On Tuesday’s episode of “The Daily Show,” correspondents Jessica Williams and Ronny Chieng took a humorous yet hard-hitting look at a form of bigotry not often discussed: sexual racism.
“Racism affects nearly every aspect of life, even -- and it truly pains me to say this -- f**king,” host Trevor Noah said as he introduced the segment.
Williams and Chieng specifically looked at how some groups, like black women and Asian men, faced undue discrimination in the world of online dating.
“There is kind of a systemic racial bias pretty much in every dating site I've ever looked at,” Christian Rudder, co-founder of OKCupid and author of the dating statistics book “Dataclysm,” told the duo. “We found that 82 percent of non-black men have some bias against black women… And Asian men get the fewest messages and the worst ratings of any group of guys.”
Isn’t it OK to have preferences when it comes to finding a partner?
As “The Daily Show” segment explained, the discriminatory behavior exhibited by many online daters appeared to stem not from "preferences" at all, but from deep-rooted stereotypes evident in statements like, “[you’re] pretty for a black girl” or in outrageous assumptions such as all Asian men having small penises.
In an outtake posted to social media, Williams and Chieng shared other offensive comments made on online dating profiles with writer Zach Stafford.
“Vanilla or spice, no chocolate or rice,” read one, with “chocolate” being a reference to black people and “rice” being a reference to Asians.
"People really like using food to talk about their racism," Stafford quipped.
