May 23, 2023 • 53 mins
We all have preferences when choosing who to date, but when do they cross the line into sexual racism? Daily Show correspondent Ronny Chieng, UMass Amherst sociology professor and associate dean, Jennifer Lundquist, and “Dates & Mates” podcast host, Damona Hoffman join Roy Wood Jr. to discuss how dating apps amplify users’ racial biases and how this impacts those looking for love online.
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
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
(00:27):
movie for a bonus double feature. So now you get
to watch and see No 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 Jr. Today we are talking about a piece that
aired originally in twenty sixteen about online dating and sexual
(00:48):
racism and when dating preferences became a form of discrimination.
Roll the clip.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
As people of color, a lot of our problems stem
from racism, and.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Now a minorities that are having trouble getting late or
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.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
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.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
Not wanting to date someone because of skin color. That's
kind of the definition of racism.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Yeah, but all dating is discrimination, That's what it is.
Like this guy's too douchey, this dude's too sure.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
This woman won't pee on me. I mean what I mean,
she wouldn't pee by in the.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
You said p on me.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
It's called water sports.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
So you're looking for a term.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah, you know that, Yeah, I know, you know that.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
All we're talking about is the fact that we do
think about race when we're thinking about desire, and sometimes
it can be detri mental to people.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
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.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
Hey, good to see you.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Man.
Speaker 5 (02:12):
You can come back to the office.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
You know, maybe I don't know to come.
Speaker 5 (02:18):
Back in and if you actually miss me, you would
come back in.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
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?
Speaker 6 (02:35):
Hi there, I'm very happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
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. Domana,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 7 (02:52):
Thanks for having me, Royn.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Now, Ronnie, as I recall, 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.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, I can 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.
Speaker 5 (03:26):
It was like some hot data.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
And as you know, Roy, it's very rare to actually
do a doubleheader with two correspondents in 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
(03:48):
least desired demographics on the dating app. So we were like,
this is perfect, let's go talk about it. So it
fit like lego, so we just went to go do
the piece. We needed to talk to someone with insider
information about how online datos behave.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Like Christian Rutterer, he co founded okay Cupid and wrote
a whole book about dating statistics.
Speaker 8 (04:09):
We looked at who people messaged, who they matched with,
who they responded to.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
So you're like Edward Snowden, but for trying to put
pens in the genes sort of.
Speaker 8 (04:18):
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
(04:39):
of any group of.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
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. But how did
it feel running? How did it feel to know least desired?
Speaker 5 (04:58):
Okay, okay, relax on. First of all, that was news
to me.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Obviously in Asia, Asian man at least designed demographic.
Speaker 5 (05:07):
I think, although I have no I have.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
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,
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
(05:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
So what was it?
Speaker 5 (05:49):
To answer your question? It didn't feel good?
Speaker 1 (05:51):
What was more shocking finding out about Asian men or
black women in terms of I mean, I'm more surprised.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Hey, I'm 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.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
Us because because.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
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,
(06:35):
better than Asian men in my opinion, there's certain heroes
in American pop culture like Beyonce.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Even going back to Pam Greer and the Foxy Brown.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
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 us.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Have you have you ever used a dating app? I have.
I'll be honest, I'll speak freely. I've lived a life.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Ah you no, I got I got attached before the
dating app boom, so I skipped that whole thing, that
whole error for me. So I had to join dating
apps for this segment. You know, Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
That's interesting. You've met your wife the old fashioned way
through the personal ads in the newspaper.
Speaker 5 (07:24):
I respect that I met her old school.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
The old school A meeting her in at university you
get more school.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
That college costs too much to meet a wife.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
Now you can't.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
So Ronnie, did you download all the dating apps?
Speaker 5 (07:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:38):
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 this super exclusive
one fort.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Such a celebrity, and I couldn't get in.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
I couldn't get in.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
I got all, I got all the famous people I
knew to like recommend me, and I couldn't get in there.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
So I mean, that's some bias right there.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
If there's ever a proof of racial bias, the fact
that I couldn't get in this even though I had
I think.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
I got social capital.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
I don't want to blow.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Up anyone's 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.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Wait, why Grinder, what's going on with gay man too?
Speaker 5 (08:26):
Let's see what.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Thorough reporter over there?
Speaker 5 (08:29):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
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 calling to tell us their
(08:50):
stories about racial bias. And we got a ton of
phone calls, which was really interesting, and I think we
recorded it, but I don't know where that ever went.
