Desiring Whiteness

Desiring Whiteness: A Racial History of Prostitution in France and Colonial Senegal, 1848-1950 is a scholarly history examining the intersection of commercial sex and racial politics. Caroline Séquin analyzes how the regulation of prostitution served to police intimate relationships across colonial boundaries following the abolition of slavery. This volume 1 work challenges the myth of French exceptionalism by exploring how the state managed racial relations in port cities and garrison towns, specifically within France and Dakar, Senegal.

The text details how brothels functioned as gatekeepers of whiteness to uphold white supremacy. In colonial Senegal, white-only establishments deterred colonists from forming unions with African women, while in the metropole, regulations managed the interactions between colonial men and white French women. This history reveals how the sex industry reinforced racial boundaries and shaped white French identity within an imperial nation-state.