Black Women, Love, Money, & A History of Reality Dating Shows

20 women on a quest to find true flavor you marry me for a wider black girl a white girl like girls white white white they gonna listen you went from a black woman to a white woman without having to take that Hispanic woman step in between Rachel is a total package she's the triple threat brains beauty personality I want to know that a girl can keep my house clean would you date a bus driver if he owns the bus if he owns it if he owns the bus that's a problem don't you know that a man being rich

is like a girl being pretty 50 women will compete to marry a mystery multi-millionaire she won't meet him till they say I do I like to do a lot of fun things that do require money like shopping for diamonds traveling first class probably would not date somebody who is Blue Collar but a man earning the kind of money you're talking about does not go for an average looking woman your average looking at best [Music] keep it real I got tired of seeing the names Micah Kwame and Marshall on my timelin

e with no explanation I was like who the are these people they are cast members of season four of Netflix's Mega Smash Hit Love is Blind the show places desperate singles in pods and lets them talk to each other through speakers with the end goal of getting engaged and ultimately married along with these names I've seen recurring criticism about the ways in which black women fare on dating shows bits of controversy from the show's final episodes and reunion led me to research and write this vide

o especially because I'm working on a larger piece about black women in reality TV because the last dating shows I watched for the VH1 ones I consumed as a youth I thought it would be interesting to watch a season of The Bachelorette and love is blind as an adult and re-watch Flavor of Love while the shows weren't that interesting Love is Blind was egregiously over long in The Bachelorette nearly bored me to tears what I've researched is fascinating because this video was originally supposed to

be 20 minutes I fully admit reality TV is very contrived and mostly fake it's still a reflection of reality and in a country where approximately 130 million adults read below a sixth grade level and 52 percent of Americans watch at least one hour of reality TV a week visual media can be a powerful shaper of values and beliefs what's the history of reality dating shows what do dating shows reflect and project about black women's real life desirability how are dating shows exploitative and manipul

ative what's with all these rushed to the altar shows in this video we'll be talking about finding love on reality TV hypergamy and black women's desirability by examining the phenomenons of the bachelor Flavor of Love And Love is Blind in some scandals and trivia along the way [Music] thanks [Music] before I begin shout out to this video's sponsor vegetated for my long time viewers you already know about vegetated from my past videos on a black women's history of burlesque and history videos on

oral sex and masturbation vegetated is committed to inclusive and expert-based knowledge about your sexual wellness and journey while we'll be talking about romantic love in this video primarily through a black woman's perspective it's masturbation May over on vegetated one of the things that gives me confidence in dating and in my romantic relationships is knowing that the way I love and take care of myself sets the bar for who I entertain plus knowing what I like in bed makes it easier to tea

ch a new partner what I like in bed we should all prioritize our own personal well-being and nurture our self-esteem and have the language to do so self-love is the most premium kind of love there is and educated can help you tap in and I'm not just talking about slinging your jelly or slinging Your Juice in addition to thorough courses on navigating your self-pleasure journey and having vulva orgasms there are courses on building your sexual confidence sexual healing and taking control of your

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in my description box and tell them Alexis sent you foreign dating shows have been around in some form or the other since the days of radio but started on TV in the 1960s there was the dating game which premiered in 1965. both shows were a similar format to Love is Blind contestants were hidden from sight while a potential partner vetted their personality before a date a dating game would air until 1999 and became a cultural Touchstone utilized in sitcoms and parodied the novelty of dating on T

V was still so fresh that the gimmick wasn't an instant marriage you were just meeting total strangers let's see back to number one is a successful photographer who got his start when his father found him in the dark room at the age of 13 fully developed tapes he might find him skydiving or motorcycling please welcome Rodney Alcala infamously a serial killer named Rodney Alcala appeared on The Dating Game In 1978 while he was in the midst of killing people which shows how little contestants were

vetted he had been convicted of raping a child in 1968 and the show still introduced him as an eligible bachelor and photographer who enjoyed skydiving or motorcycling the woman he won the date with refused to go out with him because she correctly surmised he was creepy and he continued on to kill more people before being arrested in 1979. this wasn't the last time a killer would end up on a dating show nor would it stop the Hunger for this entertainment in 1983 love connection debuted and ran

