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PORTSIDE CULTURE

SHOULD BLACK WOMEN STOP GOING ON LOVE IS BLIND?  
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Fabiola Cineas
March 16, 2024
Vox
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_ AD’s journey underscores the Netflix hit’s (Love Is Blind)
misogynoir problem. _

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Fabiola Cineas [[link removed]] covers
race and policy as a reporter for Vox. Before that, she was an editor
and writer at Philadelphia magazine, where she covered business, tech,
and the local economy.

_____

Netflix [[link removed]]’s _Love Is Blind_ is
reigniting conversations about whether the show’s unique dating
experiment — courting sight unseen — benefits Black women.

Since season six of the hit show began airing on Valentine’s Day
this year, all eyes have been on Amber Desiree (AD) Smith and her
bumbling journey through the pods. AD quickly became a fan favorite
because she was candid about her destructive choices when it comes to
love. “If I see a red flag, I’m like, ‘Oh, well, I’ll just
paint my nails red to match,’” AD confessed to the camera early in
the season. This tragic admission informed her decision to pair up
with Clay, a man who reminded her of her exes and revealed that he
selected women solely based on physical appearance. The internet
placed Clay in the show’s villain category once he probed AD about
her looks, a major faux pas for a show titled “Love Is Blind.”

Throughout the course of their engagement, Clay earned that villain
title. Commentators noted
[[link removed]] how
he treated AD like a receptacle for his trauma, even going as far as
laying his head on AD’s chest to be coddled like a newborn minutes
into their reveal. “I’m a baby,” he told AD, as they took stock
of their physical characteristics, noting that both of them were
dark-skinned. Clay talked about his father’s infidelity like it was
the third partner in their relationship and focused on how AD could
build him up. He repeatedly expressed fear about commitment, but AD
held his hand through the process. He ultimately managed to shock AD,
in front of their parents and other family members and friends, when
he said no to marrying her at the altar.

Outside of her relationship with Clay, AD faced additional hurdles
during filming. Her castmates drew attention to her body, pointing out
how “stacked” she is, and made an inside joke (“bean dip”)
about non-consensually smacking her breasts, which, no need to look it
up, is in fact sexual assault. Now, a year after filming, AD says
[[link removed]] that she “had
such an amazing experience” on _Love Is Blind_. But her storyline
highlights some of the sinister aspects of dating as a Black woman,
and because it’s airing on Netflix, the reality is being splashed
across one of the world’s biggest platforms. AD’s experience is
connected to that of Lauren, Diamond, Iyanna, Raven, Tiffany, and
Aaliyah — Black women whose stories came before hers on _Love Is
Blind_ — as well as to the Black women whose journeys were never
shown, and even those well beyond the show’s pods.

To talk about how this show positions Black women, I reached out to
“meeting and mating” sociologist Sarah Adeyinka-Skold
[[link removed]], an
assistant professor at Loyola Marymount University. Adeyinka-Skold
studies how “inequalities are produced and reproduced” in romantic
relationships, and says that _Love Is Blind_ viewers are naive to
have ever thought that this experiment, sometimes billed as an
equalizer, would help Black women have an easier time finding love. We
talk about the unique challenges Black women face, their limited
portrayals on the show, the issues with casting, and why Black
women’s pain seems to be profitable for both Netflix and the
show’s producers.

WE ARE NOW SIX SEASONS IN ON _LOVE IS BLIND_ AND I FIND MYSELF
QUESTIONING WHETHER BLACK WOMEN SHOULD CONTINUE TO GO ON THIS SHOW.
HAVE YOU BEEN WONDERING THE SAME THING?

I can honestly see an argument for Black women to not go on the show.
What we’re seeing is that external constraints like racism and
sexism are always in the pods even though the show has tried to create
this other reality.

WHY ARE WE TREATING THE REPRESENTATION OF BLACK WOMEN SO BASIC?

WHAT KINDS OF PORTRAYALS OF BLACK WOMEN ARE ALLOWED ON _LOVE IS
BLIND_?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the reality they choose to show and
how they choose to edit. They’re choosing to give us some things and
not give us others. They’re creating a reality that reinforces these
gendered racial stereotypes of Black women as these Jezebels —
hypersexual and promiscuous. And as these mammies who are caring.

In season four, they had these two white nasty women [Irina and Micah
[[link removed]]]
on the show. That’s not behavior we could _ever_ see from Black
women on that show! The kind of backlash they would get. And I
wouldn’t want them to depict Black women that way. But again,
there’s this humanity and fullness of person, or a spectrum of white
womanhood that we get to see, that we don’t get to see with Black
women.

All of the Black women on the show are professionals. They’re
extremely kind. They’re extremely smart. But we don’t get to see
that. We see the producers and editors focus on the problems these
women have. Why are we treating the representation of Black women so
basic?

