It is time to share some thoughts about race as it relates to kink.  I saw a gallery the other day with a caption that depicted a black woman being "the first member of her family having sex with a white man" as if this was the same as being the first to go to college.  I responded that this was a deeply racist caption since during the slavery period, many slaves were used sexually by their white masters and there would be few African American families who did not have some DNA from these rapes in their bloodline.  Most famously, Thomas Jefferson had a longstanding relationship with one of his slaves.  The owner of the gallery responded that at least she would not be making love to someone who was abusive, unemployed, and on drugs.  I guess he told me!

So the question comes up, what exactly is racist?  My working definition of racism is participating in a system that maintains privilege for some races at the expense of other races.  By this definition, ALL AMERICANS ARE RACIST and many people in other countries as well.  There is no doubt that people look to sub to be the dominant partner in our relationship because of his whiteness, also because of his maleness which is a topic for another day.  The fact that in our bedroom, he is submissive and allows Goddess to make many decisions about the relationship is completely beside the point.  In American society, whites gain privilege by beiing white.  They do not work for that privilege.  It is given to them every time they are seen.  Recent news events reveals how true this is.  Even supposedly enlightened police officers are more likely to shoot an African American than they are a European American in similar circumstances.  This brings us to the next question; What is the difference between racism and prejudice?  I define prejudice as a presumption of characteristics based on unrelated factors.  For example, the person mentioned above who assumed that the color of a person's skin would make them abusive, unemployed, and drug addicted.  Racism might make African Americans more likely to have those social problems, but many people of Eurpean heritage have these issues as well and many African Americans have transcended the racial constructs of our society to respect their relationships, be successful economically and avoid alcohol and drug related issues.  

The big question for us is not whether we can transcend our prejudices.  It is clear that many people have chosen to and trained themselves not to see with prejudicial eyes.  The big question is whether Americans can transcend their racism.  It is not easy, but we can choose to treat people as individuals with unique preferences, faults, and strengths.  This alone will not end racism.  Remember, racism is participating in a system that maintains privilege.  To end racism, we need to directly address the system and question whether or not the privilege is deserved or an accident of historical circumstance.  All people, black and white, can move beyond not being prejudiced and start becoming anti-racist.  We first of all need to question our prejudices.  We should not assume that a person who is black is also slovenly, drug-addicted and emotionally dysfunctional.  Nor should we assume that all white people will be successful, sober and emotionally stable.  Second, we can address privilege.  During the civil rights era, African Americans reclaimed their privilege to participate in the voting process.  Today, they are giving up that privilege.  African Americans should be the most involved in the democratic process, because it has cost us the most to be treated equal with whites and it is the one place where we are treated equal with them.  We will demand respect in a grocery store or a restaurant and we should, but we should demand respect from the system that shapes the society as well and the place to do that is the voting booth.  Whites too need to stop complaining every time they see an African American succeed.  It is not because they got a special privilege; it is because they worked twice as hard as you did and fought an uphill battle three times farther than you did to earn their success.  Get over your whining, because one out of 44 presidents of the United States was African American or a black man finally got to be a supervisor in your company.  For every one that makes it, there were a thousand who never got a chance!  Finally, we do need to claim our power to change the system.  Poor neighborhoods do need more funding for schools.  Racial quotas may be the only way to put races on equal footing for economic opportunity and to build "ladders of success".   

Yet, I must confess that our galleries contain many images that depict same race couples having cuckold relationships with the opposite race.   I did not write the captions on my pictures and I find some of them a bit disturbing for this very reason.  My primary relationship is an interracial one, so why not have the two African Americans in a picture be the cuckolding partnership and the one European be the cuckold?  Besides the poor excuse above, the answer is in the nature of storytelling.  With a picture and two lines of type, the story is easier to convey if you work with people's prejudices rather than against them.  In our personal life, sub is submissive not because Goddess is black, but because sub has been submissive in every male-female relationship that he ever had including one where the woman put on a pretense of submissiveness (long story).  Goddess is not dominant because Goddess is making a statement about societal racism, but because she likes having a man cook, clean and basically dote on her every whim and desire.  (Who doesn't?)  Using race in pornographic story-telling is a means to a very individual ends not the ends itself.  In an ideal world, we would put our own pictures up and not worry about professional repercussions of people judging us and address the reality of a complex interracial relationship.  We would only find pictures that depict women and African Americans on top to fight against the prevailing winds of sexism and racism, but for now we compromise our values in favor of some good jackoff material.  So be forgiving and consider that you too might have a role to play in reversing the societal problems that we all live with.