Ambivalent Idealizations: Black Mixed-Race Desirability and the ‘Light-skin’ Stereotype

• In Event: Desiring Intimacy

Abstract

Existing scholarship primarily investigates racial hierarchies of bodily idealizations through a monoracial perspective, with Black bodies disproportionately positioned at the bottom. This monoracial framing becomes more complicated, however, when assessing the racial idealization of Black mixed-race bodies. For this study, I draw upon fifty in-depth interviews with Black mixed-race students, twenty-five each from a predominantly White Institution (a PWI) and a Historically Black College/University (an HBCU). I find that the Black mixed-race students tend to be socially positioned in ‘ambivalent idealizations,’ which I define as simultaneous social elevation and devaluation. Importantly, these ambivalent idealizations of Black mixed-race bodies manifest primarily through the ‘light-skin’ stereotype or exoticizing desirability. The light-skin stereotype, which was mostly directed at male interviewees, elevated their romantic appeal while simultaneously heightening social suspicion around them (e.g., suspicions of self-absorption, emotional fragility, or womanizing behavior). The light-skin stereotype was more harmful to the romantic aims of the HBCU male interviewees while the PWI male interviewees experienced greater social advantage. The female interviewees from both institutions frequently cited ambivalent idealizations of their racialized desirability in which they were viewed as exotic or fetishized by male peers. Since their desirability was often elevated above that of monoracial Black women, some of the interviewees perceived resentment from Black female peers. Additionally, the female interviewees viewed this increased desirability as largely objectifying and dehumanizing rather than advantageous. Across both institutional contexts, Black mixed-race men and women experienced ambivalent idealizations, though these manifested through gendered pathways: the light-skin stereotype for the men and exoticizing desirability for the women.

Author

• Eliana Camille Gagnon, Princeton University