The fetishization differs from context to context but ingrained within it is an undeniable continuation of the social paradigm that equates whiteness with humanity and therefore, respect. When white people across the gender and sexual spectrum fetishize Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples, it is an active display of the colonizing mindset. The argument of the essay is, in essence, that “civilized” white people needed to save Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples from “our” barbarism, stupidity, and eternal damnation.
Rudyard Kipling, author of the stunningly lazy, infantile, and racist The Jungle Book (the name “Baloo” literally means “bear” in multiple South Asian languages, for example) wrote a small essay called “The White Man’s Burden”. Infantilizing and fetishization are two sides of the same coin, expressed by colonizers, both conscious and hidden, to defend their relationships, actions, and identities. The relationship of whiteness to colonialism rests in part upon a duality of expectations about the people and land being colonized.
