An aside in 3 parts.
Like most American industries pornography is dominated by whiteness. In front of the camera and even more so behind it. This matters because porn is ubiquitous. The average age of an American child’s first exposure to porn is eleven. Pornhub had 42 billion, that’s billion with a ‘b’, visitors in 2019. That number is doubtlessly higher in 2020 and 2021 with the lockdowns due to the pandemic.
Porn is the last bastion of the unacceptable. Racism, violence, child abuse, incest, a film or novel which had these themes would have to justify itself. In porn these are merely searchable categories. Search queries in porn for Mandingos, Black Bucks, Thugs, Gangsters will give you porn featuring Black men who are usually shown as pimps or predators. Black women are given roles like house slave in antebellum pieces that glorify the slave holding South. Asian women are portrayed as submissive. At best people of color are treated like props. At worst the fact that they are not white is used as a reason to degrade them.
It’s not simply racist stereotypes that are deemed acceptable in porn. People of color, especially Black people, are paid less because they are not white. Despite the fact that searches based on minorities routinely take several places in the top ten.
This continues to be accepted, though was never acceptable, because porn itself is seen as abnormal. Categories like milf (mom I’d like to f***) or “barely legal” often also include acts of pretend incest or child molestation that would be downright nauseating in any other venue. Pornhub, the YouTube of porn which exists off of user uploaded (often stolen) content, is known to be a haven for child pornographers, revenge porn, and features that include violence against women and children. Despite supposedly vetting every single upload. It is the dark place where people can live out the fantasies that would have us pilloried in any other setting.
This being the US it’s hardly surprising that racism would thrive in this fertile ground.
Sources
https://museemagazine.com/features/2020/7/7/our-nations-kink-for-racism
https://prostitutionresearch.com/why-does-the-porn-industry-get-away-with-racist-portrayals-of-black-people/
https://fightthenewdrug.org/porn-content-normalizes-promotes-racism-racist-stereotypes/
https://fightthenewdrug.org/the-brain-science-of-how-porn-consumption-reduces-a-consumers-empathy/
https://fightthenewdrug.org/get-the-facts/
http://pornharmsresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/24163417-Racism-in-Pornography.pdf
http://www.hustlingtheleft.com/CRAPP_E_LIB/leftissue.html
https://fightthenewdrug.org/how-mainstream-porn-perpetuates-racist-stereotypes-of-black-men/
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a34642666/racism-porn-industry/
https://www.newsweek.com/confronting-racism-pornography-industry-opinion-1601228
https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/07/pornhub-black-lives-matter-genre-racism.html
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/asian-porn-racism-discrimination-1148275/
https://www.wired.com/story/porn-racist-metadata-hurts-adult-performers-of-color/
https://mashable.com/article/porn-racist-tropes
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-rise-of-racist-porn
https://iwantrest.com/blog/racism-and-pornography