Yellow Fever. Jungle Fever. No, University Health Services has not begun a prevention campaign against a new illness, but these ailments are spreading quickly and are highly contagious. I am talking about racial fetishes. The terms “yellow fever”, “jungle fever” and other equivalent terms are used to describe an attraction to a particular race. In a society attempting to rectify mistakes of the past we must work to eliminate the use of these terms because at their core they are discriminatory. Consider the term “yellow fever”. If I heard this without any context of the conversation I would assume someone contracted something vile and repulsive. That is exactly what fetishes do. It takes a person that can be viewed in a beautiful way and in turn objectifies and diminishes the value of the people that are being fetishized. Discrimination removes the individual and replaces it with a standardized version of who someone should be according to generalizations. Having a racial fetish is the same thing as discriminating. Continue reading

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