Craigslist Personals: Desperately Seeking Diversity Training

Geplaatst op 15-01-2025

Categorie: Lifestyle

I’ve always liked reading personal ads. Even when I was a little girl, I would check out the back of the paper in hopes of finding a boyfriend for my widowed mom, and in the meantime, made an attempt to figure out what was going on in the minds of grown-ups as they searched for someone with whom to live “happily ever after.” There were certain acronyms and terms used in the ads that I didn’t quite understand at a young age (i.e. NSA: no strings attached or BBW: big beautiful woman), but for the most part, I thought I had a handle on what I was taking in at my elementary school reading level. It wasn’t until I became a bit older that I began to notice an interesting trend: personal ads are riddled with messages, some more subtle than others, on how people feel about race, ethnicity, and nationality.

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With the emergence of the internet, I abandoned the paper and began perusing online ads, some of which read more like military code than personal descriptions: “SWF BBW in NYC seeks 30 – 35 y.o. D&D free S or D H/W/B/A/M for NSA BSDM ASAP in area codes 10003, 100019, and 10011. You must host. Pics? STR.” While these types of ads make virtual bulletin boards appear cluttered, others are well-written, funny, romantic, and/or so outlandish that they are hard to ignore. Sites like Craigslist became popular resources for finding any and every thing, from apartments and pets to jobs and vacation rentals. The personal ads were no different. Considering the privacy feature of anonymous posting in order to protect one’s identity, the personal ads serve as e-snapshots of candid thought—inside peaks into what the people I encounter on a daily basis may think of themselves, but, more importantly, how they view the world around them.

I checked the CL personals about as often as I checked for apartments, or, in other words, every five seconds, even though I wasn’t really looking for anything heavy duty in the love department and happened to be quite satisfied with my Brooklyn 2-bedroom and its 14 month lease. Reading the personals was a perfect way to find a little piece of reality TV-esque drama without all the heavy editing, good lighting, and stage makeup. The ads were frank, the boards were frequently updated, and the content never failed to amuse me, but behind all the fun, there was an underbelly of racism. This came as a bit of a surprise considering that so many of the CL posters were young, educated, and lived in diverse and densely populated urban environments—all oft-cited demographic factors in the commonly held belief that racism is on its way out. Though politicians, institutions of higher learning, and Ward Connerly would like for us to believe that the United States is on its way to becoming a colorblind utopia, a simple examination of Craigslist personal ads proves quite the opposite.

In the world of online dating, where a user name, masked email address, and optional photo sharing means freedom to speak ones mind in complete anonymity, users frequently abandon political correctness and resort to exotification, stereotypes, and blatant racism when referring to racial/ethnic “others” in their attempts to choose a mate. While some ads include the user’s thoughts on race in more subtle ways, for example, simply stating a racial “preference” (still, arguably, a sign of prejudice), others are more obvious in their descriptions—ranging from the utilization of explicitly racist phrases or terms to describe his/her own background and/or the background of the person being sought to downright exclusion a la Jim Crow style (“No -insert race here- need apply”).

I examined New York Craigslist personals for a week straight, mainly focusing on the basic m4m, f4m, m4m, and f4f ads as the prevalence of racist epithets/hate speech was so common in the “casual encounters” and “rants and raves” sections that I’d have to write an entirely separate article to cover them. In order to find data, I simply typed in a group (i.e. “Asian,” “white,” “black”) in the search box and let the magic happen. Here were some of my favorites (organized by search term) from my early set of results (please ignore the typos…I have left them in their original form):

Hmmm . . . an “All-American” woman who is of Irish or Italian background. . . Can anyone say “contradiction”? Is he not just saying that “All-American” equates to white, and that “Latin women” are nowhere close?

I like how this guy makes dating “multiracial dating,” aka “interracial fun” sound like a hobby or a game. I wonder how much each race is worth. His statement about South Asians is equallyridiculous. It not only implies that South Asians date South Asians exclusively, but it also implies that they are the only people who have a tendency to do this, overlooking the fact that many people of varying ethnicities, races, and nationalities choose partners of the same background. Offensive much? Hell yes.

Ok, so let me get this straight . . . not all black men are the same. Check. But all black women (and, on the opposite end, white and Asian women) are?

No, the all-caps emphasis is not mine. This post was lifted straight from the site. Dear goodness, someone give him a date so he will at least stop typing in all caps.

Does this guy want a date, a tutor, or a tour guide? I’m confused.

Some themes I noticed early on include:

1. Nicknames and food references are excellent ways to allude to race.
For example, white women are referred to as “vanilla” or “snow bunnies,” black women are referred to by a myriad of names involving “cocoa” and “chocolate,” and Latinas are almost always referred to as “spicy” or “exotic.” I haven’t seen “geisha” just yet used as a reference to Asian-American women, thank goodness, but I’m sure it’s next.

2. People like using juxtapositions a lot to imply stereotypes about certain groups.
For example, I see a lot of things like this: “I am looking for a woman who is slim, drama-free, intelligent, and who has no children. No black or Latin women, please.” Though sentences like that are not connected, you can clearly connect the dots on your own. Apparently the racism found in the “rejection” line of some posts is so common and offensive that a few members mentioned about it in their posts:

“Don’t be a SBM. No matter how clever, funny, or interesting you are once she finds out you’re black the emails stop. If you put SBM in your post you can pretty much guarantee no responses.”

“It seems that every non-asian woman have preferences for pretty much everyone except asian. Even asian women in new york city have started to steer their preference more towards non-asian males…I’d like to know why the majority of new york women are so closeminded toward us. You guys claim you aren’t racist or anything but why have such a preference? I figured since NYC was so diverse, it would be different but I guess I was wrong. I can understand if women like a guy who is tall/short, or strong/fat but based on race is kinda weird.”

