BLACK MEN DATING WHITE WOMEN

With a narrower field of options, blacks are forced to be more proactive when online dating, and to cast a wider net than their white counterparts. Mendelsohn’s research found that black daters “were 10 times more likely to contact whites than whites were to contact blacks.”This was certainly true for me, but approaching white women and those of other ethnicities did not present a problem, as I find women of all races attractive. I’ve never had a type as such, and all the women I’ve been out with have been very different from one another.

But it’s equally true that single people have to be pragmatic, before they are emotional, about their choices. The low volume of ethnic diversity within online dating means there is a high probability that black singles in the UK will end up dating whites, simply as a result of availability. Of all the single, London-based females I scrolled through across four different online dating apps - easily over a thousand faces - I estimate that only five per cent were black. And this number dwindled further when I assessed whether or not I liked their personalities or found them attractive.

During my time internet dating, I met up with five black women and 20 white, which is merely a reflection of who’s out there on UK dating apps. It didn’t work out with the particular black women tat I met, either because they lived too far away, or I didn’t feel a spark, or in one case because she wanted children and I had already had mine. When I did find black women to date, I was happy, as they’re harder to come by within the dating apps, and we often had a shared racial experience and outlook.

But other than that, my approach was colour blind, if not age blind. I set my parameters within the apps to between 40 and 55, which meant almost every match was divorced and with children. The majority of those I encountered had only ever dated white men, and a number of them expressed racist views, sometimes without even realising it. On seeing my online pictures, several assumed the following: “promiscuous”, “large penis”, “voracious sex”; rather than “family man” or “loving partner”. Some of them told me this outright. One especially telling moment came when a white woman I was dating said jokingly that her white friends wanted to know what a black man would be like in bed. Although I had stated in my bio that I was looking for a relationship, in my experience there remains a strong perception within the online dating arena that black men are candidates only for sex and a good time.

BLACK WOMEN DATING

Black women are subject to even greater levels of abuse, particularly around post-colonial stereotypes about possessing a more vigorous sexual appetite or outlandish sexual preferences. Style blogger Stephanie Yeboah encountered this during her time online dating. “Some blatantly exclaim that they would want to be in a relationship [with me] to ‘get a taste of jungle fever’ and to see whether black women are ‘as aggressive in bed as they’ve heard,’” she said. In so many areas of society, blacks are required to be “more than” in order to be accepted, and for many this is also true in the bedroom. This is not sex as we know it, as an act of pleasure, but sex as performance, defined by race. Once you’ve had one or two women make remarks to you about “what black men are like in bed”, the performance aspect becomes clear - and the knowledge that the woman you’re dating thinks, “I’m sleeping with a black man”, rather than just “I’m sleeping with a man”. With the next white woman I met online and slept with, I deliberately tried to make the sex mediocre. I wanted to smash the stereotype. I wanted sex to be normalised, finally, like it is for white men.

Admittedly my moral perspective is specific to my age group, as a more mature online dater. I’m well aware there are many young black men on Tinder who are having a lot of fun sleeping with white women without any concerns about racial stereotypes. In fact, many even welcome it. I play football with a bunch of black guys in their 20s and they tell me I’m over-thinking it all. They say I should relax and be happy I have interest from women, whatever their motivation might be.

But at 54, my wish is to be valued as a human being, and my focus was on finding love. I live alone and I wanted a companion with whom I could do the normal things couples do – watch Netflix, go to the local pub, or on country walks at the weekend. Yet when I said I was not seeking casual sex, one or two of the white women I encountered were surprised. On one occasion I had sex with a woman who maintained she wanted a relationship, but then when I moved in that direction she ran away, as if I was overstepping the mark. It seemed that something deeper was at play here. I was attracting emotionally wounded white women who had been hurt by their ex-husbands and so had became cynical and fearful of love. Many swiped right on me because they believed that, as a black man, I would only want sex, and therefore they would be safe with me. They appeared surprised on discovering their assumptions were wrong.

LOVE FROM ONLINE DATING

But despite it all, I must point out that my experiences were not all negative. I connected with some fantastic women, unmotivated by stereotypes, three of whom - an NHS psychotherapist, a landscape architect and a woman in the film business - have since become good friends after we realised we weren’t right for each other romantically.

Since writing my book I have now found a partner on one of the online dating apps. We met for the first time 10 weeks ago over a drink in a bar. We were only together for an hour that night, but I liked her straight away because of what she had to say. Culturally and intellectually, we had much in common. She had taken the trouble to write a very detailed dating profile in which she was very open about who she was, so I already felt I knew her quite well when we met. She is white, works in a related industry to me, and is far less interested in my ethnicity, and more in the fact that I like running, listening to Radio 4, drinking red wine and eating cheese. She lives locally and her children are in their late teens, so she’s free to come out on dates. She has actual, and emotional, availability. The two of us have now quit the apps, and we are on our way together, towards love.

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