This has been a very bad week. I had five different indies reject me during the screening process because of my race. To the many of you who helped me connect with these ladies, NO NAMES should be mentioned. In fact, I would like that rule of no names to be here for anyone who replies to this. I am not interested in a flame war, witch hunt, or public shaming. This is meant to be a civil discussion on experiences people have had and any solutions that anyone has come up with. I will have my experience down below along with some questions. These questions are open to everyone since I think we all have some different insights we can give.
To me it seems that there are two reasons why indies say no to non-whites. The first reason is because of ‘personal choice’ as they say. In other words, they choose to not service non-whites strictly as a point of preference. Now I don’t want to be too dismissive about this rational, but I don’t really think it holds water. From a purely economic perspective if you are in the services industry the only color you should see is green and whoever provides the green, assuming all else equal of course (e.g. respectful, pass screening process, have actual money, etc.), should be just as valid as any other person. Economics though is a social science theorem predicated on the idea of rational minds. In other words, if people were perfectly rational individuals what I just said before would be the case. We all know that they are not. Meaning there must be another factor that is causing them to say no, an irrational factor to lead them to their ‘personal choice’. And that cause, I have found, is fear. Maybe because of watching too much breaking bad or bad tv stations these indies have become afraid of non-whites and want to avoid doing business with them. This is the more annoying one since that fear makes everyone worse off. The provider makes less money, the monger has less options, and everyone wastes time trying to find the right match.
The second reason is experience. Three of the indie women I talked too cited previous bad experience as their reason for not doing business with non-whites. Now this one I am a lot more sensitive to even if I still at the end disagree. We have a natural instinct to equate behavior with physical attributes, its basic human psychology and it is a painfully biased habit of ours at that. So, two bad experiences with black clients might lead to an indie saying no to future black clients. Meanwhile five bad experiences with white clients (or whatever the race of the indie is) may not lead to the same result. Again, and I really want to emphasize this: THIS IS NOT A CONCIOUS CHOICE. This is the human brain at its worst, a machine which spent millennia learning to quickly equate anything that does not look like you as being some sort of dangerous is not going to be able to quickly acclimate to the last few decades of social change. I get that and even more I feel for the women who have been in any way wronged by a fellow monger, regardless of their race.
So, my questions: what can be done about this? How does someone convince someone else to not allow their baser instincts to take root? Should we even try? Do we as a community have some sort of role to play in keeping our fellow mongers in check? Should we warn indies on the notoriety of a fellow member if we don’t think he is safe? Should we forewarn members if an indie does not take on certain clients? Or should we not play any role as a jury towards the private interactions of two individuals? Finally, is it fair for indies to reject men strictly because of their race? I obviously don’t think so, but I am clearly biased. I just don’t think that the worst of us should define all of us. Thoughts?
To me it seems that there are two reasons why indies say no to non-whites. The first reason is because of ‘personal choice’ as they say. In other words, they choose to not service non-whites strictly as a point of preference. Now I don’t want to be too dismissive about this rational, but I don’t really think it holds water. From a purely economic perspective if you are in the services industry the only color you should see is green and whoever provides the green, assuming all else equal of course (e.g. respectful, pass screening process, have actual money, etc.), should be just as valid as any other person. Economics though is a social science theorem predicated on the idea of rational minds. In other words, if people were perfectly rational individuals what I just said before would be the case. We all know that they are not. Meaning there must be another factor that is causing them to say no, an irrational factor to lead them to their ‘personal choice’. And that cause, I have found, is fear. Maybe because of watching too much breaking bad or bad tv stations these indies have become afraid of non-whites and want to avoid doing business with them. This is the more annoying one since that fear makes everyone worse off. The provider makes less money, the monger has less options, and everyone wastes time trying to find the right match.
The second reason is experience. Three of the indie women I talked too cited previous bad experience as their reason for not doing business with non-whites. Now this one I am a lot more sensitive to even if I still at the end disagree. We have a natural instinct to equate behavior with physical attributes, its basic human psychology and it is a painfully biased habit of ours at that. So, two bad experiences with black clients might lead to an indie saying no to future black clients. Meanwhile five bad experiences with white clients (or whatever the race of the indie is) may not lead to the same result. Again, and I really want to emphasize this: THIS IS NOT A CONCIOUS CHOICE. This is the human brain at its worst, a machine which spent millennia learning to quickly equate anything that does not look like you as being some sort of dangerous is not going to be able to quickly acclimate to the last few decades of social change. I get that and even more I feel for the women who have been in any way wronged by a fellow monger, regardless of their race.
So, my questions: what can be done about this? How does someone convince someone else to not allow their baser instincts to take root? Should we even try? Do we as a community have some sort of role to play in keeping our fellow mongers in check? Should we warn indies on the notoriety of a fellow member if we don’t think he is safe? Should we forewarn members if an indie does not take on certain clients? Or should we not play any role as a jury towards the private interactions of two individuals? Finally, is it fair for indies to reject men strictly because of their race? I obviously don’t think so, but I am clearly biased. I just don’t think that the worst of us should define all of us. Thoughts?