Desiring the Standard Light Skin: Black Multiracial Boys, Masculinity, and Exotification

• In Event: 322 - Regular Session. Multiracial Identity, Beauty, and Dating

Abstract

This paper analyzes the exotification of black multiracial boys attending Grovedale High School in Northern California. Qualitative interviews undertaken to examine the emergence of a multiracial collective subjectivity on the campus revealed specific gendered experiences of exotification that are not often discussed in the literature on the mixed-race experience. The contemporary celebration of multiraciality has vaulted mixed-race people into representations as the lauded, beautiful symbols of America’s diverse, tolerant, post-racial future. Although constructions of beauty, desirability, and experiences of exotification have long been examined relating to mixed-race women’s bodies, rarely is the exotification of mixed-race men discussed. This paper’s analysis will center the experiences of exotification of black multiracial adolescent boys, and discuss the constructions of masculinity, attractiveness, and desirability that contributed to black multiracial boys becoming a heterosexually desired population at the school.

Author

• Alyssa Marie Newman, University of California Santa Barbara