The new dating app everyone’s calling racist

Smoochr is geared toward black singles, but they don’t like it

Recently launched Smoochr, an app targeting black singles, has received almost universally negative reviews for some of its features. Here are a few things to know:

1. Users could filter based on lip type

According to this article on Identity.mic:

Smoochr users are even able to choose a future mate based on lip size. Those options range from thin, to full, “soup coolers” or “duck lips.”

So what makes Smoochr different from other Black dating apps? “Most of them are regular dating sites that are just marketed to black people,” Smoochr states on its website, according to the Voice. “They don’t focus on the black experience in the dating world, so this leads to wasting your time and money, and meeting black singles you really don’t have anything in common with.”

The app, which trended on Twitter late last night, received criticism from many who couldn’t believe Smoochr was a real thing.

2. There has been a social media backlash

According to this article in Daily Mail:

Daniel Adeyanju , from New York, said: ‘Dismayed to see an app that promotes colorism and somehw makes dating even more superficial than other apps have managed to #shutdownsmoochr [sic]’.

‘Black people in tech have it hard enough. We don’t need this #shutdownsmoochr,’ added Nia Johnson, from Washington.

Another user, named only as Beamer, wrote: ‘I thought Smoochr was fake, but the colorism and texture discrimination is VERY real. See for yourself.’

One man, named only as Hen.D, said: ‘Smoochr is another instance of what happens when capitalism and internalized racism meet each other.’

3. Comparisons to Jim Crow

According to this article in Teen Vogue:

We are in the latter half of 2016 and it is evident that the damaging psychological effects of Jim Crow are alive and well. Did this app developer have an unexcused absence on the day that their high school history class discussed Brown v. Board of Education? Does “the doll experiment” ring a bell to anyone? Black children admitted in the 1950s that they preferred playing with white dolls because the lighter complexion resonated with them in a positive manner as opposed to the darker dolls which implied something “bad” or “ugly”. At one point in time, blacks were subjected to brown paper bag tests. If you were lighter or the same color as the bag, then you were afforded elite privileges. If your skin was darker, then you could forget about it and go to the back of the bus, figuratively speaking.