“Suppose She Brings a Big Negro Home”: Case Studies of Everyday Racism

Analyses of everyday experiential narratives, television content, and a novel explore the ways in which black people, especially black women, are envisioned in the cultural archive. Among the patterns that come to the fore are sexualization, inferiorization, which includes relegation to the category of domestic servant, nanny, prostitute, or import bride, and criminalization. In addition, the chapter sets out the terms for understanding that subjectification was racialized, not only in the colonies, but also in the metropole. The cultural archive of the Dutch was filled with images in which blackness was suffused with sexuality. Across these different domains, the stock of images, scenarios, and scripts involving black women and men nowadays is very limited. The connection with sexuality is made, no matter what their class background is.