Implicit biases on Bumble BFF?
Last week I signed up for Bumble BFF in hopes of expanding my circle of friends. Although I have a small group of wonderful friends who live near me and an extended group of friends with whom I grew up but who now live in different countries, I thought it would be nice to meet some new girlfriends to just hang out with whenever and wherever.
A couple of days in and I realized that I was not getting any matches even though I had swiped right on a large number of people that I thought would make great potential friends. I have a simple and yet straight-forward profile which lists interests that are similar to those of the women that I was swiping right on.
A light bulb went off in my head and I wondered if the reason I was not getting any matches was because I am black and a great majority of the women in my 15-mile radius is white. I decided to do an experiment and changed my main profile picture to one of my boyfriend and I (he’s white) and lo and behold, almost suddenly I had a couple of new matches!
The part of me who thinks that people are inherently good wants to believe that it was pure coincidence that I started getting matches as soon as I changed my profile picture to one that had my white boyfriend in it. However, the realistic part of me knows that, most likely, people were swiping left on me based solely on the color of my skin because if they had taken the time to read my short bio, they would realize that we had quite a bit in common and were looking for similar things in our new friendships.
Although I was initially frustrated and annoyed that people were potentially dismissing me because of the color of my skin, I had to be honest with myself and come to terms with my very own implicit biases because I was doing the same exact thing that I was afraid white women were doing to me: I was swiping left on other black women!!! I was saddened by this realization and immediately decided to not swipe left or right on anyone until I had read their bios. Then, and only then, if I did not find that we had anything in common or if there was something in their bio that read like a red flag, I would swipe left. Otherwise, I was going to swipe right on everyone.
I honestly do not know what to make of this self-realization because I am a black woman myself! I’ve been thinking a lot about this for the past week and I feel confused, saddened, and embarrassed by my own actions. The silver lining for me is that I realized what I was doing and made a conscious effort not to let it happen again.
What do you guys think? Are we being culturally programmed to distrust and dismiss people of color (read: non-white) even if we ourselves belong to that same group of marginalized individuals? What can we do to be better people to one another?