasing their chances of finding someone who they ultimately want to be with. That's the ultimate goal here in my opinion. It's not trying to force people at gunpoint to date the date other,
you know, whatever race they say they hate. The ultimate goal is I think personal happiness is the reason why we're even having this conversation in my opinion. But very nice to speak to all of you.
Thank you beautifully, Sam.
We'll be right back, Welcome back to Beyond the scenes. We are talking sexual racism and whether or not you just have a preference and that's what you're attracted to and it's not your fault or if you are a terrible person. How much does the media play a role in what we desire? When you look at commercials and when you look at tell Vision shows, they've given us the mold of what they believe a desirable partner is, and more often than not, it's not an Asian man.
And in a lot of instances, black women are in subservient roles in television, like you know, like I don't even think there's been an Asian Bachelor if I'm not mistaken. But how much does the media play in informing our unconscious biases?
Plays a huge role, and everything that we consume really influences the way that we move through society. You mentioned Asian men in media not being sexualized, and that was something that was very deliberate with crazy rich Asians, where they were positioning the cast to become sex symbols, and we actually saw it well. Not only was the movie a huge success and there was there was a desire for that, but it really did seem to change some
perceptions of Asian men. And there's a long way to go in sort of leveling the playing field, but we've had a lot of these images for so long, and like for black women, you were either like the Jezebel or the Mamming. I know you've talked about, you know, the strong black women on episodes before, and so this is something that a lot of black women carry as a fear when they go into online dating that I'm either going to be seen as a caretaker or I'm
being sexualized and fetishized. And I even I hosted a show called Hashtag Black Love for FYI. It was a spin off of Married at First Site because there was so much passion around wanting to see black relationships and on Married at First Site in the first season, the only couple that didn't make it was the black couple, So everybody was like, we want black love. And I've seen that in media, a lot of black networks or black outlets have given the space for that because the
more mainstream outlets are not doing that. And that may also factor into a preference for black women wanting to continue to find black relationships and promote black love because it's not being reflected for them in mainstream content.
I would agree, and I think the media is a huge part of perpetuating pre existing stereotypical images but also producing them in many cases as well. I remember I used to always show this image to students. It's a little old at this point, but there's lots of examples since with Hurricane Katrina, there was a bunch of apen images of people who were basically waiting in chest deep water. And one showed a couple of African American folks and it was people looting whatever store.
And another one showed, you know.
White people with food that they'd gotten from store, saying white people looking for food, et.
Cetera, et cetera.
And so you see just a very different thing, yes, right, survival. So you see this very different framing by race. And there's so much sort of gendered racialization around masculinity, hyper masculinity or emasculation in the case of Asian men, or passive lotus flower kinds of imagery around Asian women. And there's roots of this that go way back in history that we talk a lot about in our book.
What have been some of the victories? Give me some good news. Are you seeing a shift because people approve of veneracial dating, but is it actually happening? Have you seen any type of shift in the dating trends, especially since COVID when everybody was stuck at home, and you know a lot of relationships did not survive COVID, so you probably had to be opened to a couple of more options. Back in those days, Yes.
People definitely were more experiential and more explorational in their experiences. I mean we saw also people were more open on gender. We saw people changing their preferences, their sexuality preferences. Okaycupid, we released sixty different gender and identity options so that
people could find whatever they were looking for. So we did see a lot more flexibility, and we do see looking at census data now, about twenty percent, about one in six newlywed couples are with someone of a different race or ethnicity. So when you look at just nineteen fifty eight, only four people were approving of this is
specifically black white intermarriage. Now we're at a place where there is actually a ton of intermarriage, and I think it's interestingly correlated actually with the rise in dating apps, because now we have access to different communities and there is good news and Okaycupid, black women are finding more success and women identifying as black have been getting more matches in the past year, and it's higher than any time in the past three years.
Is I always like to do on this podcast. In this part of the show, ladies, I like to try and talk a little bit about solutions and things that we can do to help change the problems that we've laid out so dutifully up until this point. Demona, I'll start with you. You know, as a dating coach, how do you encourage your clients to be race open? I guess that's the word. How do you encourage them to be race open while dating? How do you get them to put more check more boxes of race?
