Romantic racism is a form of racism in which members of a dominant group supposedly project their fantasies onto members of oppressed groups. Feminist scholars have accused Norman Mailer, Jack Kerouac, and other Beatnik authors of the 1950s of romantic racism. They point out that the dominant culture of the 1950s in the United States stressed conformity and held up middle-class suburban families as the cultural ideal was indifferent to art and literature, upheld racial segregation and anti-Semitism, and despised or ignored black achievements, such as Jazz. Those, like the novelist Norman Mailer, who felt limited by or alienated from mainstream culture, sought out influences from other cultures as form of rebellion. Mailer, a great fan of jazz music, created his concept of what it meant to be “hip,” or a member of the white urban counterculture, largely on his perception of the culture of urban African-Americans (with whom the expression "hip", meaning "in the know", originated) and articulated his vision in his essay "The White Negro." Mailer, who considered himself an opponent of Victorian sexual repression and regimentation idealized what he saw as the sexual and other freedoms of minority and other counter-cultural groups, overlooking the fact that in these groups sexual exploitation of women sometimes occurred. These critics consider his depictions of what he imagines African-American life to be like as an instance of what they call "romantic racism", contending that he implies that in urban ghettoes—filled with sex, drugs, and violence—life is somehow enriched, rather than hurt, by poverty and crime. Mailer's essay has also been criticized for spreading the stereotype of African-American men as hypermasculine and hypersexual.
These critics also identify numerous other examples of romantic racism in depictions of Native Americans in popular culture, along with other unfounded stereotypes and oversimplifications that create caricatures of various racial and ethnic groups.
Romantic racist stereotypes about East Asians include notions of esoteric "oriental wisdom", supposedly incomprehensible to unsophisticated westerners.
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Famous quotes containing the words romantic and/or racism:
“In short, the building becomes a theatrical demonstration of its functional ideal. In this romanticism, High-Tech architecture is, of course, no different in spirit—if totally different in form—from all the romantic architecture of the past.”
—Dan Cruickshank (b. 1949)
“Few white citizens are acquainted with blacks other than those projected by the media and the so—called educational system, which is nothing more than a system of rewards and punishments based upon one’s ability to pledge loyalty oaths to Anglo culture. The media and the “educational system” are the prime sources of racism in the United States.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)