#bc god i rarely find myself able to educate another white person on smth bc 1. lack of local historical info and 2. bad bad memory

[transrightsjimin]

ive been trying to read more into Black history nd postcolonial theory in relation to the Netherlands, bc while a lot of stuff ive learned over the years from BLM, antifascist collectives and other antiracist movements have been useful, theres a lot i do not know yet.

ive lost my concentration over a decade ago nd dont rly read books anymore so i mainly see only snippets of antifascist / antiracist perspective news and experiences in the Netherlands, through mainly twitter accounts nd articles w this focus (e.g. from new urban collective, kafka, oneworld). there are obviously similarities in these histories nd how racist still manifests across countries, but there’s a lot i dont know yet!

despite the Netherlands being very americanized (e.g. in how the same conspiracy theories r popularized here too) nd having a similar history of colonialism + capitalism, there are various nuances, events nd identities which r more relevant here but which i dont read abt in US-focused discourses.

like how here Black experiences r often tied to cultures stemming from former Dutch colonies (”former“, on paper at least) such as Surinam and Curaçao, though of c there r also migrants from other areas. nd how here there’s also Black-origin “slang” popular among youth in cities and in hiphop culture, but here specifically containing many words from the languages Sranantongo and Papiamento.

and then there’s so much i don’t know yet abt all these other countries tht have been colonized by NL and i would like to learn more abt, bc in high school we only learned abt the colonial violence against Indonesians, which is good to know, but there is so much more. and read into how cultures are tied together, e.g. how Carribean, Black / Chinese / Indonesian cultures blend together in Surinam and Surinamese diaspora nd how that shows in how takeaway restaurants blend these cuisines together.

these r just some of the things i want to read more into nd i keep struggling to get a super deep or coherent understanding bc short articles nd a very limited amt of videos won’t paint a full picture. i need to get back to reading books again nd visiting exhibitions on this nd just engaging more / listening more to ppl w these experiences here, but of c i dont want to just make friends w ppl for being marginalized or smth as that just feels like tokenism. i wish i was better at socializing bc i rly got stuck on that when i was still w the workers’ union, or any social context really.