In advancing White originality and normality, Bernier positioned the “first” race as the “yardstick against which the others are measured,” as historian Siep Stuurman later explained. Bernier simultaneously veiled and normalized, screened and standardized White people—and he eroticized African women. “Those cherry-red lips, those ivory teeth, those large lively eyes… that bosom and the rest,” Bernier marveled. “I dare say there is no more delightful spectacle in the world.”
