Racial fetishism

Racial fetishism involves fetishizing a person or culture belonging to a race or ethnic group that is not one's own—therefore it involves racial/ethnic stereotyping and objectifying those bodies who are stereotyped, and at times their cultural practices. This can include having strong racial preferences in dating, for example, fetishization of East Asian, Southeast Asian and to some extent South Asian women in Australasia, North America and Scandinavia is quite prevalent. Racial fetishism also often includes the fetishization of white women, black men and women, and latinx people. Racial fetishism has been theorized in academic discourse in relation to Freudian sexual fetishism and Marx's notion of commodity fetishism. The term has not been largely discussed in academia, however, because Freud's theories of sexual fetishism have become so influential since the late 19th century. Some writers who have extensively discussed racial fetishism include Homi K. Bhabha, , and Kobena Mercer.

The notion of "fetish" has been around for a very long time, and in fact, the origins of the word itself arose within imperial, racialized tensions. From there, fetishism has evolved to be defined as "the pathological displacement of erotic interest and satisfaction to an object or bodily part whose real or fantasized presence is psychologically necessary for sexual gratification". According to William Pietz's The Problem of the Fetish, I, characteristics essential to the notion of fetish include the fetish object's irreducible materiality which resides in its status as a material embodiment, the theme of repetition compulsion, and the dependence of social value on specific institutional systems. The repeated "co-occurrence of virtually any stimulus (e.g., a high-heeled shoe or an image of an elderly person) and sexual satisfaction could turn a previously neutral stimulus into a conditioned stimulus" that can cause a sexual reaction. This process can lead to fetishism or deviant sexual behavior. Over time, race has became a factor in arousing sexual desire.

Racial fetishism involves the desire for a person of another culture often because they are dissimilar, and thus "exotic". With the white, heterosexual, male gaze being the norm, non-white people are often pursued for their different and interesting physical traits and cultural habits. These distinctions have sparked sexual interest, and the term "exotic" was used to describe their their desire in attempts to make the sexual interest in different cultures seem positive. Asian women, black men and women, and latina/os are often described as exotic, which is further discussed in Examples of Racial Fetishism. As Matthew W Hughey discusses in his article, "Making Everyday Microaggressions: An Exploratory Experimental Vignette study on the Presence and Power of Racial Microaggressions", Asian and Latino/ Hispanic people were most likely to experience . The term exotic, and being sexually interesting in someone for their exotic traits, has become problematic when describing persons of color as it marginalizes their culture, reminding them that they are not a part of the norm, and their traits (physical and cultural) are considered as a part of the other.

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