If you're gay, you're probably familiar with the apps Grindr and Tinder. Because queer people, for the most part, have small social networks that limit the number of other queer people we interact with, these are apps that help connect us with other members. It's important to keep certain caveats in mind when using these apps, however, like their sexual nature, and the disconcerting pervasiveness of anti-blackness in these networks.
From what I've seen, this is more of an issue for the app of Grindr, an app that encourages the gay community to be sexually active. This is not to demean users of Grindr. It is no one’s business who has sex with whom or how much sex anyone has. Everyone should have full autonomy over his or her sexual decisions.
The pressing issue is the prevalence of anti-blackness within these apps, which is reflective of the attitudes of the gay community in relation to black men. Open an app like Grindr and you're sure to find profiles that say "No blacks, no fems, no Asians, no fatties" or "masc 4 masc.” These profiles are usually decorated with a final "it's just a preference." The truth is, it is not just a preference, and our ideas of beauty are largely shaped by history.
Specifically, our idea of beauty is directly linked to the history of colonialism, which established English as the default and white as the image of beauty. You might ask how a marginalized group like the LGBT community could adhere to this image of other marginalized groups, but racism is pervasive in the LGBT community.
Many people compare the gay rights movement to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Not only is this analogy inappropriate, it is a slap in the face to black and brown people, given that the gay community is not, contrary to what it touts, tolerant of all people.
The gay community purports that it's accepting of all walks of life, despite the fact that they definitely feel no qualms supporting organizations like the Human Rights Campaign, which is mostly run by upper-middle-class white men. What the "no blacks, no fems, no Asians, no fatties" profiles overlook is the fact that our conceptualization of beauty does not exist in a vacuum. There is a historical context.
In the early 1800s, Europeans claimed that black people were ugly, uncivilized people who fought senseless wars. They justified violence against black and brown people by declaring that the "heathens needed saving."
There's a divide in the modern Western world between good and evil and that divide is broken up into white and black. White is seen as good, beautiful, innocent, whereas black is seen as evil, licentious, dark.
It is this dichotomy that justifies police violence against black and brown people. It's the same narrative that some conservatives use to invoke the idea that black people have not progressed because they are lazy. This history is incredibly relevant to how we see and treat black people today. The same white, gay men that say "get over race," are the same ones that have brought heteronormative marriage to the forefront of the LGBT movement. That is, the movement is centered around achieving the same benefits that heterosexual married couples have, but ignores the rights of LGBT people of color, trans people in our community, bisexual people, or poor and working-class queer people.
One need look no further than the media, which fetishizes Eurocentric features and consistently deems black and brown people as undesirable. It’s as simple as going into Google images, typing in “beautiful woman,” to see what the default standard of beauty is. Do the same thing for “beautiful man,” and you get a similar image.
The result is a white image — an image that is unrepresentative of our population and demonstrates that people of color in general do not have proportionate representation in the media. That might be because the writers who write our shows are still, predominantly, white men.
The “no blacks” mindset is not a natural preference; it is racism. It is the result of socialization that relegates black skin to the bottom.
Even Latinos are seen as being higher on the totem pole because we are closer in proximity to the white image of beauty. People of color in the LGBT community are seen as objects to white members of the community. We are seen as people who can be toyed around with, but there is hardly ever any sign of commitment, because to commit to a person of color is to commit treason.
As much as everyone wants to claim that racism ended with the speech MLK gave in our capital in 1963, the truth is race matters in every manner. Beauty is currency and that currency is built on a history of exclusion that has demonized people of color.