BLACK WOMEN BEING IGNORED, DISRESPECTED, OR REJECTED ON DATING SHOWS
ISN’T NEW. WE HAVE SO MANY EXAMPLES FROM THE _BACHELOR_
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MATCH_
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AT FIRST SIGHT_
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ISLAND_
[[link removed]].
BLACK WOMEN ARE EITHER TREATED AS SIDE CHARACTERS OR JUST NOT GIVEN A
CHANCE TO SHINE AT ALL. BUT IT FELT LIKE _LOVE IS BLIND _COULD
SOMEHOW EQUALIZE DATING AND CREATE A SPACE FOR BLACK WOMEN TO BE SEEN
AND CELEBRATED. DO YOU THINK THIS HAS HAPPENED?

I think when people say that, they’re being naive about how our
social structure is shaped and formed. Anytime anyone says that
something is supposed to be the great equalizer, we should side-eye
them and ask, “What does that actually mean?”

In this context, that idea shows a lack of understanding of how our
society is set up on purpose to put Black women at the bottom of the
gender and racial hierarchy. To think that any dating show could be an
equalizer for Black women is pretending that that hierarchy doesn’t
matter.

LET’S TALK ABOUT CASTING. PEOPLE HAVE CRITICIZED THE SHOW FOR NOT
CASTING MEN WHO ARE INTERESTED IN DATING BLACK WOMEN.

We think about romance and love as these agentic, individual things
that we do in silos. We’re constantly acting as though we are
choosing or making decisions outside of our social structure. But the
fact of the matter is, this country was built on the rape, pillaging,
and conquest of Black women’s bodies. It’s also built on explicit
laws that said you should not be marrying Black people, laws that were
on the books until 1967 with the _Loving v. Virginia_ case. So how
do we think that that’s all just going to disappear? My question is,
what do people mean when they say we need to get men that are
interested in Black women, and dark-skinned Black women, in
particular? Isn’t that the antithesis of the show?

If the whole premise of the show is emotional connection, maybe what
they’re trying to say is you need to bring people on the show that
are really tuned into and attracted to the experiences that Black
women have, [who] know for themselves that Black women’s stories and
the experiences make them great partners. So maybe what we mean is we
need to cast men who are intimately familiar with the Black woman
experience, and it’s part of their attraction to these women.

YES, THAT IS THE SUBTEXT. MOST OF THE PEOPLE I’VE SEEN MAKING THIS
SUGGESTION ARE BLACK WOMEN. AD HERSELF IS ADVOCATING FOR A BETTER
VETTING PROCESS, AND A FEW SEASONS AGO, FORMER CONTESTANT RAVEN ROSS
SAID
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IN THE PODS “WEREN’T LOOKING” FOR BLACK WOMEN. SO IT SEEMS LIKE
BLACK WOMEN IN THE PODS HAVE HAD TO DO THIS KIND OF INITIAL VETTING
THEMSELVES.

That’s why AD asked Matt, “Do race and ethnicity matter to you?”
She was correctly attuned to the fact that he is white. And when she
asked, she was talking about skin color, but the subtext was also,
“I’m coming in with a particular kind of experience that you’re
not going to get with any other woman precisely because of the way our
social structure is set up.”

WHEN YOU’RE A SHITTY MAN IN BLACK SKIN, SOCIETY LOOKS AT IT
DIFFERENTLY

LET’S BREAK DOWN SOME OF THE ISSUES IN AD’S RELATIONSHIP WITH CLAY
AND TRY TO MAKE SENSE OF WHAT IT ALL MEANS FOR BLACK WOMEN WHO GO ON
THIS SHOW AND FOR BLACK WOMEN WHO DATE ON ANY REALITY TV
[[link removed]] SHOW, ONLINE, OR IN REAL LIFE.

Let me first say that any man of any race can say all of the things
that Clay said. But when we think about the cultural imagination about
Black men, unfortunately, Clay checks off all of the boxes of what we
think about Black men who are good-looking and as egotistical as Clay.

We can think of it like a Venn diagram. There’s the circle of shitty
men characteristics, and then another circle for Black men
characteristics, and then in the middle you have Clay. So together,
Clay is a shitty man who also happens to be Black.

And when we think about what a shitty Black man is, he’s a guy who
cheats. He’s a guy who’s not ready for commitment. He’s a guy
who is stuck on the physical. He’s a guy who’s maybe fine dating
non-Black women but doesn’t think that Black women should be
interested in non-Black men. Like, he’s so much cooler. He’s a
cool Black guy, so how could AD possibly be interested in a guy like
Matt?

