Do Dating Apps Promote Racism?

I saw the headline of this article and immediately sighed.  Sheesh, everything is raaaaaacist.  I'll admit that there are some interesting points made in the discussion, but in the end I'm going to come down on the side of

"But with a close personal matter, one has to wonder whether anyone else is in a position to tell someone else that they should not ‘want what they want.’”

I liked this point:

Comedian Dana Donnelly, who is Asian, recently addressed this apparent paradox in a tweet, writing, “White people who exclusively date white people? bad. white people who exclusively date non-white people? bad. white people who date a mix of white and non-white people? bad, but for reasons unrelated to their dating practices.”

Donnelly — who, again, is a comedian — is obviously joking (so please calm down). But she raises an interesting point: while I, as a white woman, am by no means here to rail against some imagined plight of white people on dating apps, there are certain ethical paradoxes at play that are worth interrogating.

Is it wrong to prefer people of only the same race? How about only of a different race? How about of the same religion, or same politics?  How about only people who are older?  Or younger?  Or richer?  If you'd "discriminate" in real life, is it wrong to do so on an app?

Academically these are interesting questions.  In the real world no one else has any business telling anyone else who to like, date, have sex with, or marry.  Mind your own beeswax.  If you filter out someone who, in reality, would have been a perfect match for you, well, no one will ever know, will they?

As someone who learned in college about John Stuart Mill's "utilitarianism" and Immanuel Kant's "categorical imperative", I found the penultimate paragraphs to be interesting:

“For the last hundred years, ethicists have been engaged in a furious debate between the ‘utilitarians’ — who claim that the ultimate goal of ethics is to maximize individual happiness — versus the Kantians — who believe that there are overriding questions of right and wrong,” McIntyre tells InsideHook.

“If ethics is just about maximizing happiness, then filtering — either in person or on an app — may not be a concern,” he says. “But if ethics is about enshrining a set of ‘absolute values’ — which may include judgments about whether we ‘should’ want what we what — this is a more troubling question.”

Either way, the question isn’t necessarily “Should we filter?” as much as it is “Should we want what we want?” And perhaps, why shouldn’t we?

Is anyone surprised that the author seems inclined to the "I'll filter however I want, but I might feel pangs of guilt for doing so" belief?  Me, either.