Swipe White: Cultural Politics and Shifting Romance Practices in Texas

• In Event: Politics and Family Life in the 21st Century

Abstract

PURPOSE: This paper is a qualitative study of how multiracial women in Central Texas develop a gendered understanding of race, racism, and the notion of a post-racial society within the context of their intimate romantic relationships. My research shows how identities influence perceptions of online dating by focusing on the gendered and raced ways that multiracial women navigate their on- and offline dating experiences and how whiteness frames ideas about “success” in dating, sexual desirability, and the construction of racial boundaries within relationships.

How they desire whiteness and how they are desired by white partners, nuancing the desirability of proximities to whiteness among multiracial and multiethnic women. The book also contends with the post-2015 socio-political context (going beyond political party affiliation like many studies) to assess how discourse has shaped the online dating experience from the vetting practices that daters engage in to the shifts in what content dating apps allow or enable to be displayed on one’s profile.

METHODS: This study uses a longitudinal interview approach, speaking to 30 multiracial women online daters in three major metro areas in Texas (Austin, Houston, and San Antonio) in 2015-2016 and again, in 2026 to get a sense of how they are navigating (online) dating and potential family formation plans that are bracketed by two Trump presidencies, two waves of the Black Lives Matter movement, and shifting politics around abortion, birth control and other bodily autonomy issues, among other policy struggles happening across the U.S. but in particular, those that are specific to Texas.

FINDINGS: As I have not yet completed the 2026 interviews, this presentation will focus on what has changed between the first wave of interviews and the second wave and how the current political climate in Texas is informing women daters’ vetting practices (effectively following up on what I explored in my 2017 article, “Dating in the Time of #BlackLivesMatter: Exploring Mixed-Race Women’s Discourses of Race and Racism”).

Author

• Shantel Gabrieal Buggs, Florida State University