We never did anything with it, but we had a
bunch of people calling and some people called in from jail,
some people called in from I mean, it was if
that was an old TV show on its own, Yeah,
tell us about racial bias. But yeah, dating apps are crazy.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
I think the only dating nep I ever did seriously
was e Harmony, back when that was the one back
in the day. Get 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
(09:33):
of their questions.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
And like basically even the Internet was old school back then,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 7 (09:39):
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 literally took hours.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
Yeah, college application.
Speaker 7 (09:53):
We've seen a huge change in the number of people
using dating apps just really since I mean, okay, cub
it has been has been around since two thousand and four,
but ever since Tinder launched in twenty twelve.
Speaker 6 (10:06):
That really changed the.
Speaker 7 (10:07):
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
(10:27):
so that's that's when it got crazy and the stigma.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
The 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?
Speaker 6 (10:43):
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 markets 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
(11:06):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
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?
(11:43):
Or is it all because we may have always stopt
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.
Speaker 6 (11:53):
Think about always the history in the United States, as
we had very rigidly enforced anti missagination 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
(12:13):
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
(12:33):
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?
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Right?
Speaker 6 (12:48):
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 were able to see not just what
(13:08):
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.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
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 it's an app where you can
accidentally click on a picture of a particular thing, and
(13:43):
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 It's not your fault that all of this
extra bekini P I'm sorry. How do the apps help
to perpetuate the issue?
Speaker 6 (14:02):
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
(14:23):
race in the algorithm, or it can be machine learning,
which is 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,
(14:46):
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
(15:09):
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,
(15:30):
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
(15:50):
think are manifesting in new ways.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
So, Demona, you're okqpit's official dating coach. Now, this segment
is about six years old. What can you update a
song with regardless to the stats and trends that you're
seeing amongst online datas is 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
(16:13):
the Black Instagram squares work? Demona?
Speaker 7 (16:18):
I'm not going to comment on the Black Instagram squares,
but what I could say it came together.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
De'monia, it's time, Kumaya.
Speaker 5 (16:25):
We're all on this together.
Speaker 7 (16:27):
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,
(16:50):
I met my husband online way before it was cool,
roy back in probably probably when 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
(17:12):
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.
Speaker 6 (17:28):
We want to put.
Speaker 7 (17:29):
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
(17:52):
beliefs that you come into dating apps with those are
going to be amplified because you's.
Speaker 5 (18:01):
Have it your way.
Speaker 7 (18:02):
You can 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
(18:24):
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
(18:46):
problem in America and it's really time that we pulled
back the curtain and examine that.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Let's go to a break. We'll be right back. We're
more beyond the scenes, Jennifer. Why do you think people
are so hesitant to have a conversation around this? Because
does the 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.
(19:13):
See Ronnie, so you're trying to make me look bad.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
No, No, I'm doing it because I remember your piece
you did on the racism.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Racism and porn. Yes, but people didn't even want to like, no, no,
I not want to date black with 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
(19:43):
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.
Speaker 6 (19:55):
Yes, 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
(20:15):
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
(20:39):
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 books said. But essentially, we're not arguing that individuals
(20:59):
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
(21:23):
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
(21:46):
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. And so that was kind
of something common that we would hear. Or someone would say, oh,
you know, I a white person, I never dated, you know,
(22:11):
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.
Speaker 7 (22:23):
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,
(22:44):
but they're like, oh but my my neighbor Gary across
the street, Well he's cool, Well he's fine. Well Beyonce,
because you know, I listen to her 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
(23:05):
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
(23:28):
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 there was a Gallup poll
that looked at approval of interracial marriages, and the most
recent poll said ninety four percent approof of interracial marriage
between black and white. This is a huge difference from like,
(23:49):
prior to nineteen fifty eight when they first did this,
did the study only four percent?
Speaker 5 (23:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (23:55):
Right, 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
(24:19):
pretty quickly.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
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.
Speaker 5 (24:32):
Like, we didn't really have a.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Chance to have each other's backs, so to speak, in
many issues, but this is one thing where we are like, now,
screw this, and then we went to go we went
to go fight people about it. I always think of
Roy did another piece on Surprise Surprise racism. You did
this early piece of Jordan Klepper about I remember.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
What the least bias?
