Intimacy, Race, and Decolonization

Introduction

Love and desire do not happen in a vacuum. Even in spaces where we imagie liberation, our intimate lives are shaped by history, by power, and by race. In many ways, Western culture still carries the legacy of colonial thought: whiteness remains the unspoken default in who gets to be a desirable partner, and people of color are often exotified or marginalized. If we care about true liberation, we must confront how these dynamics play out in our relationships.

Critical Race Theory teaches us that racism isn’t just about individual prejudice, but a system woven through our culture. Under this lens even intimate spaces reveal racial hierarchies. For example, many dating apps still allow coded race-based filters or fetishizing signals, and some Western men treat men of color as “exotic” playthings. To decolonize our sexuality, we must name these patterns rather than pretend they don’t exist. In the following sections I'll attempt at defining key terms like power and Orientalist fetishization and trace how racial power shapes intimacy, before considering how scripts of care and collective action might begin to undo these colonial legacies.

Defining Key Terms

By power in intimate relations i mean the social privilege and authority that partners carry from race, class, or gender. Whiteness, for example, still confers unspoken privilege in many gay spaces. Emotional spaciousness is the freedom to be fully seen, to share feelings, fears, or desires without being cut off by stereotype. Orientalist fetishization refers to the colonial gaze that treats people of color as exotic objects. Joseph Massad shows how Western narratives can hide imperial power under a “white man/brown boy” fantasy​, turning the racial other into a plaything who desires servitude rather than an equal.

Racial Power and Desire

These dynamics play out in very concrete ways on dating apps and in social circles. Studies confirm that gay platforms systematically privilege whiteness. For example, one analysis of hookup profiles finds that an explicit preference for white partners “white superiority” is common, and that encountering this bias is strongly associated with increased depressive symptoms in men of color​. Another report notes that Black users send messages to white users ten times more frequently than whites message them​, highlighting a painfully one-sided dynamic. The result is that people of color carry extra emotional burdens in dating: each rejection can echo racism, and each encounter can feel like a replay of historical oppression. These patterns aren’t accidents but symptoms of long-standing power structures.

Orientalist Fetishization in Queer Culture

Colonial fantasies still inform desire. Scholar Joseph Massad describes how a Western gay traveler might imagine Arab or Asian sexuality as a complement to his liberation, thereby disguising an imperial hierarchy​. In other words, what looks like “liberating” the Other often reproduces colonial dominance. These Orientalist fantasies strip away a person’sindividuality, reducing him to a stereotype such as the fiery Arab, the feisty Latino, the submissive Asian, etc. rather than a full subject.

We see this in everyday encounters. For a Middle Eastern man like me, Western admirers sometimes in the chat ask if I will have sex with them in Arabic. Or insist on me he growing up miserable in the Middle East. A recent meeting with a Korean-American man started with trepidations:

Him: "So are you like one of those white people who are only into Asian boys? What are they called...?" he said, enticed.

Me: "Rice queens? No, also who said I am white?"

Him: "You mentioned that the other day, you said, " as a white man..." 

Me: "I didn't say I am white, I don't consider myself white, I am not a white American and I wouldn't say something like this..."

Him: " Oh, I thought you said that... sorry"

Then the conversations became clunkier because he knew little to nothing about me if I didn't fit a Western view. Now he was stuck; he had to get to know me as a complex human being. The agony.

When the desire is filtered through such tropes, personal connection is lost and racial power is reinforced.

Emotional Spaciousness and Scripts of Care

The combined effect of racial bias and fetishization is that emotional spaciousness often gets squeezed out of queer interactions. When people are first seen as symbols of their race or culture, it’s hard to be vulnerable. 

Instead of the typical anonymous hookup script, we can practice scripts of care in our encounters. Taking moments to truly see one another can create emotional room. For example, meet them in public first... or nerves have calmed downlinger together over coffee and ask open-ended questions about how each of us is doing. Each caring gesture, a warm hug, or a thoughtful check-in text later signals “I care,” countering the impersonal anonymous norms. These small practices don’t erase power, but help people feel a bit more human and a bit less like sex toys.

Decolonizing Queer Spaces

Changing personal scripts is only half the task; we must also change our institutions. On the systemic level, queer spaces, offline and online, organizations and technologies need to confront racism directly. Researchers even urge dating apps to drop race-based filters, since such filters simply “reinforce racial divisions and biases”​; we've seen the discrimination increase when Grindr and Scruff introduced the tribes tab. 

Indeed, some platforms are already moving: one gay app now outright bans users from stating any racial preference in their profile​. Pride events and LGBTQ centers should follow suit: Host anti-racism training, promote non-white staff to leadership roles, and explicitly reject fetishization. This kind of solidarity affirms that true liberation must be intersectional.

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Conclusion

Dismantling colonial power patterns in our intimate lives requires personal and political work. We must bring honesty and humility into how we date, acknowledging how collective and personal histories and privileges shape our desires. Replacing impersonal hookup scripts with care-based ones can make each encounter more equitable and healing. At the same time, we must push for concrete policies: remove race filters on apps, diversify leadership, and sit with implicit bias. Maybe one day, our dating apps and community spaces will become more inclusive.

Acts of care and policy change might push us toward a world where desire, intimacy, vulnerability and ultimately belonging are not dictated by hierarchies that make the global majority of people suffer in service of the limited comfort level of the very few. 

The rewards of these resolutions are not just better intimacy and romance, but richer communities where love and power are shared fairly and consensually. 

The promise of liberation will only be fulfilled when everyone is humanized while investing in reparation. 

A revolution in love is a revolution in justice,

A revolution in Justice is a revolution in love.