Some might be surprised that there’s so many people willing to marry a perfect stranger on the show “Married at First Sight” but that’s the case every season.
If you’re not familiar with the series, relationship experts select six men and women who don’t know each other and marry them off. The first time the couples actually see each other is at the altar before they exchange vows in front of their families.
During an interview, Pastor Cal, one of the relationship experts on the show, spoke about the selection process and how those who audition have to go through intense questioning.
And during that Q&A process, a lot of the Black men said they wanted to marry someone outside of their race,” which the Pastor finds problematic.
“How can I say this?” he began. “Here’s a big problem I have: One of the biggest problems we have on the show when we’re trying to match is finding Black men who want Black women. I can say that, and that’s a problem. But I believe it’s bigger than ‘Married at First Sight.’”
“There’s something in our society where, you know, we’ve been affected by this whole colorism thing,” Pastor Cal added. “And it’s sort of like a survival of the fittest type thing, you know, ‘I want to be on the side that’s winning.’ So it’s a very serious thing. It pervades our society. It’s there and it’s unfortunate, but we’re all victims of it.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Pastor Cal said he and the producers get a lot of requests for older, same-sex and interracial couples to be on the show. With same-sex couples, he said it would be a logistical challenge, but they’re not opposed to it.
In regards to marrying an interracial couple, they’ve tried repeatedly but haven’t been able to do so because some who audition are more enthusiastic about the idea than others.
“As far as interracial, I would love to see an interracial couple,” said the Pastor. “We tried every season to do that. It’s very difficult because when it comes to Black men and white women, we can find Black men who want white women, we can’t find as many white women who want Black men.”
“We have all these guys, I mean I’ve heard guys and I think you’ve seen them on previous seasons, guys who said ‘Hey, you know, I prefer white women.’ Then my thing is white women don’t prefer you. And so that’s a problem with the Black man-white woman scenario. I’m not saying that across the board. Just in the cases that I’ve seen, that may be it.”
And he sees the same thing among Black women who audition too.
“And then on the other side, when you have Black women and white men, I’ve seen Black women who may want white men, but I haven’t seen a lot of white men who put on their profiles that I want a Black woman,” said Pastor Cal.
You can watch “Marry at First Sight” on Tuesday at 10:00 p.m EST on Lifetime.
