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Anna
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Anna Wilkinson Society has been proven to equate fetishization to compliments. Complimenting someone isn’t obsessing over someone specifically because of their culture or a specific aspect of their body. This is fetishization, and society continues to allow minority groups to be perpetuated and discriminated against. However, many argue that laws such as the 15th,16th, and 18th Amendments prove otherwise. Even with this change to the U.S.’s founding law, minorities are fetishized more often than white males. According to the Cambridge dictionary, fetishization is defined as “an unreasonable amount of importance that is given to something, or an unreasonable interest in something” and “a sexual interest in an object, a part of the body that is not a sexual organ, or a person as if they are an object.” Racial fetishization is a mix of both these definitions as it emphasizes the obsession and sexual interest aspect of each respective definition. For example, minorities are compulsively fetishized for their skin color or stereotypes. While there are times when one can be appreciated for their skin color, these
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ordinances become an issue when it degrades the person their color or heritage with excessive fetishization. María Valle-Remond, a senior, spoke about how they had felt personally fetishized by those around her when they identified as bisexual. Valle-Remond has also noticed the trend of minority group fetishization I referred to. “I think it’s confusing how a lot of the time people will fetishize light skin black people and discriminate against dark skin black people. This just shows how there’s a lot of colorism when the reason for both is the color of their skin,” ValleRemond said. This idea is not a new phenomenon. I have seen this obsession with skin color over various social media apps. For example, rather than complimenting someone using
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