Introduction
Fetishization is sexually objectifying someone based on an aspect of their identity. Thus, racial fetishization is making someone an object of sexual desire based on racial characteristics such as their skin color, physical features, and hair type (Forbes). Fetishization becomes more apparent when people only date someone because of their specific race. While physical racial characteristics can be fetishized, racial stereotypes about a specific race can be as well. For example, the fetishization of Black women, also known as “Jungle Fever”, portrays Black women as “hyper-sexual”, wild animals to be caged and chained. Latina women are also portrayed as “hypersexual” and “fiery”, while Asian women are stereotyped as domestic and docile. While some might argue that racial fetishization is flattering because it increases the dating desirability of someone from that community, racial fetishization is a form of sexual racism connected to the reproduction of racial and sexual inequality.
History
Since colonial times, Black bodies have been hyper-sexualized and subsequently dehumanized to justify abhorrent human rights violations such as Chattel slavery and forced sterilization. The sexual exploitation of black women was a byproduct of manifest destiny and colonization (Homes). European colonizers like Christopher Columbus saw the new land and its people as a sexual conquest to be taken forcibly; it was within their entitled rights. The rise of Social Darwinism and pseudo-science during the late 1800s was used to perpetuate sexual stereotypes about Black people. By dehumanizing Black people and portraying them as subhuman, slaveowners were able to justify slavery. For instance, Thomas Jefferson in his book Notes on the State of Virginia, depicted Black women as hyper-sexual and uncivilized, as sexual commodities rather than free agents. His beliefs painted Black women as sex-driven animals rather than people. Thus, American slavery and the widespread rape culture of Black women were born. From then on, under the injustices of the chattel slavery system, Black bodies were valued solely for their sexual and reproductive economic worth. Like animals, black women were seen as “breeders”. Her worth, measured by how much additional free slave labor she could give birth to, willingly or unwillingly to to other slaves or her master.
After the age of formal slavery, racial fetishization still had an unrelenting grasp over black bodies as a vehicle for the reproduction of white supremacist colonial racism. Through the eugenics movement in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries that espoused racial cleansing and selective breeding, people of color were targeted for forced sterilization to prevent the mixing of the white race (Holmes 5).
Conclusion
The fetishization of Black bodies made it easier for them to be enslaved and abused and was used as a justification for their debasement. Black women are more likely to experience sexual assault in the United States while perpetrators of sexual abuse against Black women are more likely to have their charges reduced. The United States still benefits from turning black bodies into sexual commodities. From popular music to advertisements, and pornography, social media today still perpetuates harmful stereotypes about Black bodies while weaponizing racist beauty standards.
References
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