The Usage of Sexuality to Express Racism (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2021 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Tubingen (Philosophische Fakultät), course: Literary Studies, language: English, abstract: This work gives an overview about how sexuality has been used in history to express racism, and how some ethnicities are fetishized even today.

There are many ways in which People of Colour (POC) have to endure racism. Discrimination of PoC and minorities is a practice with a very old history. As a society we have already gone a long way, and expressing one's own culture, sexual orientation, or history is mostly accepted today. But from slavery to political right pressure many western democratic states experience the last few decades, racism has been and probably will be a huge problem for a long time. Not only racism but also sexism from our society and our way of life. Sexism comes in many forms. It's not always easy to detect and is internalized in our society, just as racism is, too.

Racism is not only slavery or right-wing extremists, it is also sitting away from a black man in the bus, touching someone's afro hair because it 'feels different', or sexualizing black women because of their skin colour. There are a lot of ways to express racism and sexism and not even realizing that one is doing it.

In this paper, I will discuss how white people use sexuality to discriminate against People of Colour by explaining sexuality and racism in the 20th century with the example of the poem 'The Harlem Dancer' by Claude McKay, fetishization and exoticization, and the denial of sexuality of PoC.