What would my experience be like on OkCupid if I were white?
OKcupid has devoted a considerable amount of research to the interactions and experiences of its users. In his acclaimed 2014 book, Dataclysm, Christian Rudder, one of the site’s founders, notes that black women are disproportionately rated “below average” in attractiveness by Asian, black, Latino, and white men alike. In the United States, black women receive the fewest messages and fewer responses to their sent messages—75 percent of the communication received by their white counterparts, a pattern that seems common to online dating as a whole. In Canada, the number is higher—90 percent. But while black women in Canada may receive 90 percent of the messages that white women do, many report receiving more sexualized messages, and fewer messages from men they would actually like to date. In my case, perhaps my fancy pantsuit, plaid shirt and toque, PhD, and failure to conform to stereotype warded off those seeking to obtain their “black belt”—a dating term for a sexual conquest—and leading to fewer overall messages for me.
As a Torontonian, I optimistically thought race wouldn’t matter much. One of the defining principles of our culture is, after all, multiculturalism. There is a widespread perception that the tensions and cultural politics of race are milder in Canada than in the US—we represent a “mosaic” rather than a melting pot—with an openness to experiences that all that implies, including interracial dating. I observe the reinvigoration of the kkk, remember the demagogic, racist words of Donald Trump during his campaign, read about yet another shooting of an unarmed black man in America, and thank my lucky stars that I decided to stay in Canada for law school, instead of going to a place where my sass could get me shot if my tail light went out and I were asked to pull over. Here I am, a multicultural woman in the world’s most multicultural city in one of the most multicultural of countries.
I’ve never felt the contrast between the two countries more strongly than when I was applying to law school. After being accepted by several Canadian and Ivy League law schools, I visited Columbia University. At the orientation for successful applicants, I was soon beset by three women from the Black Law Students’ Association. They proceeded to tell me that their association was so much better than Harvard’s and that I would “definitely” get a first-year summer job because I was black. They had their own separate events as part of student orientation, and I got a troubling sense of 1950s-era segregation.
When I visited the University of Toronto, on the other hand, no one seemed to care what colour I was, at least on the surface. I mingled easily with other students and became fast friends with a man named Randy. Together, we drank the free wine and headed off to a bar with some second- and third-year students. The experience felt like an extension of my undergraduate days at McGill, so I picked the University of Toronto then and there. Canada, I concluded, was the place for me.
In the US, the roots of racism lie in slavery. Canada’s biggest racial burden is, currently, the institutionalized racism experienced by Indigenous people. In Canada, I fit into several categories that afford me significant privilege. I am highly educated, identify with the gender I was given at birth, am straight, thin, and, when working as a lawyer, upper-middle class. My friends see these things and assume that I pass through life largely as they do. Even to strangers, in Canada, I get the sense that I am seen as the “safe” kind of black. I’m a sultry, higher -voiced version of Colin Powell, who can use words such as “forsaken” and “evidently” in conversation with aplomb.
I have been told that because I am educated and have non-stereotypical interests, I am not black enough— that to be black should be equivalent to being poor, poorly spoken, or downtrodden.
When I am on the subway and I open my mouth to speak, I can see other people relax—I am one of them, less like an Other. I am calm and measured, which reassures people that I am not one of those “angry black women." I am that
black friend that white people cite to show that they are “woke,” the one who gets asked questions about black people (that thing you were “just curious about”). Once, at a party, a white friend told me that I wasn’t “really black.” In response, I told him my skin colour can’t come off, and asked what had made him think this—the way I speak, dress, my tastes and interests? He tried, poorly, to rationalize his words, but it was clear that, ultimately, I didn’t meet his stereotype of a black woman. I didn’t sound, act, or think as he thought someone “black” did or, perhaps, should.
13 BLawyerisH/July, 2017