Last updated 12/20/2024

Racial fetishization is treating particular people as being attractive specifically because of what the fetishist believes is normal among people of that race. Because it relies on stereotypes, generalizations, and other distorted or false perceptions, it ends up objectifying and dehumanizing the very people that fetishists claim to love.

Blanket content warning for racism, objectification, and dehumanization. Many of these links may discuss racist violence, misogynist violence, colonialism, slavery, and various types of sexual violence.

1. General and various

Black Jewish Boyfriend, Fetishized and Othered | Writing With Color (December 2014)

As a black woman, I'm tired of being fetishized by Charlene Haparimwi | HelloGiggles (May 2016)

Making Food Comparisons within Black Characters' Circles | Writing With Color (February 2015)

Chocolate Comparisons and Pick-up Lines | Writing With Color (October 2014)

An Essay on the Fetishization of black men in white Heterosexuality and Heterosexual Pornography | sensitiveblackboy (July 2014)

White Man Love Interest, Black Woman Fetishization | Writing With Color (December 2014)

[video] "The Black Girl Fetish": Let's Talk. | Tee Noir (January 2021)

Avoiding Fetishizing Descriptions: Skin Color and Black Men | Writing With Color (March 2015)

How The Colonial History of Hypersexualization Obscures the Possibility of Black Asexuality by Sherronda J. Brown | Wear Your Voice Mag (October 2019)

Rebellion-Based Interracial Relationship in the 1950s (BWWM) | Writing With Color (February 2015)

White sexuality is a breeding ground for racial violence/the sexual violence of white supremacists fetishizing & seeking out black romantic partners by Sherronda Brown (October 2017, content warnings at link are ”racialized sexual violence, Jeffrey Dahmer, dismemberment, necrophilia, cannibalism, hebephilia”, also uses racial slurs)

Available on Black Youth Project and Afropunk

Don't Conflate The Fetishization of Black Bodies With The Care For Black Lives by Sherronda J. Brown | Wear Your Voice Mag (June 2020)

descriptions of white women versus descriptions of Black women | Tumblr thread (December 2016)

Battling stereotypes and finding love as a queer black man | Xtra* (November 2016)

Your Assumptions About Black, Queer Masculinity Are Erasing My Asexual Identity by Timinepre Cole | Autostraddle (April 2022, mentions laws and violence against LGBTQ+ people, as well as negative attitudes towards asexuals)

Sexual Objectification of Black Men, From Mapplethorpe to Calvin Klein by Charles Stephens | Advocate (May 2017)

Luke Cage – Looks Like A Cinnamon Roll... | Stitch's Media Mix (September 2017)

Popular sex comic under fire for glossing over cuckolding's racist past by Ana Valens | Cashmere Magazine (April 2017)

When Your (Brown) Body is a (White) Wonderland | Tressie McMillan Cottom (published in or before August 2013)

Walking the Tightrope: Good Indian Girls, Race, and Bad Sexuality by Chaya Babu | The Feminist Wire (May 2013)

2. Jezebel stereotype

The Jezebel Stereotype – Jim Crow Museum | Ferris State University (July 2002, contains racist images to contextualize the history of the stereotype)

The Historical Roots of the Sexualization of Black Women and Girls | Blackburn Center (February 2019)

Study suggests Black women are more sexually objectified than White women by Eric W. Dolan | PsyPost (November 2018)

Black Woman Mistress | Writing With Color (October 2016)

Gender, race, and the cult of true womanhood, cont. | Are Women Human? (November 2011)

White Men and the Sexual Fetishization of Black Women by Rebecca Stevens A. | Medium (September 2020)

reclaiming what it means to be a sexual Black woman | Afrosexology

I hate... | theunfairlady (December 2016)

Dating While Black: I'm No Jezebel by Adiba Nelson | Ravishly (February 2016)

[video] Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake, the jezebel & white masculinity | Khadija Mbowe (March 2021)

3. Big Black Cock

The negative side of 'positive' stereotypes | Crommunist (August 2011)

Not Funny. | Seriously?!? (September 2016, uses racial slurs to make a point)

What being a gay black man has taught me about the sexual objectification of women by Jeremy Helligar | 9honey (January 2017)

Behind Amy Schumer's 'Get Out' joke: The horrible legacy of claiming the Black phallus endangers white women by Sherronda J. Brown | Black Youth Project (May 2017)

Black Is Bigger in Bed | TV Tropes (lists examples in pop culture, the opener addresses some of the implications of the stereotype and discusses the history of racist violence tied to it)

4. Adultification of Black girls (warning for sexualization of children)

"Adultification" refers to the tendency to perceive Black children as being older than they actually are. For Black girls, this is usually a subset of the Jezebel archetype that treats them as hypersexual when they are still children.

Black Girls Aren't Fast You've Just Been Taught to Sexualize Them by Jatella Jordan | King Of Reads (September 2017)

[video] Are "black girls less innocent"? Adultification explained | Khadija Mbowe (June 2021)

[video] she's fast: the adultification of hey arnold. | harriyanna hook (June 2021)

Why Do We View Black Girls as Sex Objects? by Anissa Durham | Word In Black (March 2023, mentions suicide and self-harm)

[video] Hypersexualization and Adultification Of Black Girls in The Proud Family | Video Essay | Pixie Academy (September 2021)

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