Well, Michael is not to make everyone date race open, though I see that as the best chance at them finding what they're looking for if they don't put a restriction on race. But what I want them to do is to date from a place of authenticity and clarity. At the beginning of my dating coaching program, I always
ask people about race, and I've always done this. It was surprising to me when I wrote the Washington Post piece to find the other dating coaches weren't necessarily doing this, or we're making assumptions that people just wanted to date someone who came from a similar background. And I think as a whole, we make a lot of assumptions that someone with our skin color must have similar experiences, or must have similar values or views on the world, or
would raise children in the same way. And I want to get underneath all of that and really have people examine what their own beliefs are. So if they tell me that they only date someone of their race, I'll ask them why. It's actually a business technique. I do the five whys technique that was founded by Toyota to figure out why systems were not working. I'll apply that to dating and I'll say, Okay, well, why haven't you dated anyone of another race? Well, I just never I
never met anyone of another race. Well why, well, I never went outside of dating in my social circle. Why And when we start to unpack that, you know, basically the answer to all questions is because racism. But that what I'm trying to get my clients to do is to get them to understand these these factors that are impacting their preferences the way that they date, and examine
them and see what fits. Which part of this may be an expectation that maybe your parents had for you, or that was ingrained by society and culture, and which part of it really comes from a place of honesty and clarity for yourself and building the life that you want and the relationship that you ultimately want to have.
I'd know that for me, if I'm just speaking about dating in my twenties, a lot of it was just rooted in the presumed uncultural unrelatability. You're white girl, I'm just going to assume you don't like It's not like rap wasn't as pervasive into what like white people always listen a rap, but in the sense of, oh, if I said this rapper, this rapper, this rapper, she's going
to know all of them. There was It's just this preconceived notion that there is a cultural divide too big for us to close for us today, And that was always the assumption, and so I just never would you know, just would you know if there was five white girls at the table and they had one black friend? In my brain, I have to talk to her.
I also wonder, Roy, how much of that actually comes from a place of fear of rejection, Like I know this is something as a black woman and someone who's worked with a lot of black women, there's this fear that if I open myself up to this person who's different than me, and they reject me. It's because I'm black. Was that ever a part of your thought process?
No, but it never really got into by the way, Jennifer, welcome to my free dating counseling session. I hope that you're enjoying this. It was never I don't think it was ever rooted in that, but I do know that a part of it for me. If we're talking to your point about cultural upbringing, I grew up in Birmingham, Alabam. I'm a Birmingham proper to Birmingham within the city limits
is about an eighty percent black city. I did not have a white classmate until the sixth grade, and that was for a couple of months before I got transferred back to another predominantly black middle school. So my world was black, the Black boys Club, I went to black church. I hung out and played with black kids. My mama had black sorority sisters. I played with her for so whiteness was never culturally. That just wasn't a thing growing up.
So when you get older and you become a man, you're kind of keying into a lot of that data that was that software was already kind of that behavioral software. I feel, to a degree was probably already pre installed. So you do have to overcome a lot of what your upbringing was to break out of that to be race open. I've never been race like. I've never seen no white girl, but it was always just a black woman, and it just always felt like a quick and easier
and simple fix. I'm not saying that that was the right choice, and I'm not saying that was always the right thing to do, and that I couldn't have had a great relationship with the white girl from Applebee's, But that was more daunting than the fear of rejection. The fear of rejection, I do think that's real because it's also like, what, I'm black, I gave you a white ass a chance. But it was definitely rooted in how
will we relate to each other? And I don't know if we can, But you know that idea is definitely something that is twenty years ago, because you know, the culture divide isn't as big as it was. I've seen white people tworking. I think we've we've come together, Jennifer, how much is on the dating companies, these these dating app companies to be more transparent about what they're doing, like with the algorithm, do they owe us the right
of transparency? And if they changed it, how would that impact the user experience.
