[font=Georgia, Times, sans-serif]The last four times porn star James Deen tried to cast a black male performer in a scene for his website, the female star or her agent refused.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times, sans-serif]In one case, an agent using the shorthand for “interracial” texted him to say that his client “does not do IR yet.”[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times, sans-serif]In another, Deen asked up front via text message whether a female performer had “issues with black dudes.” She wrote back, “Personally no. Sexually, I’d rather not at this time lol.”[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times, sans-serif]He responded: “Racist,” then added, “I will find someone else for this scene.” She tried to save face, writing, “I’m only 5 months in. Havnt done IR yet.”[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times, sans-serif]In the porn business, working with black male actors is often viewed as the final, most extreme frontier in a white starlet’s career.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times, sans-serif]Popular industry wisdom has it that a female performer must slowly expand the range of things that she does on camera — going from standard “boy-girl” scenes to anal sex to gang bangs, for example — in order to build intrigue and keep her star from burning out too quickly.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times, sans-serif]This hierarchy usually proceeds according to which sex acts are considered most taboo and, sometimes, most physically demanding for the female performer. But “interracial” porn, which is frequently seen as the ultimate feat for an actress, is held out as more extreme not because of which body part goes where but because the adult industry reflects the old attitude society still holds on to — that the color of a sexual partner’s skin can by itself make the act forbidden.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times, sans-serif]“It’s gross and racist, and I’m just sick of it,” says Deen. “It’s rampant s--- that’s making it really difficult to actually get any sort of interesting scenes or to actually have a diverse group of performers, because what ends up inevitably happening is every scene just turns into a bunch of white people, and it’s getting really frustrating.”[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times, sans-serif]The term “interracial” porn is misleading — hence the scare quotes — because it generally isn’t applied to scenes between a white woman and, say, an Asian man. “It simply means ‘a black person,’” says Isiah Maxwell, an African-American performer.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times, sans-serif]And, Maxwell says, it can simply mean a black man, regardless of the woman’s race. “It don’t make any sense when a mixed girl tells me she don’t want to do IR,” says Maxwell. “I’m like, you’re already IR! What are you talking about?”[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times, sans-serif]Maxwell says he has seen this mentality impact his career. “[Producers will] tell me that they would love to put me in more scenes, but they can’t find performers that will work with me,” he says. “The concept is mind-blowing if you think about it.”[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times, sans-serif]Porn performer Mickey Mod has had similar experiences. He’s African-American, but has “a little bit of a lighter complexion,” as he puts it, so sometimes people assume from photographs that he’s Latino.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times, sans-serif]A few times, he has shown up on set, only to have his female costar inquire about his ethnicity and react negatively when he answers. “I’ve had the scene stopped because the person was like, ‘Well, I don’t do interracial yet’ or ‘I’m saving that for later,’” he said. “That’s happened a couple times where I’m booked for a scene and the scene is changed.”[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times, sans-serif]Even porn’s pay scale has racist implications. A standard “boy-girl” scene generally earns a female star around $1,000, according to Mark Spiegler, one of the industry’s top talent agents. After that, pay often increases with the degree of difficulty or taboo of the scene. Anal sex comes with a price tag of roughly $1,200 and up, and double penetration runs around $1,400, says Spiegler. Spiegler’s agency does not charge extra for “interracial,” but others do.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times, sans-serif]Deen recently had an actress request an extra $500 to perform with a black man. In the case of contracts with big companies, female stars can get $2,000-plus for their first “IR” scene, according to one black performer who asked to remain anonymous so as to not associate that rate with the agency that employs him.[/font]
[font=Georgia, Times, sans-serif]In other words, in monetary terms, these agents, performers, and producers are saying that simply having sex with a black man is about 43% more difficult — or more taboo, or both — for the actress in the scene than it is for her to have two penises inside her at the same time.[/font]