in its original format until 1994 and has been brought back multiple times love connection would even dangle the offer of a ten thousand dollar cash prize to contestants from the beginning these shows included a sense of Comedy that signaled that they weren't meant to be taken all that seriously many of the people who appeared on these dating shows were actors or models actively trying to break into Hollywood and TV backed up by the fact that several love connection clips on YouTube have been up

loaded by former actors and models these dating shows were often career Stepping Stones of exposure not to be taken seriously they weren't as popular as any other game show like Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune because they were competitions and humans we love watching competition another popular and non-serious dating show to emerge during this era was blind date which premiered in 1999 but sadly for These reality show contestants there was no social media Fame waiting at the end of their appearan

ces from the original 1999 to 2006 run of blind date a total of two couples eventually married after the show but by the 2000s dating shows were in for an infusion of gimmicks and Desperation especially as networks look to fund cheap reality shows over expensive scripted ones during the presidency of George W bush there was intense debate over the sanctity of marriage especially after Massachusetts ruled that denying marriage rights to gay couples violated their constitution it became the first

state to license and recognize same-sex marriage spurning conservative backlash about the importance of reserving marriage for men and women while these battles raged on marriage was being pimped on Prime Time television first there was who Wants to Marry a multi-millionaire playing off of the newly popular Who Wants To Be A Millionaire when it aired on February 15 2000 in a two-hour special over 22 million households tuned in but not without intense criticism in the months before and after wrot

e a disgusted columnist 50 female contestants vied for the honor of marrying a man they had never seen all they knew about him was that he's really rich and he's weird enough to Wed a stranger whose only interest in him is monetary the columnist added for centuries it was parents not TV networks who arrange marriages others liken the series to green lighting sex work but there was a problem with the multi-millionaire Bachelor who Fox claimed had 750 000 in liquid assets and a two million dollar

net worth Not only was Rick Rockwell a struggling comedian not making nearly a million a year but his ex-girlfriend had filed a restraining order against him for violent Behavior Next Entertainment The Producers reported that they had no way of finding the restraining order because of a Fair Credit Reporting Act loophole darba Conger a 35 year old emergency department nurse was the winner of the show and she was upset when he forcibly kissed her on stage the two were immediately married and sent

on a honeymoon to Barbados where the marriage went unconsummated upon their return Conger immediately got an annulment and sold her engagement ring when she posed for Playboy shortly after her appearance on the show she was dragged in the media while box never went forward with another season of the show they like other network Works wanted to scale back big budget productions for reality TV and who Wants to Marry a Millionaire was just the beginning Fox followed it up with temptation Island wh

ich threw couples on an island with tons of alcohol and other couples to test their loyalties it wasn't a popular concept that Drew out many couples while Fox had 6 000 applicants for the first season of Survivor for instance there were only 250 applicants for Temptation Island so in 2002 producer Mark Fleiss brought the bachelor to life Monday March 25th ABC presents the classic story of Boy Meets Girl Meets Girl Meets Girl Meets Girl Meets Girl Meets Girl Meets Girl Meets Girl boy picks one gi

rl to hopefully become his wife it retained the competitive Spirit of Who Wants to Marry a multi-millionaire but became much more about romance and aligned with middle class values it is the longest running and most popular dating show and has created its own lane of Niche celebrity for a committed group of fans called Bachelor Nation throughout the show's run however it's been very white the black women and other minorities have been added as background filler throughout the show's run they alw

ays got eliminated early on after a failed discrimination suit against the producers in 2012 by black men upset that they weren't cast in the lead roles producers sprinkled in more minorities like parsley not that it changed much a 2016 Splinter study found that 59 of black contestants up to that point were kicked off of the show in the first two weeks Salon found that in 31 seasons of The Bachelor in the spin-off The Bachelorette only four winners could partially claim white ancestry and all we

re biracial and Asian the first black lead of The Bachelorette was Rachel Lindsay a lawyer and daughter of the U.S District Court Judge who had made it in the final three during her season of The Bachelor the move was cheered on in the industry as black women finally getting representation on the long whitewash show while a 2015 study says black women are 59 more likely to watch reality TV than other women in a 2014 study said black women watch 14 more hours a week of TV 80 percent of the bachel

