Black woman changed her race to white on Hinge and suddenly started matching with investors, advisors and athletes: ‘That racist’
Finding a good match on dating apps can be frustrating. But one Black woman claims her options improved almost overnight after she changed her race to white on Hinge. The difference left her questioning how the app was treating her.
Before the change, she struggled to find men she wanted to date. Suddenly, her feed was filled with Harvard graduates, investors, and athletes. Interestingly, some of those men were Black.
A video shared by TikTok account @wrekkkii, which has gained 28.6K views, captured the woman’s experiment. While she encouraged other Black women to try the same trick, commenters weren’t convinced. Some questioned whether those new options were actually any better.
Then came the questions
The woman explained that she had seen another person recommend the trick a few months earlier. The advice was for Black women to identify as white on dating apps to improve their dating options. Curious whether it would work, she decided to test it herself.
Her Hinge profile originally identified her as Black, although she had hidden that information from other users. According to her, the men appearing in her feed were mostly drug dealers, scammers, and people she had no interest in dating.
Then she changed her race to white, and the difference surprised her. “Suddenly I’m getting Harvard graduates, real estate investors, financial advisors, um, football players, black men,” she recalled.
She was particularly surprised by the attractive Black men appearing in her feed. “Where were y’all?” she asked, wondering why she hadn’t encountered those profiles before.
“Shit is that deep and that racist,” she wrote in the video’s caption, expressing her frustration with the difference in her dating options.
For the woman, the experiment raised questions about racial bias in online dating. She encouraged other Black women to try changing their race, arguing that dating apps weren’t taking them seriously.
However, commenters pointed out a potential problem with her advice. Even if the change made more desirable profiles appear, it didn’t necessarily mean those men would be interested in dating her.
Several people suggested that the men appearing in her feed might have set their preferences to exclude Black women. If that were the case, changing her race could make their profiles visible without changing their actual preferences.
“Why would you want men who are seeking white women?” one commenter asked. Another responded, “Those are men that don’t want you. Disregard them and move on.”
Others felt the experiment reflected broader dating challenges Black women face, particularly when racial preferences influence who gets considered as a potential partner.
“that’s because those men have clearly removed black women as their preferences and it’s time for black women to wake up and see it,” one person wrote.
Another pointed out that seeing someone on a dating app doesn’t guarantee romantic interest. “Those men selected to be shown white women so it probably won’t change your odds.”
One commenter raised safety concerns about appearing to men who may have deliberately excluded Black women. “My concern is if those men have their settings set to intentionally filter out black women, will changing those settings make your profile visible to some men who could be a threat to your safety,” they wrote.
Changing her race may have brought different men into her feed, but it doesn’t guarantee better dating prospects. After all, finding someone worth dating should depend on genuine compatibility, not having to pretend to be someone else.
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