Are Gay Dating Apps Racist?

As my team collected the data to publish an unbiased review of these apps, we found something really interesting: Gay dating apps are as self-segregating as we are in public.

It’s a given that there are white bars and black bars and never shall the twain meet. Sure, you will see some African-Americans in mostly white bars and some white folks in mostly black bars. But the truth is, our bars are as segregated as straight churches.

This of course, is not necessarily a racist thing. Birds of a feather flock together not necessarily because they hate the other birds but because they feel more comfortable among their own. In our case, that comfort can come in a lot of different forms — the music we like to listen to, the neighborhoods we like to frequent, or the type of men we are attracted to.

For example, I don’t like rap music and my idea of spending the night listening to it does not fill me with hope and anticipation.

I’m also fairly lazy about where I like to go out. If I have to drive more than 10 minutes I’m probably not going to go to that bar. That eliminates a lot of the black bars in my city. In fact, the black guys I’ve dated I have always met at white bars.

There’s also the comfort factor. The few times that I’ve been in black bars didn’t exactly make me feel uncomfortable but it is undeniable that you feel like you are “the other” (just as African-Americans must feel in white bars). It doesn’t make it right or wrong it just makes it so. If you’re the minority in a crowded place you are going to be well aware of it.

So, back to the gay dating apps. Of the six major gay apps we reviewed, four are so lily white that we thought it had snowed on our smartphone screens.

Of course we can’t take real-world explanations for our self-segregation outlined above and apply them to the gay hookup apps. After all, it’s not like you hear music, have to travel far, or (to a lesser extent) feel like a minority in the apps. Yet, it’s clear that the gay dating apps are highly segregated. Self-segregated to be sure, but segregated nonetheless.

My team and I all agreed that this is not a function of discrimination per se (although you see blatant discriminatory profiles — “Not interested in blacks” — ), but the “birds of a feather flock together” phenomenon at work. As one of our team members said, “Preferring to date within your own race doesn’t make you racist anymore than preferring men makes you sexist.”