or and bachelorette viewership is white so during Rachel Lindsay's season in 2017 viewership plummeted during the premiere and for the rest of the season and we gonna be coming back to miss Rachel Lindsay two years after the bachelor premiered in 2002 Bush announced that he supported a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage right before kicking off his successful re-election campaign though they would zero in on gays and lesbians who desired marriage conservatives and homophobes who could

watch shows like who Wants to Marry a multi-millionaire in The Bachelor we're cool with Merit being for TV ratings and profit and why wouldn't they be most serious dating shows showcase heterosexuality typical gender roles hypergamy or marrying or forming a sexual relationship with a person of a superior sociological or educational background and or capitalist rituals of Love Like lavish gifts and travel of course any show that makes love and near instantaneous marriage between heterosexual coup

les its primary objective has misogynistic implications and overtures when flavor of won in March 2006 it was touted by some as the black bachelor but as many of us who first watched the series unfold on screen will tell you there were major glaring differences first I don't think anybody watching seriously believed any woman competing wanted to marry Flav except maybe Tiffany Pollard I'm not going to hold you secondly Flav real name William Drayton took the women's names and replaced them with

objectifications like boots delicious and nibbles who has the softest chest I like soft chest next explain producer Mark Cronin I produce Flavor of Love a show on VH1 in which 20 women competed to date the Public Enemy hype man Flavor Flav those women believed he was rich after all he was famous and that they were living in his mansion in fact he was not long out of jail for not paying parking tickets he had very little income we rented the mansion from a nice family in Encino on The Bachelor in

Bachelorette there's travel lavish dates and a big ass budget meanwhile VH1 had the flavor women squatting four to six Tour room and had them going to work home at last Friends The Bachelors were gainfully employed middle class to upperclassmen perpetuating white Christian heteronormativity and talking about how much they cherish their families and desired commitment and romance slave was the first hype man in hip-hop a part of revolutionary group Public Enemy with a lengthy arrest record and e

ight children by the time in the 2000s he was more known for appearing in VH1 Surreal Life and getting into an entanglement with Brigitte Nielsen an actress and ex-wife of Sylvester Stallone their relationship was toxic to say the least and would prove to be a gold mine for VH1 when Flavor of Love debuted some viewed it as the black bachelor and others viewed it as a former revolutionary artist in sellout becoming a Minstrel Act and the show had number one ratings with black Americans aged 18 to

45. seriously everybody was talking about this show when it first dropped adding to the menstrual C allegations were the activities the women were made to perform in challenges from dining them at KFC to making them take care of kids to working at restaurants to entertaining his friends to most egregiously having them clean up the filthy leftovers of a house party at Warren G's mansion and that's going to hold the foot down when I in the valley you know what I'm saying you know I want a woman t

hat's going to be a queen just as much as I am a king class and that's going to do her thing that's right around the brain yeah even when I stopped to sing you know what I mean that makes mad sense that makes sense the mostly Black cast was reduced to house servant Nanny and Maid said flave I want to know that a girl can keep my house clean this is extremely different from The Bachelor where there are lavish dates as well as less demeaning challenges all of this matters because white viewers who

don't know black people in real life often accept These reality shows as the norm by the same token the white version of the show Rock of Love would reinforce stereotypes about lower class white women another horrible thing I notice about Flavor of Love was that the women were expected to kiss and often have sex to stay in the house flave kicked out tiger in season two for not kissing him in later boots for claiming to be selling bit Additionally the women of Flavor of Love didn't have the same

expectations of privacy as Bachelor women as slave was regularly seen walking in and out of their rooms and even in the bathrooms as they showered lastly because of the status of slaves his past instances of domestic violence as well as his drug problems and Squad of children the women themselves were seen as trashy in reviews of the show The Women many of whom were aspiring actresses singers video vixens or actual sex workers were dragged as being equally matched for flave even the white women