Speaker 5 (24:53):
The least bias.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah, And one of the things I got away from
that that always stuck with me was this idea that
when you accused p Pole being racist, it really shuts
down the conversation because people get defensive about it.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
Yeah, but they are right.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
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
(25:30):
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
(25:50):
and be like, no one, no one's dating me. This
is disgusting. You guys are racist 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
castory too. Wait complaining about it as I can't speak
(26:12):
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.
Speaker 5 (26:21):
You just have to like deal with it.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
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
(26:47):
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, But 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
(27:09):
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.
Speaker 6 (27:25):
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
(27:47):
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
(28:09):
themselves have you know, are pretty resilient and have have
had success stories. They've it's just been a little harder, but.
Speaker 5 (28:19):
They kept with it. They kept with it.
Speaker 6 (28:22):
Well, that's right, they hung in there.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Let me ask you, Jennifer and Damona da'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 racists, but if we're talking just
straight up legit. Yes you are my girlfriend. Hey everyone,
(28:46):
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 vibes,
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
(29:07):
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
(29:28):
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
(29:49):
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? Roy running? I
see you looking at.
Speaker 5 (30:05):
Roy, you suck.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I'm just I'm just being terrible.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
You'll 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 the person
you're dating.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
Then too, kid, Then too You're like.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
It's extrapolating so far ahead about your kid in like
when he's ten he or she's ten years old?
Speaker 5 (30:29):
What am I going to do? So you're both like
you're thinking.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
There's no dating algorithm that can tell me what her
racial blind spots are.
Speaker 7 (30:36):
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 just being a person of color in that space.
(30:58):
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
(31:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Why don't you white girl is 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're talking about say a lot.
Speaker 7 (31:44):
I want to know what Jennifer has to say from
her research.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Though I thought Damona is basically saying there's a lot
of trouble, but though the white privilege is worth it.
Speaker 6 (31:58):
But we're joking about it.
Speaker 7 (32:01):
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
(32:21):
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.
Speaker 6 (32:41):
Absolutely, I've heard Roy, Wait, 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
(33:03):
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 of 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
(33:26):
that it's not. It's about familiarity and survival. And you know,
one thing that I always found really interesting too in
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,
(33:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
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.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
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
(34:49):
this is, as as Jennifer and Demona was saying, is that,
you know, you can't force people to date who they
do 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
(35:10):
of finding someone who they ultimately want to be with.
That's that's the ultimate goal here in my opinion.
Speaker 5 (35:14):
It's not trying to.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Force people at gunpoint to date the day 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.
Speaker 5 (35:27):
But very nice to speak to.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
All of you.
Speaker 6 (35:30):
Thank you beautifully, Sam.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
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
(35:54):
when you look at television shows, they've given us the
mold of what they believe or desigre iirable 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.
(36:17):
But how much does the media play in informing our
unconscious biases.
Speaker 7 (36:23):
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
(36:46):
we actually saw it.
Speaker 5 (36:47):
Well.
Speaker 7 (36:47):
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, it
(37:08):
was 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
(37:29):
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.
(37:50):
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 that's it's not being
(38:13):
reflected for them in mainstream content.
Speaker 6 (38:16):
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,
(38:41):
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
a store, saying white people looking for food, et cetera,
et cetera. And so you see just a very different yes, right, survival.
(39:04):
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
(39:26):
that we talk a lot about in our book, What have.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Been some of the victories? Give me some good news?
Are you seeing a shift because people approve of enterracial dating,
But is it actually happening. Have you seen any type
of shift in the dating trends, especially since COVID when
everybody was struck 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
(39:50):
in those days.
Speaker 7 (39:51):
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. At Okaycupid, we released sixty different gender and
(40:15):
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
(40:37):
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 like on okay Cupid,
black women are finding more success and women identifying as
(41:00):
black have been getting more matches in the past year,
and it's higher than any time in the past three years.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
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. Demana, I'll
start with you. You know, as a dating coach, how do
you encourage your clients to be race open? I guess
(41:27):
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?
Speaker 7 (41:35):
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.
Speaker 6 (41:59):
It was surprising to me.
Speaker 7 (42:00):
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
(42:21):
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
(42:42):
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.
So basically the answer to all questions is because racism.
(43:03):
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,
(43:24):
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.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
I 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
sisten 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 just this preconceived
(43:57):
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.
