Can Sean Cody Not Refer to One of Its Black Models as ‘Chocolate Skinned’?

Just because someone looks like a snack, doesn’t mean you have to describe them as food.

This week, porn studio Sean Cody released a scene featuring two of its longtime performers, (extremely NSFW link incoming) Landon and Randy. In the description for the video, the studio described Randy as “dark-haired” while it described its black model, Landon, who has appeared in videos going back as far as 2010, as “chocolate-skinned.”

Despite every indication that doing so is racist, people continue to reference black people as “chocolate” as if they exist solely to be consumed or eaten by white people. Just stop it. In 2011, Naomi Campbell called the comparison “insulting” and “hurtful” when she was compared to a chocolate bar. Even this year, a German chocolate company compared Meghan Markle in a wedding dress to a chocolate bar wearing a wedding dress.

This shit is just not OK.

What’s even more surprising about this is that Sean Cody doesn’t understand that their brand is already associated with overwhelming whiteness. One 2016 Str8UpGayPorn analysis showed that, since Sean Cody’s inception, only 28 of its 1,024 models in sex scenes — 2.7 percent — were people of color, several of whom were light-skinned or white passing.

Adding Sean Cody to the bottom of pictures fearing mostly white men has become a staple of the gay internet, whether it’s to the U.S. Men’s bobsled team or to — yikes — racists holding tiki torches at the Charlottesville white supremacist rally in 2017.

Sean Cody is obviously not alone in its treatment of Black actors in their adult films. In June, Michael Lucas entertainment released a video featuring several Black actors called Black Cocks Matter. At least one of the film’s actors came forward to say that he was not told the name of the video when he signed up to do the scene.

Racism in gay porn became a conversation lightning rod in November after GayVN Awards announced a category for “Best Ethnic Scene,” which led gay porn actors like Hugh Hunter to pull out of the awards show altogether. Shortly after the announcement, Men.com released a porn parody of Justice League where the film’s sole Black character was replaced by a character played by Trump-voting porn actor Colby Keller, and porn actor Leo Forte penned an essay about racism in the industry for Str8UpGayPorn.

Images via Sean Cody