3. Generalizations are a MUST.
The statements people make are often quite broad, i.e. black and Latina women are assumed to have big butts and an even bigger sex drive, Asian-American women are assumed to be thin, shy, and/or “traditional,” multiracial/ international, anyone non-white is, without a doubt, “exotic,” and white men are all wealthy and treat their women well, or, at least, they do according to these ads like these:

“Must be SINGLE and WHITE. I hope your stable financially and emotionally. I want to be with a man that’s wealthy. I aim for the stars and want nothing less than the best.”

“I am obviously a Latin woman who is very much attracted to white man. You might ask why, but the truth is that I love the way white men treat women.”

White women are also, at times, deemed “boring,” a stereotype that a friend shared has made her feel “worthless” and unfairly categorized. “I was a psych major,” she said. “I know about outgroup homogeneity bias, but is there such a thing as ingroup bias?” she questioned after being constantly viewed as yet another generic white person.

I interviewed several people about their experiences in the online dating world in addition to their feelings about exotification. One respondent informed me that when she first placed an ad on Craigslist while in college, she did so because her experiences attempting to find a date on what she describes as a “Midwest, white, upper middle class, narrow minded, slightly republican campus” were “highly ineffective.” She noticed that despite being talented, attractive, and intelligent, “making an intellectual connection or turning a friendship into a relationship seemed so difficult.” She wanted to “cast a wider net,” so she thought online dating would be the way to go. After receiving countless penis pics, sexually explicit emails, and racist responses to an innocent ad she posted, she decided that next time she looked to Craigslist as a way to find a date, she would not mention her race. When she replied to the post of a white Jewish man looking for a long term relationship with someone who had “a zest for life,” she offered a description of herself that was accurate (i.e brown eyes, black hair, college-educated), but did include her racial/ethnic background. “I wanted to bypass instant objectification, judgment, and the kind of ideas that come with race and being a black female,” she confessed. After more correspondence, the time came for picture trading. While she was anxious about how her new friend would react to her racial identity, his response was positive and they dated for a total of six months. She doubts that the outcome would have been the same if she had decided to post another ad that included her race.

A few of my friends shared similar experiences about being typecast in the dating world—online and off. “I need to get me a Latin girl…white girls just aren’t…you know….FREAKY like that!” was a recent pick-up line geared toward a Latina friend with whom I spoke. She shared that while she felt “Latin women are generally perceived as a bit more passive than Black women,” they are assumed to have just “enough aggression to make them sexually attractive.” She added that Latinas are often racially ambiguous enough in appearance to be considered acceptable in terms of beauty and are not viewed as a threat to the norms that help maintain the racial and gender-based hierarchy in America in the same way that black women are. Though such stereotypes are interpreted by some as harmless, it takes an obvious toll on those who are affected by them. A male friend recounts that, “Sometimes it’s disappointing. I want someone to be interested in me as a person and for who I am—not because of what they may have heard about my background. I think it adds pressure and awkwardness when someone finds out that I’m ‘not like the other Puerto Ricans [they] know.’ It always creates the doubt on whether a person is dating you because of you or because they can view you as a commodity.”

Commodification is King on Craigslist. Considering that women and men are advertising themselves for love alongside inanimate objects, it comes as no surprise that a reliance upon stereotypes to “sell” oneself or receive attention from another is customary.

I spared you from the really bad ones, but here are some ads that I found amusing from the m4f section. I have separated ads under the same category with slashes and placed my commentary in brackets. Enjoy:

Men looking for Asian/Asian-American Women
Most of the ads I came across regarding Asian/Asian-American women could be categorized under the following keywords/categories. They were, unfortunately, entirely predictable.

Men Looking for Black Women
While some were tame, most had to do with sex and/or fulfilling some interracial fantasy with a black Jezebel. Now I understand the aforementioned interviewee’s hesitance to include her race in ads/replies. Maybe the men felt like Craigslist was the only place they could be honest, but at the end of the day, it’s still o-f-f-e-n-s-i-v-e.

Men looking for white women
I found that the most offensive of the ads regarding white women were those written by black men. Though men from other racial backgrounds expressed that they wanted to date an “SWF,” the majority of them did not contain nearly as much stereotyping, nor did the posters feel the need to explain themselves for wanting to date a white woman.

Men looking for Multiracial/Latina/Middle Eastern/”Exotic” women
While most of these ads fell into the category of “any race is fine,” there were a few that stood out as they explicitly employed exotification in hopes of complimenting and attracting a girlfriend. Funny enough, most of these ads also made travel references (along the lines of “I have been all over the world, and this is why I want a -insert any race/nationality here- woman”). This one is nice because it contains about a zillion stereotypes all rolled into a small paragraph:

Given, most of the samples I included here are from “m4f” postings, but that’s mainly because there were about two times as many ads posted by men than by women. With regard to the other sections, there was an abundance of racist imagery within the m4m section though, unfortunately, most were too explicit to share here. I am happy to report that I found less racism in the f4f section, and far fewer references to race at all except in the case of one’s personal description. Most of the ads posted by women, whether they were looking for a man or a woman, did not include as many references to appearance and/or race, and instead focused more on mental and financial stability, intelligence, and personality. I don’t find this to be a reflection of women’s dating tendencies as a whole, it just so happened to be the case in the week’s worth of CL NYC ads I reviewed. Nevertheless, the f4m section was certainly not free from posts that convey messages about race in similar ways as postings profiled above.

So with that said, I suggest you click on over to the Craigslist personals. It certainly makes you wonder how different the world would be if its contents were plastered on people’s foreheads when you interacted with them so you could avoid any confusion about what they wanted and why. . .

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