I'm looking at you the racist pumpkin in the culturally appropriating Buckwild ew and I ain't forget you Apple I thought I might fit in with the other women I wasn't sure how ghetto some people might be but they weren't seen as prizes all of them were dragged mercilessly along with Flav during 2007's The Comedy Central Roast of Flavor Flav though they did get a d-list category of Fame that allowed them networking and career opportunities and further casting on VH1 shows the first season finale

of Flavor of Love Brought in nearly 6 million viewers making it the highest rated program for VH1 on the sister channel MTV non-serious dating shows like Knicks room Raiders and parental control were also airing BT the Black Entertainment Television channel wasn't really interested in cornering the market on black dating shows because all they gave us was Hell Date which was a prank show and it was awful but the popularity of Flavor of Love which was palpable in my youth changed the TV landscape

forever first of all it would lead to a shift in more black people starring in reality shows of all genres networks now saw big money when black people were involved secondly it spawned a celebrity dating show Universe for VH1 including two direct sequels multiple spin-offs starring Tiffany New York Pollard a white version Rock of Love starring washed up rock star Brett Michaels For the Love of Ray J real chance of Love MTV's a shot of love with Tila Tequila notable for being the first series w

ith a bisexual and Asian American lead and eventually Megan wants a millionaire in 2009. we'll be coming back to New York in Charm School in an upcoming video but there are a couple of things to say about Megan once a millionaire starring Megan hauserman who appeared on Rock of Love and Rock of Love charm school and got dowels with a drink by a hypocritical Sharon Osborne first it's interesting and telling to me that New York's show was filled with average men and wannabe actors who stood to ben

efit from her Fame and connections remember Frank the Entertainer who lived in his parents basement they set her up with him meanwhile Megan's show was mostly verified millionaires whose goal was to turn her into a trophy wife for Gammy has always been a contentious subject in the black community and it's looked at differently for white women who have been more easily able to move between classes via marriage hypergamy has been explored in literature in film like Becky sharp in Vanity Fair who w

as an anti-heroine to the 20th century heroines in the movie's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and how to Marry a Millionaire honestly honestly the nerve to stand there and expect me to believe that you don't want to marry my son for his money it's true then what do you want to marry him for I want to marry him for your money girl being pretty you might not marry a girl just because she's pretty but my goodness doesn't it help and if you had a daughter wouldn't you rather she didn't marry a poor man yo

u'd wanted to have the most wonderful things in the world and to be very happy oh why is it wrong for me to want those things though to be clear both the black and white upper classes usually marry within their own class reserving successful hypergamy for the most conventionally attractive beneficiaries of the patriarchy in the orbit of supremely wealthy men I.E celebrities models Etc not average women Fox Executives made fun of hypergamous average women in their 2003 show Joe Millionaire by hav

ing a group of women compete for a man they believed to be a millionaire but who was actually a construction worker the show made fun of their hypergamous desires and raked in cash for Fox free the Americans watching the joke was these women being open gold diggers for a man with no gold so clearly hypergamy has never been accessible to all white women but it still happens and it's increasingly a dating style some women subscribe to in the black community calls for black women to only date up ha

ve been getting stronger in defiance of traditional Notions that we should resist being gold diggers poor misguided Souls on Tick Tock have advised women to engage in a remix of sex worker fishing eating in restaurants and attempting to get random men to pay for their meal like that that's that's they're trying to manifest their own millionaire or billionaire often off the strength of repeated stories that include the rapper and actress Eve who used to be a stripper marrying a billionaire Kimora

Lee Simmons who at 17 began dating her future ex-husband 35 year old multi-millionaire Russell Simmons and Meghan Markle and Prince Harry or Lauren Sanchez snagging multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos but all of these women had vast social and or erotic Capital as well as being relatively wealthy in their own right before they got these men recently there have been arguments over a formerly poor woman turned celeb dating a rich basketball player rapper or in the case of karish and young Miami Brownlee

dating Millie millionaire Sean Diddy Combs about whether or not it's true hypergamy it depends on who you ask the line between what constitutes sex work and what constitutes hypergamy is thin and usually comes in the form of a wedding ring nuptials and an advantageous or non-existent prenup strike strict hypergamous have their eyes on men who come from old and or professional money not knowing these are the ones least likely to marry out before feminism women who sought to marry up were more li

