As we have reported plenty here, in the museum and this blog, during lectures given by our staff, through our whole ethos really, what happens in the world is often reflected in our more salient entertainments. As seen through the weak pink lights in our sexual products and interests, there is often no escaping, both the good and the bad that human beings get up to.
And so, as we see in society, we see racism in porn.
At the beginning of 2016 in fact, adult industry talent agency Exposed Models LA issued the statement: “February is Black History Month and all of this month our talent will be doing IR BG scenes at their lowest rate.”) IR BG is porn-industry speak for interracial vaginal-penetrative sex scene, usually between a white woman and a black man. This declaration of price reduction sex scenes during a month celebrating the history of people of color seemed insensitive at the least, racist at the most and many performers then, as many have always implied, said this all speaks to racism in porn…and society at large.
One could argue that the IR BG construct still exists and came into being largely do to the fetishizing of white women having sex with black men. This ‘taboo’ goes back centuries, the very stuff of wickedly racist tracks. But really, is the humping between two people of different colors so controversial and ‘taboo’ these days that the porn world still sees it as something to exploit and sell?
James Deen, a man courting all kinds of controversy himself, as much in front of the porn camera as behind it, reported on racism to reporter Rachel Bell on Broadly.com. He said: “I let the performers know who they’ll be working with and an agent tells me, ‘She doesn’t do interracial porn….I end up in these situations with agents where I’m trying to plan a scene, and I have to say, ‘Okay, one girl will be having sex with all the men and one girl will only have sex with the white men,’ because there are women who have never had sex with a black man on camera and want to be paid $500 extra for it, as if it’s a chore”
One would have hoped that in porn, there might have been more ‘gray’ areas.
