I’m so glad you brought this up! Every time I'm in NOLA, I take a Storyville tour; the red-light district of New Orleans. And I’d recommend it to anyone who hasn’t. It’s fascinating how sex work was woven into the French Quarter until the city decided to push it out and “contain” it in Storyville. And yes, Storyville itself was segregated: white brothels in one section, Black brothels in another. The idea was to “clean up” the Quarter for white respectability while still profiting off sex work. I'm a descendant of a "plaçage" aka a "left-handed marriage" so not necessarily SW per se but an arrangement of sorts.
That context helps explain why women like Ida Dorsey in Minneapolis made the choices they did. On the surface, it feels shocking that a Black madam wouldn’t allow Black men into her brothel. But in the late 1800s, it was about optics and survival. If her brothel was seen as serving only white men, it was considered more “upscale” as if her women were elevating themselves by being “chosen” by white patrons, not “lowering” themselves with Black men.
There’s a saying I learned when I lived in the Deep South: “In the South, you can get close but you can’t get too high. In the North, you can get high but you can’t get too close.” Down South, Black and white people often had deeply personal ties. How many Black women were domestics who raised white folks' children? And then became the help for them. But Black folks were only allowed a certain amount of professional or social “height" with "token" Black folks being the ones who could move between the communities when needed during times of tension. Up North, Black professionals could rise higher in status; more doctors, lawyers, business owners but the neighborhoods and social lines stayed deeply segregated. There’s a line in the film Sinners where someone says, “Chicago ain’t nothing but Mississippi with tall buildings.” That wasn’t just Chicago though. That was most Northern cities, all the way through Jim Crow. And we see that to this day. On the surface things look liberal and progressive, but underneath? Bias and segregation linger with the way most Northern cities are divided. That’s any city, any era. Suck it up, Buttercup.
Ida’s decision wasn’t just personal though. It reflected how respectability politics, white supremacy, and economics all collided. She was playing a strategic game in a world where the deck was stacked against her. In some ways, those dynamics are still around today. You see it in the “No AA” lines on ads. Sometimes it’s personal because a person may not want to risk recognition in their own community. For example, I'm part Indigenous and if a client tells me he’s Indigenous from Minnesota, my first question is “what tribe?” This is because there’s a real chance we could be kin. But let’s be honest: most of the time, “No AA” isn’t about logistics. It’s about stereotypes and bias.
People assume Black men are “too aggressive” or “too risky.” Others cling to myths about size or behavior. Yet in my lived experience, my Black clients have gone above and beyond to be consummate gentlemen because they know the bar is stacked against them. Meanwhile, some of my worst experiences have been with white men. And statistically? If we look at the data, the men who commit the worst crimes against sex workers are overwhelmingly white. But you don’t see anyone putting “No White Men” on their ads, because that would dry up 65% of our business overnight. And we are willing to look at the individual and not the group as a whole.
And that's a reminder why it’s important to treat people as individuals. Period. I get it... some demographics can be harder to screen, or feel more entitled. But guess what? You don’t see me posting “No TER Users,” even though they sometimes can be harder to work with and schedule. I refuse to just outright shut them out. I screen the individual, not the stereotype.
Preferences are rarely neutral. They’re rooted in history, bias, and fear that go back generations. And if Ida Dorsey were alive today, I wonder how much she’d really see has changed.
xoxo