kely to be seen as devious but in the 20th century as shown in those movies I mentioned earlier depending on the financial care of a man was presented as a more traditional and correct route than a woman making her own money and being independent but it was repackaged as a tremendous privilege when the second wave of feminism from the late 60s and 70s called for economic independence and political and social equality it caused anti-feminists like Phyllis Schlafly to oppose the Equal Rights Amend

ment on the basis that it would take away women's privileges of being stay-at-home wives and mothers these are many of the same women who would oppose reparations regulating banks that peddle loans to black families and and supported their male husband's agendas to deny Justice and financial Equity to black people so the modern Trad wife or traditional wife movement being mostly pushed by white women who desire to be stay-at-home wives and mothers showcases the glaring difference between white a

nd black women's histories the Trad life has often been denied black women who have been working in some capacity since first being enslaved in this country in 1619. consider this in 1880 35.4 percent of married black women and 73.3 percent of single black women were in the labor force compared with only 7.3 percent of married white women and 23.8 percent of single white women and often in the past those traditional wives depended on the labor of black women when black women desire a traditional

marriage with the financially secure man who pays the bills she's usually seen as a gold digger lazy and or unrealistic to a degree it is unrealistic to think that we can all have Ballers because of racial wealth inequality there are less black men who can offer the kinds of Lifestyles highly coveted on social media you know being flued out on private jets taking on private trips limousines and getting bought a Tesla for your birthday or just because it's Tuesday and walking into a room with he

ll of flowers and hella money everywhere and stuff yet not everybody's getting that after all just 30 to 31 percent of black households make over seventy five thousand dollars a year just 20 percent make over a hundred thousand and because of inequities in housing Banking and business we know that isn't the same one hundred thousand dollars white people make but let me emphasize black women aren't villains for Desiring Financial stability equally matched Partners or even a partner who pays all t

he bills that shouldn't be controversial but I'm sure my comments are gonna say otherwise so it wasn't surprising that New York the queen of 2000's reality TV was simply looking for love and then she got sent literally to work in spin-offs after the fact while Megan got to fill the role of a blonde Trophy and Megan wants a millionaire but the show wouldn't pay off much for VH1 before the entire series could air a contestant named Ryan Jenkins who placed third in the show married a model named Ja

smine Fiore in Vegas after two days of dating within months there were pending charges of domestic violence against him and he eventually murdered her and killed himself VH1 stopped airing Megan wants a millionaire when the news broke and canceled plans to run season three of I love money which Jenkins won but it also came to light that Jenkins had been convicted two years earlier for assaulting a woman in Canada VH1 had hired a private investigation firm to do background checks on all the conte

stants in a Canadian firm they outsourced to never brought up his conviction VH1 dodged legal accountability but as a blogger pointed out the network has built a brand on unstable crazy people people interacting on these idiotic and Mindless dating shows and can't pretend to not have anything to do with it the tidal wave of VH1 celebrity dating shows and the I love money and Charm School editions that all mutated from Flavor of Love came to an end but the dating show would again evolve first of

all the renewed importance of stringent background checks and exhaustive mental evaluations would make filming these shows safer but it also armed production with explosive tea that can and is used to trigger contestants for good ratings next the celebrity dating show became passe the dating shows of the early 2010s reflected the post-2009 recession World featuring average people but with more gimmicks in a country increasingly dominated by social media though were a few small sad exceptions lik

e ultimate merger in which Donald Trump picked 12 men and all black mix of wannabes entrepreneurs and Alby Shore for The Apprentice star Omarosa manigal to date Omarosa chose nobody from the cast and Takara Jones from America's Next Top Model starred in the next and final season does anybody remember this show letting Donald Trump play matchmaker for you is absolutely wild it couldn't be me in 2014 Married at First Sight debuted on lifetime average people not celebrities or wannabe actors were s