In the United States, there are these characteristics that we
associate with shitty men, but when you’re a shitty man in Black
skin, society looks at it differently. Society says, oh my goodness,
they are going to ruin your family. They are going to be violent. They
are going to be cheaters. It doesn’t carry the same type of weight
as a shitty man in a different skin tone.

So unfortunately for Clay because he happens to be a shitty man
who’s also Black, he’s just playing into that cultural
imagination, those stereotypes, that we already have of Black men and
which we think is the source of Black women and Black families’
problems. When you have a society where Black people are at the bottom
of the racial hierarchy and Black men are demonized, Clay is seen as
particularly bad. Again, I don’t think that Clay is doing anything
original.

IT FEELS LIKE BLACK WOMEN ARE HAVING THIS CONVERSATION AMONG
THEMSELVES. I DON’T KNOW THAT I’VE SEEN MANY MEN OUTRAGED, APART
FROM WALE
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BEEN KEEPING HIS FOOT ON CLAY’S NECK ON X ALL SEASON.

That points back to our racialized and gendered society. Black women
are often the ones that have to bear the burden of choosing Black men,
of being committed to the racial uplift of Black people, of choosing
Black community over themselves.

People are always holding Black women to the highest standard. Black
women understand that it’s on them to keep Blackness afloat. It’s
on them to breathe the respectability of Blackness. It’s on them to
show other people we can have Black love and Black families. Black men
don’t care about this because first of all, they’re men. They are
rewarded regardless. They don’t have to care because the pressure is
not on them to keep the race going. The pressure is not on them to
choose the community every time. And if they do that, people are like,
“Oh, that’s fantastic.” You get extra points for choosing the
community and choosing Black women.

But Black women don’t get extra points. And in fact, they get
deducted points, if they do something like date a white guy, which
goes outside of the norms. And I think that AD probably didn’t even
understand how much the experience within a culture that says, “This
is what good Black women do” also impacts the decisions that she’s
making. That’s why Black women are having this conversation. They
recognize that these two things constrain the ways in which they’re
allowed to be fully human.

WHEN THERE ARE BLACK HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS, THEY’RE CALLING IT
BORING

SOME WOULD ARGUE THAT BLACK WOMEN HAVE HAD SOME SUCCESSFUL
RELATIONSHIPS ON _LIB_. FOR EXAMPLE, FANS VIEW SEASON ONE’S LAUREN
AND CAMERON AS THE SHOW’S GOLDEN COUPLE. AND THEN WE HAVE TIFFANY
AND BRETT, WHO ARE CELEBRATED FOR BEING THE SHOW’S FIRST BLACK
COUPLE THAT HAS REMAINED TOGETHER.

I like the contrast with Tiffany and Brett. They did a good job in
season four of giving us a successful story. It was just really
beautiful and I’m glad that they did that. But I also think it
shouldn’t be an anomaly. It shouldn’t be that in these other
seasons we’re kind of treating Black women like trash. We need to
see the full experience of Black women just like we see the full
experience of white women on the show.

I’VE SEEN WHITE COMMENTATORS CALL TIFFANY AND BRETT BORING, WHILE
OTHERS HAVE COMPLAINED THAT THEY DON’T GET ENOUGH ATTENTION FROM THE
FRANCHISE.

When you say it’s boring, what are you looking for? Are you looking
for that drama that you guys focused on in season five? Is that the
only thing we’re capable of watching? These are the same groups of
people who will tell us that the Black family is in shambles because
all the men are like Clay. But y’all want to watch that shit
on television [[link removed]]. You guys will tell us Black
families are poor because the women are too much in charge. But
y’all want to watch that shit on television. So when there are Black
healthy relationships, they’re calling it boring. That should make
you question what it is you want to watch and why. Why do you want to
see Black people as stereotypically dysfunctional? So Black people
can’t win.

THOUGH AD AND CLAY SAY THEY’RE NOT DATING, VIEWERS ARE SPECULATING
THAT THEY ARE STILL TOGETHER BASED ON THEIR BODY LANGUAGE DURING
CERTAIN MOMENTS OF THE REUNION. BUT IF SOME MONTHS FROM NOW THEY DO
ANNOUNCE THAT THEY ARE GIVING IT ANOTHER GO, HOW SHOULD WE INTERPRET
THEIR DECISION?

I think we need to understand that AD and Clay are navigating some
pretty complicated structural and agentic constraints as they are
trying to find love. As we have discussed, no white woman on the show
was like, “What do you think about race?” They have never asked
that question. I will die on that hill.

AD and Clay are still navigating gender and race in a way that white
people simply will never have to. And so we need to extend to them the
full grace that we give to humans because they are humans.

 

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* misogynoir
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* love is blind
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* NETFLIX
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* Black Women
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