That’s not to say there still aren’t people who, bafflingly, think that it’s OK to write that in a profile, but it seems less prevalent these days.
The same for “No fats, no femmes, no Asians” (which has been around for decades, migrating from newspaper personal ads in their paid classified listings). As more people - particularly white dudes who were the objects of this pointed attraction - started calling out these profiles for their blatant racism, the less and less “whites only” appeared.
These modern-day sexual Jim Crows defended their stance as a “preference,” as if one’s race was mutable or a choice. But this wasn’t Alabama or Arkansas this was Brooklyn and Manhattan - and sometimes less than 100 feet away. A disturbing amount of profiles declared “WHITES ONLY,” something I hadn’t seen outside of Jim Crow photos of water fountains in the South. But the scariness of the apps was in how comfortable people felt in being truly awful when there was no one publicly holding them accountable. I first started using dating apps when Grindr began crawling out of the primordial sea of 2009, since they seemed like a less-scary version of flirting with a guy in a loud, dark, sweaty bar. Yet, in other hands, this feature amounted to little less than institutionalized racial profiling. Some folks of color were able to use this feature to find a friendly face on the apps, in what can be a sea of white torsos, or in the real world, in a town palpably lacking in visible diversity. The ethnicity feature in these apps - either built into the operating system or a bonus benefit that came with an additional subscription fee - allowed users to search for people by race, as narrowly defined by the app creators. And really tricky when we get into questions about whether or not racially-driven partner selection practices are ‘acceptable’ for racial/ethnic groups that are traditionally oppressed, versus the majority group.” “But this is so subtle that it’s not immediately apparent what impact such an implicit message could have. “As for potential benefits, removing ethnicity filters does implicitly promote the idea that race should not be a criteria for partner selection,” Wade adds. He does note that if, by removing these filters, “the frequency with which POC are subject to erotic objectification” is reduced, then it could actually be worthwhile. Wade also points out that people who block out people of color with an ethnicity filter are not somehow only rendered visible to white people, which could then lead them to perpetrate “overt” or “covert” discriminatory acts when responding. “If, for some reason, they are compelled to do so, then I would be cautious about whether or not they should, if they do indeed hold prejudicial attitudes towards POC.” “It’s unclear whether or not users who are seemingly uninterested in people of color (POC) would now be compelled to interact with POC because they can longer remove them from their grid,” Wade explains via email.