Speaker 7 (44:13):
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
is different than me and they reject me, it's because
(44:35):
I'm black. Was that ever a part of your thought process?
Speaker 1 (44:38):
No, but it never really gotten 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, Alabama.
Birmingham proper to Birmingham within the city limits is about
(44:59):
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. So whiteness was
(45:20):
never culturally. That just wasn't a theme 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 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
(45:42):
your upbringing was to break out of that to be
race open. I've never been race. I've never said no
white girl, but it was always just a black woman,
and it just always felt like a quick and easier
and simple fix. And 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.
(46:03):
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
(46:25):
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 to working. 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,
(46:48):
like with the algorithm, do they owe us the right
of transparency? And if they changed it, how would that
impact the user experience?
Speaker 6 (46:55):
Yeah, I think our first instinct is to always go
for the platforms and say, platforms need to change, I
need to do this in 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?
(47:20):
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 and 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,
(47:42):
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
(48:03):
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 an inward that race has so
little to do with finding a mate, and to really
(48:24):
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, just 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,
(48:46):
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 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
(49:08):
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
(49:32):
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.
Speaker 7 (49:49):
As someone who works with Okaycuban, I think those are
those are all great ideas, And I also want to
remind people 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
(50:11):
block and report and this is something that I'm always
telling my Dates and Maids 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.
Speaker 6 (50:28):
We take those reports very seriously.
Speaker 7 (50:31):
And as you said, as reports like that line up
then and we see a trend, that's when an algorithm
or are a feature gets released or an algorithm gets changed.
Speaker 6 (50:42):
And just one last thing I'll say.
Speaker 7 (50:43):
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
(51:05):
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.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
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
(51:45):
dot com, all of them should bang you for acting
a fool. You should be banished to Craigslist personals. You
know what's happening.
Speaker 7 (51:53):
People are just like putting you on blast on TikTok,
like that Western palist, like you can't get a date again,
tender swim worker.
Speaker 1 (52:03):
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 them
and see what happens. But again, can I help you?
I want to help you, white male, I'm signing rich
white Man. Yeah you know what, Yeah, bring me on
(52:24):
that date to Mate's podcast. I'll talk to you. We'll
figure out what going on.
Speaker 5 (52:28):
Come through.
Speaker 7 (52:29):
I think, give me, give me, just like.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
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.
Speaker 6 (52:44):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (52:48):
Listen to the daily Show beyond the scenes on Apple podcast,
the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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
(00:27):
movie for a bonus double feature. So now you get
to watch and see No 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 Jr. Today we are talking about a piece that
aired originally in twenty sixteen about online dating and sexual
(00:48):
racism and when dating preferences became a form of discrimination.
Roll the clip.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
As people of color, a lot of our problems stem
from racism, and.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Now a minorities that are having trouble getting late or
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.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
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.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
Not wanting to date someone because of skin color. That's
kind of the definition of racism.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Yeah, but all dating is discrimination, That's what it is.
Like this guy's too douchey, this dude's too sure.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
This woman won't pee on me. I mean what I mean,
she wouldn't pee by in the.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
You said p on me.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
It's called water sports.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
So you're looking for a term.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah, you know that, Yeah, I know, you know that.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
All we're talking about is the fact that we do
think about race when we're thinking about desire, and sometimes
it can be detri mental to people.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
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.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
Hey, good to see you.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Man.
Speaker 5 (02:12):
You can come back to the office.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
You know, maybe I don't know to come.
Speaker 5 (02:18):
Back in and if you actually miss me, you would
come back in.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
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?
Speaker 6 (02:35):
Hi there, I'm very happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
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. Domana,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 7 (02:52):
Thanks for having me, Royn.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Now, Ronnie, as I recall, 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.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, I can 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.
Speaker 5 (03:26):
It was like some hot data.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
And as you know, Roy, it's very rare to actually
do a doubleheader with two correspondents in 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
(03:48):
least desired demographics on the dating app. So we were like,
this is perfect, let's go talk about it. So it
fit like lego, so we just went to go do
the piece. We needed to talk to someone with insider
information about how online datos behave.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Like Christian Rutterer, he co founded okay Cupid and wrote
a whole book about dating statistics.
Speaker 8 (04:09):
We looked at who people messaged, who they matched with,
who they responded to.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
So you're like Edward Snowden, but for trying to put
pens in the genes sort of.
Speaker 8 (04:18):
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
(04:39):
of any group of.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
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. But how did
it feel running? How did it feel to know least desired?
Speaker 5 (04:58):
Okay, okay, relax on. First of all, that was news
to me.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Obviously in Asia, Asian man at least designed demographic.
Speaker 5 (05:07):
I think, although I have no I have.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
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,
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
(05:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
So what was it?
Speaker 5 (05:49):
To answer your question? It didn't feel good?
Speaker 1 (05:51):
What was more shocking finding out about Asian men or
black women in terms of I mean, I'm more surprised.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Hey, I'm 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.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
Us because because.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
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,
(06:35):
better than Asian men in my opinion, there's certain heroes
in American pop culture like Beyonce.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Even going back to Pam Greer and the Foxy Brown.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
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 us.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Have you have you ever used a dating app? I have.
I'll be honest, I'll speak freely. I've lived a life.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Ah you no, I got I got attached before the
dating app boom, so I skipped that whole thing, that
whole error for me. So I had to join dating
apps for this segment. You know, Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
That's interesting. You've met your wife the old fashioned way
through the personal ads in the newspaper.
Speaker 5 (07:24):
I respect that I met her old school.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
The old school A meeting her in at university you
get more school.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
That college costs too much to meet a wife.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
Now you can't.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
So Ronnie, did you download all the dating apps?
Speaker 5 (07:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:38):
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 this super exclusive
one fort.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Such a celebrity, and I couldn't get in.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
I couldn't get in.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
I got all, I got all the famous people I
knew to like recommend me, and I couldn't get in there.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
So I mean, that's some bias right there.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
If there's ever a proof of racial bias, the fact
that I couldn't get in this even though I had
I think.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
I got social capital.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
I don't want to blow.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Up anyone's 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.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Wait, why Grinder, what's going on with gay man too?
Speaker 5 (08:26):
Let's see what.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Thorough reporter over there?
Speaker 5 (08:29):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
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 calling to tell us their
(08:50):
stories about racial bias. And we got a ton of
phone calls, which was really interesting, and I think we
recorded it, but I don't know where that ever went.
We never did anything with it, but we had a
bunch of people calling and some people called in from jail,
some people called in from I mean, it was if
that was an old TV show on its own, Yeah,
tell us about racial bias. But yeah, dating apps are crazy.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
I think the only dating nep I ever did seriously
was e Harmony, back when that was the one back
in the day. Get 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
(09:33):
of their questions.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
And like basically even the Internet was old school back then,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 7 (09:39):
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 literally took hours.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
Yeah, college application.
Speaker 7 (09:53):
We've seen a huge change in the number of people
using dating apps just really since I mean, okay, cub
it has been has been around since two thousand and four,
but ever since Tinder launched in twenty twelve.
Speaker 6 (10:06):
That really changed the.
Speaker 7 (10:07):
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
(10:27):
so that's that's when it got crazy and the stigma.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
The 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?
Speaker 6 (10:43):
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 markets 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
(11:06):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
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?
(11:43):
Or is it all because we may have always stopt
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.
Speaker 6 (11:53):
Think about always the history in the United States, as
we had very rigidly enforced anti missagination 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
(12:13):
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
(12:33):
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?
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Right?
Speaker 6 (12:48):
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 were able to see not just what
(13:08):
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.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
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 it's an app where you can
accidentally click on a picture of a particular thing, and
(13:43):
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 It's not your fault that all of this
extra bekini P I'm sorry. How do the apps help
to perpetuate the issue?
Speaker 6 (14:02):
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
(14:23):
race in the algorithm, or it can be machine learning,
which is 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,
(14:46):
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
(15:09):
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,
(15:30):
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
(15:50):
think are manifesting in new ways.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
So, Demona, you're okqpit's official dating coach. Now, this segment
is about six years old. What can you update a
song with regardless to the stats and trends that you're
seeing amongst online datas is 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
(16:13):
the Black Instagram squares work? Demona?
Speaker 7 (16:18):
I'm not going to comment on the Black Instagram squares,
but what I could say it came together.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
De'monia, it's time, Kumaya.
Speaker 5 (16:25):
We're all on this together.
Speaker 7 (16:27):
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,
(16:50):
I met my husband online way before it was cool,
roy back in probably probably when 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
(17:12):
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.
Speaker 6 (17:28):
We want to put.
