“She only sleeps with Black guys” : On racial fetishism

 

So on Saturday night, I was approached at the bar by a guy who leant over and told me I could have the honour of being the first black girl he had ever slept with, because he “never usually finds black girls attractive”. Naturally, I was over the moon. Thank you so much for allowing me to be your trophy that is all I have ever dreamed of. But seriously, you would be surprised how often this happens- but it doesn’t get any less offensive each time.

Racial fetishisation is a real societal problem. We assign stereotypes to a skin colour for example: Asian women are submissive or kung-fu ‘bad girls’, black men are animalistic, black and Latino women are hyper-sexual- and then we let these sink into our everyday language and views until one day we transcend levels of preference into dangerous highs of bias. And there is a difference between preference and fetishisation. If you happen to date only Black women- you, my friend, have a preference. However, if you actively seek or avoid someone on the foundation of their skin colour, you need to ask yourself why that is.

These stereotypes have often been constructed historically, such as the image of the ‘hyper-sexual jezebel’ during slavery to justify the rape of black female slaves by white men, and then maintained through discourse and the media. Claiming hyper-sexuality in someone with a different anatomy; such as a large bum, a big penis…is inappropriate at best. Ethnic minorities are very often boxed into the contours of a stereotype through narrow media representations- or specifically in this case, representations in porn. Society begins to assign behaviours to races, based on flimsy beliefs; such as the big, threatening black man who defiles an innocent white girl. It’s gross, and it’s racist.

Satire of the Hottentot Venus (Saartjie Baartman). Martinet, Aaron (1762-1841), Charon, Louis FranÁois (1783-1831). September 1815

This leads me on to the fact that it is not just women of colour who are fetishised. Men of colour are also victims of this, specifically black men for the reasons aforementioned. How many times have you heard the phrase “Oh she has only dated black guys”; a sentence with no intrinsic meaning until you attach a social connotation to it- which in this case is always negative…unless you’re a black guy. The animalism attached to black men on the backdrop of the superiority of white men largely continues to taint them and the women they engage with. Similarly, the hyper-sexuality of black and Latino women on the backdrop of the virtuosity and purity of white women is an issue that these women have to navigate around and be aware of constantly. I will continue to say- racial fetishisation has no concrete logic attached to it, because there is nothing logical about racism.