et up with strangers by a panel of experts with 14 couples eventually marrying and still being together today over 11 Seasons the show has a 20 success rate I'm gonna warn you guys now this next segment might piss a few people off if you're one of those people who gets in their feelings about the next segment you might want to chill out and touch yourself let me remind you that for the rest of the month you can get 50 off the vegetated yearly pass with my coupon code Alexis you can try all veget

ated courses and there are over a hundred of them for one day free do you want to ramp up your solo sex get better with a partner or do you want to pick up a new skill like striptease go get educated remember you won't get charged for the first 24 hours and you can cancel anytime there's no risk because there's a 14 day money back guarantee use the link in my description box and celebrate for masturbation May throughout the history of competitive dating shows there have been complaints about bla

ck women not being chosen or taken seriously how important is representation in dating shows for women who do watch these shows and who are also romantic in their own lives their desire to be represented is valid and I think they're fusing with anxieties over modern dating statistics and demographics if you only get on social media and you're constantly cocooned by images of famous black athletes with white women passport Bros and romantic divestment girlies declaring they'll find love only with

other races and troubling podcasts and Tick Tock videos in which people berate black women things could seem rather dire and statistics do back up black women's anxieties about desirability and whether or not we are marriage material according to the Barcelona School of economics in 2018 62 percent of white women between ages 25 and 54 were married in the U.S compared to only 32 percent of black women according to the U.S census in 1970 35.6 percent of black men and 27.7 percent of black women

were never married but by 2020 these percentages had jumped to 51.4 percent for black men and 47.5 percent for black women and overall 30 percent of African Americans are married compared to 43 percent of Hispanics 52 percent of whites and 58 percent of Asians of course these statistics omit lesbian black women in marriages and long-term Partnerships plus not every black woman wants to get married there's an extensive study by Brookings that found that lower marriage rates aren't hurting black w

omen's Mobility but these aren't the only reasons why the racial marriage Gap is so large roughly a quarter of black women identify as lesbian or bisexual meaning approximately three in four are straight affecting their chances at marriage if they desire it is the underemployment of black men and mass incarceration secondly men of all Races are less likely to propose marriage when they aren't able to afford a wife and family and let's be very clear that in most cases marriage is the man's decisi

on to initiate lastly a small chunk of the marriage Gap can be attributed to black men's intermarriage rate they're twice as likely to marry outside of their race than black women with 24 percent of Black married men doing so I don't subscribe to the belief that black men don't love black women anymore why I prefer black girls oh that's the culture that's why I was raised around beautiful black women during my time in Charlotte Atlanta Ohio and New York I have always seen black love a lot and it

's beautiful but I'm not blindly naive about the data more High status black men are dating out leaving more black women to also date out so when it comes to straight and bisexual black women's dating choices we're traversing a Minefield first many of us are told that we need to pursue marriage and children to enrich our race and keep our population growing so that we remain a sizable portion of the electorate if we forgo partnership and raise children ourselves we are painted as destroying the

black community by not allowing men to lead a belief that has persisted since Daniel Patrick moynihan's Infamous 1965 report at the same time who we decide to marry and procreate with is further held up to scrutiny if poor black women attempt hypergaming with high status men defined as Highly Educated growing up middle class cetera they are derided as delusional gold diggers meanwhile middle-class black women with degrees who still want black love are told to date down if they want a chance The

Brookings study found that black women tend to create families with black men who do poorly on both individual and family income and thus bring down the family income results for black women this study is always cited when black women are told to consider dating out in equal numbers to black men on the occasions when a highly educated black woman dates a felon or someone who makes less money than her and is financially scammed abused or even murdered people say she should have known better and a

s explored and we need to talk about black femicide black women are approximately 53 percent of the women murdered by their Partners in a gear we can't underestimate how much the decline in marriage is by women rightfully seeing that a guy is trouble and being like nah I don't want no parts of it if a black woman does not want to date down and gets no play from equally matched black men she dates out and is called a traitor in a winch and while dating out her chances of finding love are Slimmer

than black men and white asian and Latino women who date out from their respective races in addition to the stats about interracial marriage numerous surveys polls and podcasts showcase misogynistic and racist opinions that black women are seen as less desirable than other women by men who are actively seeking marriage if you don't believe me they in the comments right now them little fingers is just the type and they talking all kinds of right now in 2014 okcupid's co-founder Christian Rutter f