I think our first instinct is to always go to the for the platforms and say the platforms need to change, I need to do this and that. Given the fact that since twenty thirteen, the primary way that relationships start in the United States is through digital market places, the dating market.
That is a primary way.
Now that relationships start, why do we want corporations to be running this space? So that's one thing that we really unpack in this book, which is our corporations for profit corporations going to have an interest in bettering society in you know, helping to eradicate racism. It's not necessarily profitable to do so. Surveillance capitalism is a big part
of many platforms. You know, our data is sold to third parties, and some of the data that we put in our profiles and the kinds of very intimate interactions we have online that's incredibly lucrative to companies. It's also incredible data to have on someone. I do have ideas, Lots of people have ideas and how platforms could improve and i'd happy. I'm happy to go over what some of those are. I think they're small changes, but I
think that they could make a difference as well. Good well, you know, like I love Demana's perspective on you know, this very human perspective, but we need to look inward that race has so little to do with finding a mate, and to really think about why we say we have racial preferences.
I would love to see more of that kind.
Of instruction or advice as part of the setup when people are creating their profiles.
I think there's a lot of contextual data.
Of you know, pro tips from the platform that could
help daters as they put together their information. I also think, you know, we'll we talked about algorithms before, right, it would be great if a we at least knew what went into the algorithms, you know, so daters could say, oh, I want to go to a you know, a platform that doesn't use race and algorithm or doesn't use past racial behaviors as a way to then create what I see some people have experimented in you know, small apps with a reset button for algorithms so that your past
history doesn't influence how the algorithm continues. I also think it would be really useful for platforms to collect information on you know, how many people flag others for you know, racist commentary to them as a dator and even you know this is probably going too far by many people's perspectives, but being able to not just say someone's attractiveness and you know, overall your experience with them, but also to be able to say, this person, you know, asked me
if I like black chocolate and sent me a dick pic, you know, to be able to like have some kind of more like user mediated sanctioning, I think would be a step.
As someone who works with okayqu but I think those are those are all great ideas. And I also want to remind people of about you know, personal I don't want to say responsibility, but just how much personal power they have to shift the way that the apps are in service to the user. Also, a lot of people don't use the tools that are already there to be able to block and report. And this is something that
I'm always telling my Dates and Mats podcast listeners. If somebody calls you a racial slur, don't just get disgusted and turn off the dating app and say I don't want to be here because someone said this thing, you need to report it, and we take okay, keep it. We take those reports very seriously. And as you said, as reports like that line up then and we see a trend, that's when an algorithm or a feature, a
feature gets released or an algorithm gets changed. And just one last thing I'll say, what I also do with my clients is if they've experienced sexual racism, I encourage them to not internalize that or assume that means everyone on the app, or everyone in dating or everyone of that culture. To really focus on the place that you're getting the love. So, even as a black woman, I was able to find love on a dating app, and I'm not worried about the nine people that didn't write
me back. I'm worried about the one that had the right kind of intention, shared my values and my goals for the future, and those predictors of long term compatibility.
I've always wished that dating apps would, at some point, based on the phone numbers that are tied to the account, form some sort of no fly list, if you will, of racism and jerks and abusers and like anything of that nature, Like if you're no good on OkCupid, then you should be no good on every other side. Bumbleeharmonymatch dot com, all of them should bang you for acting a fool. You should be banished to Craigslist personals.
You know what's happening. People are just like putting you on blast Onto talk like that West Palost. You can't get a day ever again, tender Swimdler.
Well, thank you all so so much for the wonderful, wonderful conversation on this. I'm going to now log into a dating app like Ronnie and join all of it and see what happens. But again, can I help you, Roy?
I want to help you.
White male. I'm signing episode Rich white Man. Yeah, you know what, Yeah, bring me on that day to Mate's podcast. I'll talk to you. We'll figure out what is going on come through.
I think give me.
Give me just like minutes two as we find that white girl from Applebee's from twenty years ago and be like, hey, what's going on? Listen? All right, thank you all so so much for going beyond the scenes with you.
Thank you, thank you.
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