Racial fetishism

Caren M. Holmes , College of Wooster Follow. In my research, I examined the history of sexual debasement and abuse of black women throughout American history and its influence of modern racial fetishization. In my paper, I explore the influence of European colonial thought on these modern realities. I argue that the conquest and feminization of the New World led to the dehumanization and conquest of African women who were perceived by colonialists to be byproducts of manifest destiny.

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This chapter surveys a range of fictional texts by both white and black writers from the antebellum South. Seeking to initiate a wider investigation of same-sex relations in the region, it maps the depictions of white male desires and homoerotic intimacies in narratives of sympathy, friendship, courtship, mastery, and sexual exploitation. The chapter shows how male writers infuse homoerotic sentimentality into certain forms of homosociality, including loyalties across the color line, to consolidate male power. Altogether, these texts demonstrate that a clear validation of male homoeroticism was central, not oppositional, to the constructions of masculine intimacy during this time.

Names have been left anonymous in this article to protect the identity of our source. Micro-aggressions are, unfortunately, something all too common for people of color, especially on this campus. Fetishization is a completely different monster. But it can be significantly less obvious with the same, equally demoralizing emotional consequences. Do you have a type or what?