Heard the one about the porn star and the zebra crossing?

WHEN IT COMES to race, progressive thinking isn't something porn is known for.

In the sex industry, ethnicity generally translates as flavour, a bit like different flavours of icecream. This isn't very different from The Life in general, where every characteristic is a potential selling point - or minus. Muscles, twink, blonde, bear, hung, pierced - and black, Latino or Asian: they're all sales pitches on a box cover (or an irritating banner on DList... or, come to that, on the average Joe or Jamal's profile).

The Sword.com has looked at the 10 most racially offensive porn titles, and some of them really are stunningly bad: Ace Of Spades, anyone? How about Dealers? Truth be told, most of their top 10 isn't that bad, and I thought I could come up with some better examples, with a little research (and I do mean a little; it doesn't take too long with porn). But it was all too exhausting, not to mention depressing, a quick browse of the interracial section of Movie Mountain throwing up dozens of Big Black Dicks Tight White Asses (no, it can't be the other way around in porn land), Big Black Bananas (of course they are - they all are, you know that!), some Black Lust White Passion (apparently indicating some primitive difference in black desire) and the revelation that Big Black Men Like Dick Too (hang on, I thought they were all big? And do little black men like dick too?). And don't forget this important warning from your mama: Black Meat Taboo & Forbidden! And that's before I got to Asian and Latino men. No doubt the words "rice" and "spice" feature heavily in those categories.

What must this be doing to our youth? Is it any wonder the whiter than white scene queens on Gaydar look down on those who are not. Or that the precocious divas of BGC think their race makes them a prized commodity? No, you're not special 'cos you're mixed race, and saying "I don't do black" on your Adam4Adam profile isn't cool. Race ain't a commodity to be traded on, kids.

It isn't all bad news in porn land. Jean Daniel Cadinot was generally indiscriminate in his use of models, and his scope was wide (ahem...), with boys from Africa, Asia, Europe and the middle east. More importantly, as a European director, his features were bereft of the depressing slave paradigms and racially charged power relationships prevalent in American porn. Men were, simply, men, not black men and white men coming together and breaking taboos. Similarly, Kristen Bjorn has used a wide variety of nationalities and races in his films, to the extent that it's clear most of the models don't understand a word anyone else is saying. Everyone is an exotic confection, black, white or otherwise. And that's how it should be.