is love truly blind when it comes to Black women?
We gotta discuss Love is Blind’s racial problem
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After season three of the global phenomenon of Love is Blind aired in 2022, season one alum Lauren Speed shared her grievances about the popular show excluding the stories of Black women. She noted how Black women are present throughout the trailer, yet their screen time is limited and their engagements aren’t shown.
The show's creator Chris Coelen responded that their team is true to the experiment, but it seems the experiment is failing. The show has now has gained criticism from previous cast members for creating a stress-inducing environment that caused panic attacks, for insufficiently feeding cast members, and most recently, for not addressing an instance of sexual harassment and allegedly supplying lots of alcohol in order to coerce the cast to create entertaining content for viewers.
In the duration of Love is Blind, there have been two successful couples with Black female partners that remain together today: Lauren Speed and Cameron Hamilton, and Tiffany Pennywell and Brett Brown. However, there are a plethora of Black and Brown women who have been mistreated on this show.
In season two, Iyanna McNeely got engaged to Jarrette Jones, a man who couldn’t even come home at night to spend time with his fiancé and had an inappropriate conversation with the connection that didn’t choose him. Iyanna’s storyline centered around being the second choice that Jarrette never wanted, or in other words, the Black woman he never wanted. His past connection, Mallory, is a light-skinned, curly haired Hispanic woman.
Also in season two, Indian couple Deepti Vempati and Abhishek 'Shake' Chatterjee got engaged. Shake repeatedly demeaned Deepti’s deep skin color and Indian features, equating her to his aunt. He now dates a white woman. Similarly, in season three, Cole Barnett (white) told his fiancé Zanab Jaffrey (Pakistani & Indo-Aryan) that he wasn’t physically attracted to her, and proceeded to rate the other white women in the cast a ten out of ten.
There’s a colorist pattern here, and racial preferences became more apparent in season five.
Background into the worst season of Love is Blind
In this multi-layered season, Black female faces dominated the pods pre-engagement, yet only one story was displayed, and that story featured a beautiful Black woman named Aaliyah being emotionally abused by Uche, a Nigerian man, for cheating on a man she dated two years prior to Love is Blind. The moment was reminiscent of a father scolding a child for an error in judgment that she admitted that she regretted.
Many Internet users sided with Uche, praising him for being “calm and direct,” yet in the bombshell of all bombshells, viewers realized that Uche was keeping secrets of his own. He and Aaliyah’s best pod friend Lydia had dated before recently, and the relationship was quite ambiguous and filled with half truths. Aaliyah left the experiment early due to close proximity with Lydia, yet attempted to make things work with Uche. He rejected her, but they tried to date after the experiment, all to find out that he’s not attracted to her. Keep in mind, he did see her in person before dating after the pods.
Black women felt like they couldn’t find love on Love is Blind because in a pod, their voices, personalities, and even their names point to their race. Really, this experiment has never been blind, and these Black women didn’t feel like there was love for them in the pods because the men already knew they didn’t desire them.
It hurts as a Black woman to see Aaliyah ask for love from someone who clearly has no respect for her, and when Uche explains that Lydia was a stalker, yet he feels this immense empathy for her, I began to believe that the relationship that Uche and Lydia shared was a case of fetishization. If someone is being stalked, isn’t the rational response is to call the authorities? He didn’t seem that alarmed if he continued to sleep with her and repeatedly bring her back into his life. For context, Lydia describes herself as a passionate, feisty Latina, playing into the stereotypical tropes of Latinas in the media.
“I don't think people were ready for a loud personality like mine,” she says looking back. “I don't think that society is used to seeing someone as loud, strong, and confident as I am.”
“I'm the first Puerto Rican that got [to the altar] in Love is Blind, and they’re not used to it,” she adds. “They’re used to more mellow, one-note [people] who are not as passionate as I am.” - Lydia said in a Netflix interview
The truth is, if the roles were reversed and Aaliyah had acted like Lydia did according to Uche, it wouldn’t be seen as desirable because that’s not the accepted stereotype or narrative for a Black woman. If a Black woman is loud and passionate, she’s automatically labeled as angry and crazy.
Another Black woman who received the short end of the stick is an accomplished, educated woman named Miriam. On the show, Miriam became the butt of a joke as she explained what she does for a living. In an interview with media personality Jessie Woo, Miriam cleared up her employment history and how production edited her responses. She actually emigrated from Nigeria to the United States to attend the University of Houston for her bachelor’s degree and she received her master’s in biotechnology at John Hopkins University. She’s a chemist who moved abroad to work in Saudi Arabia, and slowly transitioned back to Houston at the time of filming.
Yet that’s not how the show chose to portray her.
Miriam is portrayed as someone dishonest and ditzy, yet her cast member Izzy, who is known throughout the season to have a low credit score, a lack of dinnerware AND a nightstand (where do you put your phone at night???), is portrayed as someone “ready to love.”
And when Miriam becomes Uche’s punching bag, it becomes clear and evident how Uche, and this show, feels about Black women. When Uche tries to convince everyone about Lydia’s wrongdoings, all the women chime in to tell him he’s wrong. Stacy even raises herself from her seat, but when Miriam opens her mouth, that’s when he becomes disrespectful and starts to berate Miriam, insulting her intelligence and calling her bitter.
Why is being “bitter” synonymous with a Black woman who desires to be heard? To be honored as a human? This show makes Black women seem undesirable by men within their race and beyond, as if the producers don’t ask about racial preferences during the casting process or even have an understanding of cultural competence.
In Miriam’s interview, she mentions that some Black women felt like they couldn’t find love on Love is Blind because in a pod, their voices, personalities, and even their names point to their race. Really, this experiment has never been blind, and these Black women didn’t feel like there was love for them in the pods because the men already knew they didn’t desire them.
Identifying preferences is a process of deep soul searching. While it’s okay to like what you like, it requires investigation. Why is this person appealing/not appealing? Is it rooted in a dislike or a colonial ideal? In your eyes, is this person an exciting option due to their skin color or cultural identity?
The problem manifests when Black and Brown women are disrespected or dishonored due to the pursuit of a preference. Like what you like, but don’t diminish someone in the process.
After finishing the show, many contestants say in confessionals that they believe love is blind, but is that really an option for women of color? While many of us crave love, we become victim to the preferences of our partners, and when we voice our opinions, we’re labeled as bitter. We’re told that this is true to the experiment, so maybe Black women don’t need to seek this show to find love, and in upcoming seasons, I sadly expect Black women to be forgotten. It’s clear that Love is Blind, a show built to eliminate the superficial aspects of falling in love, is perpetrating the same racist and colorist lies that us women of color are tired of encountering.
What does Laraya like this week?
📚What I’m reading: I started Black Girls Must Die Exhausted by Jayne Allen. Love is Blind is proving that title to be 100% true.
P.S. I thought we had a petition going for getting rid of the Lacheys for hosting the LIB reunions? The way Aaliyah was dismissed for how she felt about the show deserves an apology. The comment that “everything worked out as it should’ve” from Vanessa Lachey was terrible. FIND NEW HOSTS. Now I digress.
ICYMI, here’s some past posts:
See you next week 🧡