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YouTube, Interracial Relationships and Microcosms

I love supporting black women, I support us on social media spaces and in real life. My recent addictions are vlogs, I find out about a new black female vlogger and quite often, these vloggers tend to have white partners. Is this a trend? Are they only popular because they have white boyfriends? Do viewers overlook black vloggers' talent because they have white boyfriends? And is mediocrity accepted and popularised because they date interracially? Is this a microcosm for society? When discussing this topic with friends in interracial relationships and those not, I often get two types of responses.

The first response:

"Black women vloggers gain popularity because of their white boyfriends’."

If this is the case then that leaves us with a problem. This assumes that viewers only care about black women when associated with white people (shock horror!). This doesn’t surprise me at all; in fact, it makes a lot of sense. black women’s navigation of white spaces are not enough for viewers to be entertained by, our navigations and experiences are only completely accepted into a white sphere by invitation only. This isn’t to question the authenticity of such relationships, I have no doubt that interracial couples on and off camera are genuine. However, it cannot be denied that these vloggers are widely accepted because of their white partners. Just to clarify, my issue is not with the interracial relationship itself, but rather with the viewer’s fascination with interracial couples.