YOU GIVE ME (YELLOW) FEVER Hi, my name is Mini and I think I might be a bit of a racist. Okay, not in a go-back-to-where-youcame-from, stop-the-boats kind of way. Please, before you put this paper down out of disgust, let me explain. First up, you should know that I’m of Indian/ Australian descent and I probably wouldn’t ordinarily consider myself a racist. In fact, I am incredibly racially aware to the point that it can be quite frustrating for those who spend a lot of time with me. I absolutely abhor the question “where are you from” and I swing between mirth and indignation whenever someone tries (and usually fails) to pronounce my full name correctly. But recently I’ve become ‘the racist’ within my group of friends because of my rather obvious taste in men. After recent forays into the dark, dark place that is Tinder, it has become increasingly obvious that I have a “type”, and this type seems predominantly to be guys of the Caucasian variety. Actually, after my friends witnessed some rather swift swipes to the right, it might be more correct to say this type explicitly excludes men of sub-continental descent. Whilst this all seemed perfectly normal to me, my friends’ reaction got me thinking: am I secretly a racist? Jungle/salsa/curry/yellow fever is where people, generally white, straight males, are sexually attracted to people of (insert your minority here) descent. It’s basically a term to describe a racial fetish. There’s been a hell of a lot of criticism of these “fevers”, with some saying they’re disgustingly racist and others claiming that they would be flattered by it. There’s no real issue with having a preference for certain physical attributes. I don’t think any straight guy has ever been chastised for liking big boobs. If that’s what you’re into, good for you! Considering how online dating and Tinder basically force you to make a decision purely off a couple of snaps, of course your preference for certain physical attributes is going influence who you pick. So you find yourself attracted to bronzed goddesses with dark hair? – Congratulations! You’re not a racist! But here’s where things get a bit problematic. What can sometimes happen with people who have racial fetishes is that they start attributing certain characteristics, values and behaviours
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to people they have never met based purely on race. The danger in having such a fetish is that you start pursuing a type of person as opposed to a person in their own right. So while it’s all well and good that you like Asian girls, exclusively dating them because you believe they are more subservient, hard working and “make better wives” than their white counterparts? Then you have a problem. Likewise, the use of racial “knowledge” of someone you’re chatting up can end disastrously and often becomes an appalling example of the pervasiveness of racial stereotypes and presumptions. I’ve experienced some of these outrageous presumptions and prejudices first hand. I’ve had people start chatting me up in Japanese thinking a) I am Japanese and b) that I speak the language (which isn’t the case). In the space of about 5 seconds, this guy had made numerous assumptions about me without me even opening my mouth. And the problem is how I can’t shake the feeling that if he hadn’t thought I was Japanese that he wouldn’t have come over. He was more interested in finding an ideal Japanese girl than actually getting to know me, the person who’s standing right there in front of him. It’s behaviour and prejudices like this that numerous women (and men) of colour across the world have had to experience and put up with. All these issues come back to the same general problem – that these presumptions based on race can often have little or no connection to the person standing in front of you. No one is defined purely by his or her race, upbringing, religion or political views. While they these things play a part in defining who you may be, none are determinative. I’ve always just thought that the reverse of all these “fevers” applied to me, that I just dig pale skinned guys and get turned off by mass amounts of body hair, which sadly generally knocks Indian boys off the top of my list of hotties. Likewise, my sister doesn’t date Indian boys either. I would consider myself Australian before anything else and I don’t feel particularly in touch with my Indian heritage. I’ve spent a
lot of my time trying to dissociate myself from expectations and ideals that people, including my extended family, dump on me that relate to a culture that I don’t really feel a part of. That being said, part of me can’t help but thinking that my lack of attraction to brown boys is somehow linked to this anger. Perhaps what I’m doing is that in dealing with my own quandaries to do with cultural identity, I’ve also subconsciously pushed away anyone who might threaten how I want myself to be perceived- I don’t want to be the Indian girl who ends up with an Indian guy because that’s what people are going to expect of me. But doesn’t this in turn make me just as bad as those Creepy White Guys? Aren’t I doing the exact same thing, making a million assumptions about a person’s upbringing, values and personality, based on their appearance? I know we’re all going to judge a book by its cover, it’s inevitable living in the superficial world that we do. But while it’s fine to have a preference, you have to make sure that you get to know the person, not the culture. One of the best things about dating is really getting to know someone, not just fantasising about the person you saw across the crowded bar. You have to read the book, not impose your own story.
Picture by Ayeesha Fredrickson
by Mini Burr