I believe that the song “Filipino Baby” by Cowboy Copas is a classic example of a man fetishizing a woman of color. Throughout the whole song, he didn’t once mention her name or anything about her other than what she physically looks like. He repeats the line, “I love my dark faced Filipino”. I understand that this was written in the 1940s and phrasing things as “politically correct” wasn’t a big concern, but there are so many things in this song that are just blatantly wrong. He also refers to her as “…my pet, lovin’ pet”. I disagreed with Professor O’Malley’s argument that this may as well have been a love song because he did end up marrying the woman he wrote the song for. I think that argument is the same as a racist person saying that they have black friends so they can’t be racist. There are issues of racist and sexism that this song highlights that we see repeatedly in history. As someone pointed out during our class discussion, after the war in Korea, many American men were with Korean women just to please themselves while they were away. It may be as simple as that this man was in love with the Filipino woman that he’s singing about, but his constant description of her dark features is unsettling and makes it hard for me to view it from a romantic lens.