ound that user data showed that most men on the site rated black women as less attractive than women of other races and ethnicities summarize Time Magazine Asian Latin and white men tend to give black women 1 to 1.5 Stars less while black men's ratings of black women are more consistent with their ratings of all Races of women but women who are Asian and Latina receive higher ratings from all men in some cases even more so than white women lastly colorism plays an undeniable role in black women'

s marriage possibilities Dr Derek Hamilton provided research finding that 55 percent of light-skinned women were married while only 23 percent of dark-skinned women had jumped the broom he pointed to upwardly mobile black men's tendency to marry light or white as a factor this is The Bleak backdrop for black women who are romantic looking for marriage with men and or into dating shows and that we ain't even talking about like body size and how we wear our hair all of these things that we're cons

tantly judged on that's all a backdrop tweeted user Aya Marie how does Netflix continue to cast black men who don't prefer to date unambiguous black women on their dating shows a sentiment I've seen by UK and USA viewers of Love Island where couples are competing for a hundred thousand dollars and of course love is blind the premise of lib is like the dating game on steroids but it's also proof that this type of show really isn't new instead of getting to know someone you can't see in front of a

studio audience you spend at least 30 hours in pods with a variety of people before deciding whether or not to commit to a marriage with someone you've never seen the gimmick is portrayed as being different from any other dating show though contestants are predictably plied with alcohol pushed and prodded by production and allegedly being denied sleep love is blind premiered in 2020 on Netflix right before the pandemic sequestered most of us into our homes for lockdown leading to approximately

30 million viewers watching within four weeks of the premiere subsequent seasons have garnered record viewership including the recent season 4. describe Julia Jacobs for the New York Times Kim Kardashian lizzo Billy Ellis and Daniel Radcliffe are among the show's celebrity fans and contestants have built gigantic social media followings with one married participant from season in one Lauren speed Hamilton reaching 2.5 million followers on Instagram Lauren married a white man named Cameron and wo

uld later complain about the lack of black women on the show she tweeted I don't like how lib be cutting all the black women how come they're always in the trailer but not the show on the season that I watched for research one of The Season's leads Kwame Appiah explained why he was ready to join the show and find his wife he said they wasn't allowed to go to prom with his girlfriend because he was black implying that the show was enabling him to fulfill his dream of searching for a white mate wi

thout interference like so many before him he coveted a specific race Jagged hairline aside herein lies one of the flaws of the Love is Blind social experiment because most people can clock the race of the person they're talking to quickly it becomes evident that Kwame is looking for white women specifically rather than connecting with who a person is inside Love is Blind my ass like I just want you to be honest about it now's a good time to bring up the first black bachelor Matt James whose sea

son aired in 2021 shortly before he was announced a former Bachelor casting director demanded diversity in an open letter the only black women that were picked to be in the running had weaves are chemically straightened hair we're ethnically ambiguous or were not considered if they were too black women with afros braids locks Etc weren't even given a chance because of the white standards of beauty so for James's season a record-breaking 25 women of color plus 12 white women were cast of those 25

only eight were unambiguously black an Instagram account called Bachelor data tracked which women were getting the most air time and one-on-one dates unsurprisingly black women were jilted as the son of a black father and a white mother Matt James went on to have two mixed women and a white woman in his final three the white woman Rachel Kirk Connell won and when the season aired it was revealed that she was an attendee of Plantation balls Bachelor host Chris Harrison in a contentious interview

with Rachel Lindsay argued that the racist Rachel should be granted understanding Grace and compassion leading to his eventual firing Matt James forgave his Confederate Queen and they continued their relationship anyway as for Rachel Lindsay the first black bachelorette she also chose a non-black partner the colombian-american Brian aboslo who she was clearly in love with from day one would Ryan have had more competition for Rachel's affections if there had been more eligible black Bachelors fr

om the upwardly mobile lawyer producers only gave her 10 black men to choose from and several of them did not date black women as Rachel would later recall in an interview with zeeway I also learned as I was going through my season that several of the black men on my season didn't date black women The Producers thought it would be interesting and intentionally lessen the odds of creating a black Love Story by offering up a bunch of white men one of whom would later be revealed to liken the NAACP

to the KKK and they called this diversity the next black bachelorette Tasha Adams had six total black contestants and she also chose a white partner will Bachelor Nation ever see a black lead choose a black love interest from a mostly Black cast do they even want to again eighty percent of the viewership is white would most of those people watch couples that are exclusively black the way they watch exclusively white couples the answer is no interracial couples with one white partner are the pro

fitable and Progressive middle ground this is part of a broader trend of interracial couples rising in media from the obsession over Bridgerton to all of the mixed couples and AD campaigns and of course they represent a growing part of American society but it's also the easiest way for companies to pretend to be Progressive and diverse while shunting representation of black love and families which we haven't had much of to the side it's also lining up with calls for black women to date out as mu

ch as black men do there's a predominantly black love show on OWN called Ready to Love which premiered in 2018 and is geared towards an older crowd at least one couple has gotten married from the show in a couple of episodes are available on YouTube the few scenes I saw were interesting and potentially problematic but I love the representation and the variety of body types and shades of brown meanwhile there is one black couple to root for on Love is Blind Brett and Tiffany though some viewers h

ave pointed out that they receive less air time than other couples though I think everybody got too much air time that show was too long I kept watching it and I'm just like when is this gonna end eventually Kwame picked the white woman who was his runner-up choice to another white woman and for those who've watched the show it's clear he's putting on for the cameras because Love is Blind Fame is proving to be lucrative but I swear they are so fake it gives me secondhand embarrassment contestant

s are racking up social media followers sponsorships and publicity opportunities this the kind of stuff that people who appeared on blind date and love connection would have loved but they didn't have the internet on their side on the flip side the show like all reality TV and the social media age can bring scrutiny and hate in the contract Love is Blind contestant sign according to Insider they acknowledge that being on Love is Blind might destroy their reputations the contract says appearing o

n the show May expose information that is personal private surprising defamatory disparaging embarrassing or unfavorable and open them up to public ridicule humiliation or condemnation nobody learned this harsh lesson on season four of Love is Blind quite like Marshall glaze who was humiliated and called sweet and had his sexuality questioned by his former fiance Jackie a Latina and he temporarily had the support of black women when those texts came out very quickly old tweets were dug up from h

is account in 2014 when he was approximately 19 showcasing his contempt for black women talking about our lack of a marriage rate and also his fetishization of Latinas shocked I'm shocked [Music] in this video we have explored the ways that dating shows have exploited some of our biggest anxieties and controversies we've also documented the racism and colorism and dating shows that reflects larger beliefs about black women's desirability I acknowledge my bias as someone who does not date out fro

m my own personal reasons but I'm not trying to get people to stop watching these shows or trying to convince anybody to divest or date anybody I'm just observing clocking and recording this as is I think that part of the popularity of Love is Blind in addition to being a lockdown hit is that downward Trends in marriage are a source of anxiety rush to alter shows like love is blind and Married at First Sight can offer a bit of optimism while still providing the hit of dopamine many people have a

lways enjoyed like in romance novels and movies in the future I'm curious to see how anxieties around interracial dating black women's desirability feminism and hypergamy will play out in reality dating shows as the mixed race population in this country continues to grow it's estimated that the current multi-racial population size will triple by 2060. what do you think the dating scene and by extension dating shows will be like by then let me know in the comments I think dating shows along with

Trad wife creators and alpha male Kevin Samuels s content on social media will thrive in this decade as our country's population and racial and gender anxieties change in a backlash to sex positivity gender fluidity and more black women refusing to settle content that reinforces traditional families and black women's subordination will flourish and because of the increase of mixed race pairs the media will continue to prioritize mixed couples with a white partner over monoracial minority couples

this might also be reflected in dating shows with more instant marriage formats only time will tell I hope you liked this video I wanted to do something a little different do a little rant talk about a little bit of reality TV be sure to keep an eye out for an in-depth video on black women in reality TV soon and also be sure to like this video And subscribe and know black women don't have to lower their standards for anybody [Music] [Music]