Speaker 7 (17:29):
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
(17:52):
beliefs that you come into dating apps with those are
going to be amplified because you's.
Speaker 5 (18:01):
Have it your way.
Speaker 7 (18:02):
You can 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
(18:24):
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
(18:46):
problem in America and it's really time that we pulled
back the curtain and examine that.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Let's go to a break. We'll be right back. We're
more beyond the scenes, Jennifer. Why do you think people
are so hesitant to have a conversation around this? Because
does the 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.
(19:13):
See Ronnie, so you're trying to make me look bad.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
No, No, I'm doing it because I remember your piece
you did on the racism.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Racism and porn. Yes, but people didn't even want to like, no, no,
I not want to date black with 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
(19:43):
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.
Speaker 6 (19:55):
Yes, 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
(20:15):
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
(20:39):
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 books said. But essentially, we're not arguing that individuals
(20:59):
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
(21:23):
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
(21:46):
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. And so that was kind
of something common that we would hear. Or someone would say, oh,
you know, I a white person, I never dated, you know,
(22:11):
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.
Speaker 7 (22:23):
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,
(22:44):
but they're like, oh but my my neighbor Gary across
the street, Well he's cool, Well he's fine. Well Beyonce,
because you know, I listen to her 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
(23:05):
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
(23:28):
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 there was a Gallup poll
that looked at approval of interracial marriages, and the most
recent poll said ninety four percent approof of interracial marriage
between black and white. This is a huge difference from like,
(23:49):
prior to nineteen fifty eight when they first did this,
did the study only four percent?
Speaker 5 (23:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (23:55):
Right, 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
(24:19):
pretty quickly.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
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.
Speaker 5 (24:32):
Like, we didn't really have a.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Chance to have each other's backs, so to speak, in
many issues, but this is one thing where we are like, now,
screw this, and then we went to go we went
to go fight people about it. I always think of
Roy did another piece on Surprise Surprise racism. You did
this early piece of Jordan Klepper about I remember.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
What the least bias?
Speaker 5 (24:53):
The least bias.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah, And one of the things I got away from
that that always stuck with me was this idea that
when you accused p Pole being racist, it really shuts
down the conversation because people get defensive about it.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
Yeah, but they are right.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
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
(25:30):
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
(25:50):
and be like, no one, no one's dating me. This
is disgusting. You guys are racist 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
castory too. Wait complaining about it as I can't speak
(26:12):
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.
Speaker 5 (26:21):
You just have to like deal with it.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
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
(26:47):
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, But 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
(27:09):
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.
Speaker 6 (27:25):
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
(27:47):
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
(28:09):
themselves have you know, are pretty resilient and have have
had success stories. They've it's just been a little harder, but.
Speaker 5 (28:19):
They kept with it. They kept with it.
Speaker 6 (28:22):
Well, that's right, they hung in there.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Let me ask you, Jennifer and Damona da'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 racists, but if we're talking just
straight up legit. Yes you are my girlfriend. Hey everyone,
(28:46):
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 vibes,
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
(29:07):
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
(29:28):
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
(29:49):
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? Roy running? I
see you looking at.
Speaker 5 (30:05):
Roy, you suck.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I'm just I'm just being terrible.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
You'll 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 the person
you're dating.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
Then too, kid, Then too You're like.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
It's extrapolating so far ahead about your kid in like
when he's ten he or she's ten years old?
Speaker 5 (30:29):
What am I going to do? So you're both like
you're thinking.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
There's no dating algorithm that can tell me what her
racial blind spots are.
Speaker 7 (30:36):
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 just being a person of color in that space.
(30:58):
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
(31:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Why don't you white girl is 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're talking about say a lot.
Speaker 7 (31:44):
I want to know what Jennifer has to say from
her research.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Though I thought Damona is basically saying there's a lot
of trouble, but though the white privilege is worth it.
Speaker 6 (31:58):
But we're joking about it.
Speaker 7 (32:01):
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
(32:21):
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.
Speaker 6 (32:41):
Absolutely, I've heard Roy, Wait, 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
(33:03):
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 of 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
(33:26):
that it's not. It's about familiarity and survival. And you know,
one thing that I always found really interesting too in
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,
(33:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
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.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
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
(34:49):
this is, as as Jennifer and Demona was saying, is that,
you know, you can't force people to date who they
do 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
(35:10):
of finding someone who they ultimately want to be with.
