We All Know About Yellow Fever

...But Is There Such a Thing as White Fever?

Feb 05, 2021

Up until the pandemic became a force to be reckoned with, I had thought I was too good for TikTok. Being forced to leave my dorm and moving back in with my family was definitely a lifestyle shift. I took up baking to combat my boredom, but that could only do so much. I eventually gave in and downloaded TikTok, diving headfirst into the trends as I whipped up dalgona coffee and cloud bread. Everything on my feed was light-hearted, until my algorithm got too smart, and a video about yellow fever showed up on my For You page.

There is a whole page of these videos, but here is the specific one that I watched. It features a Wasian, someone who is half white and half Asian, recording themselves and adding the sound:

“And if you're gonna call me an Asian, make sure to put half in front of it. My dad, my dad is a conservative with an Asian fetish.”

Usually, it would just be a video of themselves, but sometimes, they would also focus their camera on their white dad and Asian mom.

This was back in June-July 2020, and I haven’t thought about it since. Then, this video popped up on my feed this week.

“Y'know that audio that’s like my dad, my dad is a conservative with an Asian fetish. Uh, that all the half Asians are using. My dad is literally the chillest white person on the face of this Earth. Where’s the audio that’s like my mom, my mom’s the liberal of a family of Asian immigrants and only dates white men.”

These TikToks made me think about the power dynamic between racial groups. I seem to have forgotten just how powerful my mind was, and as my thoughts began to consume me, I fell down a rabbit hole...

Yellow Fever

Yellow fever is a diagnosis that refers to having a dominant sexual racial preference for people of Asian descent, to the extreme that it can be considered a racial fetish. To explain this phenomenon, we have to consider the relationship between the Orient–Occidental discourse, which is rooted in colonialism and imperialism.

“…the indisputable truth that Occidentals are superior to Orientals.”
— Edward Said

In American society, the Occidental is the cisgender, straight, rich, white man because of his ability to maintain the greatest autonomy and agency. On the other hand, the Orient is the Asian American woman, as her politicized identity becomes the epitome of femininity. She is docile, exotic, and (especially sexually) submissive. This hypersexuality is further reified by the history of their immigration to the United States. They were war brides and mail-order brides, seen as mere objects whose only purpose is to serve the men who “saved” them from their countries. Over the years, Southeast Asian countries have become a hub for sex tourism, commodifying the Asian fantasy for Western men.

“The East is often constructed as the submissive female and the West usually as the authoritative male.”
— Liz Wells

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White Fever

While yellow fever is an issue that Asian Americans often acknowledge, what is usually not talked about is the opposite concept: white fever. Much like yellow fever, white fever is *supposedly* when Asian people have a dominant sexual racial preference for white people. I previously watched the PBS documentary film, Do Asian Women Have White Fever?, essentially showcasing Asian women confessing reasons for preferring white men. Academic intellectuals also analyzed these confessions and concluded that it is because of the concept of “hypergamy,” a term sociologists use to describe “a universal female desire for marrying above one’s own socioeconomic status.”

“Orientalism is the ineradicable distinction between Western superiority and Oriental inferiority.”
— Edward Said

Thoughts?

I’m not sure if white fever should be a term since it derives from yellow fever. While yellow fever evokes racial fetishism, sexual racism, and sexual violence, white men have always been privileged enough to be at the top of the social hierarchy.

What do you think? In a way, aren’t women conditioned to perpetuate a cycle of white supremacy? From Disney to Hollywood, we are told, time and time again, that white men are the Prince Charmings of this world.

Politically Invisible Asians

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