Context (archaeology)

Inequality

Affection

Social psychology

Citizenship

Gender studies

Racism

Archaeology

Visual arts

Naturalization

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Alien

Psychology

Mathematics

Politics

Political science

Infectious disease (medical specialty)

Criminology

Sociology

Mathematical analysis

Medicine

Pandemic

Perspective (graphical)

Disease

Colonialism

Diaspora

Pathology

History

Gender Work and Organization

This article proposes a debate about the situation of Brazilian housemaids in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic to expand the discussion on this scenario and link it structurally to racism and the history of colonialism, from the perspective of its successful project of establishing racial inequalities and relegating Black women to the most vulnerable conditions. As staying at home is not a choice for these women, the suppression of the right to life reflects how the necropolitics against Black Brazilians operates. In Brazil, the naturalization of this form of violence finds great support in a mixture of affection and inequality relationships, in a context in which domestic workers, specifically housemaids, figure as the memory of Black mothers, that is, the enslaved women of the colonial period, coming from the African diaspora. This memory is associated with the whiteness naturalization of the subordinate status of Black women.

Brazilian housemaids and COVID‐19: How can they isolate if domestic work stems from racism?