Online Dating and Racism

A hotbed of misogynoir and fetishisation

Hello friends,

A while back I came across an article about racism in online dating. I was appalled though not totally surprised.

My own experience with online dating comes from a more innocent time, relatively speaking. I met my husband on a site that was very 90s - coloured background, a few links and no pictures. There was limited messaging, too. In my experience at least, that cut down on the potential for racism.

It’s very different now. These days, there are a wealth of dating apps, but these seem to have made dating life even harder for Black people, and Black women in particular.

I’ve read a number of articles on this, written by Black people from different parts of the world and they all have two themes in common:

• Black people are both hypervisible and invisible at the same time.

• Black women have it worst of all.

Here are some of the things I learned: