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Code Switch · NPR

Was dating while Black always so hard?

February 11, 2026·39 min·2 clips
Nicole Hill: 'I never imagined that they were dreaming so big. I think my picture is just that they're suffering. But they're imagining so much for us.'
Love gets roasted first. Parker opens around Valentine's Day by admitting that Code Switch, chilly edges included, is packed with hopeless romantics. The jokes are doing real work here. Rom-com lines, romance novel devotion, and dry self-mockery set up a question with a little bite under the cute setup: was dating ever easier? The episode reaches back to 1937, where Nicole Hill helps compare Black dating complaints then with Black dating complaints now. Parker becomes the test case. Gene and Parker turn the premise into a dating experiment, wondering who Parker might write to for another date. Confidence shows up fast. Parker is sure she would crush it in 1937, right until the conversation gets around to cooking, cleaning, sewing, and darning socks. That gap is the joke. She cannot really cook, can sort of clean, and offers books and film knowledge in place of domestic certainty. The bit makes old expectations easy to see without dressing the past up as simpler, sweeter, or better. Then modern dating slips back into the room. The BLK app comparison works because the search feels familiar, even when the setting changes. Preferences get messy fast. People know what they want, then have to bend anyway. The episode keeps its chatty rhythm, using teasing, awkward confidence, and real curiosity to ask why Black dating can feel hard across generations.

As heard by us

A funny conversation about Black love in 1937 and today.

Code Switch uses Valentine’s Day to ask a simple, slippery question: was Black dating better in 1937 than it is now? B.A. Parker, Gene Demby, and Nicole Hill keep the setup light, with Parker’s time-machine dates giving the conversation its spark.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want a funny, thoughtful look at Black dating then and now.

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