5 Ways Porn Is Bizarrely Racist Behind The Scenes

This is all part of a larger problem with the pay scale in porn. According to Dr. Miller-Young: "African-American actresses are paid one half to three quarters of what white actresses earn for the same work. This is the sorest issue for black actresses in the adult business." We assume the good doctor chose that particular word for a reason. Possibly throwing us poor comedy writers a bone.

"The pay inequality is both longstanding and blatant," Dr. Miller-Young continues. "When actresses are perceived as being too pushy (or bitchy) because they're demanding certain pay and working conditions, producers easily replace them with the next new young talent. The porn industry treats all actors as disposable, but black actresses are treated as the most disposable of all."

Even Misty Stone, an extremely successful African-American porn star, sometimes described as the "Halle Berry of the porn industry," is often paid significantly less than her white coworkers, despite never having done anything half as degrading as Catwoman.

And if you're wondering if the opposite ever happens, the short answer is "No," while the long answer is "No, of course not. Don't be ridiculous. Who doesn't love white people? NAHNAHNAH I CAN'T HEAR YOU."

According to Dr. Miller-Young, "'White' is not a searchable category in porn because it is the norm," so there's no need to actually label it, unless you're stressing a normally ethnic feature that a white girl seems to have ("White Girls With Inexplicable Asses!") or the video stars a biracial actress, in which case you apparently have to hammer home that the actress getting hammered on screen is so Caucasian that she probably puts chilled grapes in her white wine during brunch.

Bridgette B. (NSFW) was born in Spain and mostly bills herself as a Spanish or Latina actress. Yet many of her videos are badly trying to convince viewers that she's just your typical white girl from Nobraska, because Caucasian girls getting drilled is normal, while it seems Latina porn is some weird fetish. That's why some of her most popular videos are titled Big Booty White Girls (NSFW) or Big White Tits And Large Black Dicks.

You see the exact same thing with Alexis Texas (NSFW) and Kristina Rose (NSFW). Despite the actresses being, respectively, part Puerto Rican and part Mexican, their filmography includes titles like Thick White Asses 3, White College Girls Wit Ass, Worship My Big White Ass, White Booty Clappin, and Big Slippery White Butts 4. If you're looking to check those out, do yourself a favor and start with the original Big Slippery White Butts, or you'll be completely lost during the fourth installment.

Dr. Miller-Young elaborates: "Overwhelmingly, white actresses declining to do scenes with black men do so because they have been told by management or agents that it will decrease their value, or erotic capital, in the business. These producers and agents argue that fans often believe that white women become tainted when they have sex with black men."

But as long as their partners were also white, porn actresses could screw their way through the entire phone book and still be considered untainted, no matter how many taints we've personally seen them handle.

According to the porn emporium site Adult Empire, six of their top 10 bestselling XXX DVDs (NSFW) include interracial crotch jousting. So why does the porn business discriminate against people of color when they are obviously a big hit with the smut-watching audience? Sadly, interracial porn may be so popular because it's considered a shameful, unnatural deviation from the norm. The thrill of the forbidden is a big part of porn's appeal. There's a reason the #2 most-used language for searches for "gay sex" is Arabic. Meanwhile, over in the American South ...

"Ebony" is the #2 most-searched term in Mississippi, the #3 term in North Carolina, and the #1 term in the District of Columbia. And D.C. is the only place north of the Mason-Dixon line where "ebony" appears in the top three searched terms. Every state with "ebony" in its top three search terms is also a state that kept anti-miscegenation laws (aka laws banning black and white people from boning) on the books until the Supreme Court forced them to stop in 1967.

Nyomi Banxxx explains: "Porn is a taboo topic, but when you mix in race with that, then it becomes a double shame ... People might think that having sex is bad, but now also you're doing it with black men?! That is a double shame right there." Simply put, we want our porn to violate both orifices and social norms at the same time.

Dr. Miller-Young elaborates: "Pornography always portrays the violation of boundaries, whether they be class, age, social status, family relationships, gender norms, or racial lines. As a society, we are fascinated with transgressing the walls we erect between ourselves ... Porn is in some ways being very honest about this dilemma, often chooses the easy way out -- profit from the forbidden fruit in the most simplistic way possible."

In porn's defense, though, it's not like it goes down very well when they do take on serious subject matter ...

Cezary Jan Strusiewicz is a Cracked columnist, interviewer, and editor. Contact him at c.j.strusiewicz@gmail.com. Mireille Miller-Young is associate professor of feminist studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the author of A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography.

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