The 1920’s is traditionally viewed as an era for the freedom of sexual identity, but some critics such as Elise McDougald, argue that such freedoms raised unforeseen dangers for African American women (Monda 24) since being sexual was directly linked to satisfying racist notions (Scheper 682). In the eyes of white America, the African American ethnicity was teeming with ghosts of “barbarism” (Dawahare 23) that bled directly into the sexual lives of African American women, creating a racist expectation that all African American women are sexually “hypersexual, primitive, exotic, and always available.” In Larsen’s Quicksand, Helga Crane struggles with this racist and sexist “primitive” expectation (Scheper 682) as she attempts to explore her