That's that's the ultimate goal here in my opinion.
Speaker 5 (35:14):
It's not trying to.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Force people at gunpoint to date the day 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.
Speaker 5 (35:27):
But very nice to speak to.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
All of you.
Speaker 6 (35:30):
Thank you beautifully, Sam.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
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
(35:54):
when you look at television shows, they've given us the
mold of what they believe or desigre iirable 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.
(36:17):
But how much does the media play in informing our
unconscious biases.
Speaker 7 (36:23):
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
(36:46):
we actually saw it.
Speaker 5 (36:47):
Well.
Speaker 7 (36:47):
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, it
(37:08):
was 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
(37:29):
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.
(37:50):
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 that's it's not being
(38:13):
reflected for them in mainstream content.
Speaker 6 (38:16):
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,
(38:41):
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
a store, saying white people looking for food, et cetera,
et cetera. And so you see just a very different yes, right, survival.
(39:04):
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
(39:26):
that we talk a lot about in our book, What have.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Been some of the victories? Give me some good news?
Are you seeing a shift because people approve of enterracial dating,
But is it actually happening. Have you seen any type
of shift in the dating trends, especially since COVID when
everybody was struck 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
(39:50):
in those days.
Speaker 7 (39:51):
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. At Okaycupid, we released sixty different gender and
(40:15):
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
(40:37):
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 like on okay Cupid,
black women are finding more success and women identifying as
(41:00):
black have been getting more matches in the past year,
and it's higher than any time in the past three years.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
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. Demana, I'll
start with you. You know, as a dating coach, how do
you encourage your clients to be race open? I guess
(41:27):
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?
Speaker 7 (41:35):
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.
Speaker 6 (41:59):
It was surprising to me.
Speaker 7 (42:00):
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
(42:21):
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
(42:42):
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.
So basically the answer to all questions is because racism.
(43:03):
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,
(43:24):
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.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
I 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
sisten 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 just this preconceived
(43:57):
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.
Speaker 7 (44:13):
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
is different than me and they reject me, it's because
(44:35):
I'm black. Was that ever a part of your thought process?
Speaker 1 (44:38):
No, but it never really gotten 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, Alabama.
Birmingham proper to Birmingham within the city limits is about
(44:59):
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. So whiteness was
(45:20):
never culturally. That just wasn't a theme 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 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
(45:42):
your upbringing was to break out of that to be
race open. I've never been race. I've never said no
white girl, but it was always just a black woman,
and it just always felt like a quick and easier
and simple fix. And 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.
(46:03):
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
(46:25):
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 to working. 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,
(46:48):
like with the algorithm, do they owe us the right
of transparency? And if they changed it, how would that
impact the user experience?
Speaker 6 (46:55):
Yeah, I think our first instinct is to always go
for the platforms and say, platforms need to change, I
need to do this in 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?
(47:20):
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 and 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,
(47:42):
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
(48:03):
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 an inward that race has so
little to do with finding a mate, and to really
(48:24):
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, just 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,
(48:46):
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 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
(49:08):
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
(49:32):
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.
Speaker 7 (49:49):
As someone who works with Okaycuban, I think those are
those are all great ideas, And I also want to
remind people 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
(50:11):
block and report and this is something that I'm always
telling my Dates and Maids 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.
Speaker 6 (50:28):
We take those reports very seriously.
Speaker 7 (50:31):
And as you said, as reports like that line up
then and we see a trend, that's when an algorithm
or are a feature gets released or an algorithm gets changed.
Speaker 6 (50:42):
And just one last thing I'll say.
Speaker 7 (50:43):
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
(51:05):
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.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
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
(51:45):
dot com, all of them should bang you for acting
a fool. You should be banished to Craigslist personals. You
know what's happening.
Speaker 7 (51:53):
People are just like putting you on blast on TikTok,
like that Western palist, like you can't get a date again,
tender swim worker.
Speaker 1 (52:03):
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 them
and see what happens. But again, can I help you?
I want to help you, white male, I'm signing rich
white Man. Yeah you know what, Yeah, bring me on
(52:24):
that date to Mate's podcast. I'll talk to you. We'll
figure out what going on.
Speaker 5 (52:28):
Come through.
Speaker 7 (52:29):
I think, give me, give me, just like.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
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.
Speaker 6 (52:44):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (52:48):
Listen to the daily Show beyond the scenes on Apple podcast,
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