Interesting question, comment below your opinion:
“No Blacks and no Asians please”. Let me ask you, where have we gone
to read such an offensive statement? Are we standing in front of a door
sign outside a bed and breakfast or pub in a market town in 1950s
Britain? Nope, it’s just a typical comment you can see after a quick
trawl through the profiles of guys on several of our most popular gay
dating platforms. Yes, welcome to sexual racism in the social
-networking era. Racism and homophobia are two forms of prejudice that
have been around since the start of modern civilisation, but these days
they show up online with far greater prominence than you would expect to
find in your average street.
The large number of celebrity cases in the news in the past year (Olympic diver Tom Daley received homophobic tweets
during the London 2012 Games and the former footballer Stan Collymore
successfully took a law student to court after he was bombarded with
racial messages) illustrate the sharp end of malicious, online bigotry.
Many people still have not grasped the fact that what you publish online
is the same as saying it out loud in a street. This year’s high-profile
Twitter ‘troll’ prosecutions may have been a wake-up call for some of
the ignorant and also to parts of the establishment.
However, sexual racism, encapsulated by the comments you read at the
very beginning, where the author is not seeking to hurt a particular
individual, is a more subtle form of stupidity. What does it tells us
about our online gay culture if most of us instantly recognise the
familiarity of the “no Blacks, no Asians” comment? Of course, everyone
is entitled to their own sexual preferences. It would make for a pretty
strange world if someone told me who I could and could not fancy –
althought that does happen, all too often.
The main reason why I believe sexual racism is wrong is because it
promotes the idea that ‘casual’ racism is acceptable. By writing “no
Blacks, no Asians” on a profile, a person is basically announcing that
they believe these two racial groups of people should be avoided
sexually. It is their personal opinion, but when displayed in a public
setting it constitutes prejudice, regardless of the context. Society has
taken the view that displaying prejudice is wrong. However, the minute
we start to compromise with ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’
discrimination, the journey to a fully equal society travels in a skewed
direction. Rejection is always a difficult thing to deal with,
regardless of whether it is racially based or because you are 5ft 7.
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