Documenting the life of Black people in the Netherlands

In the last few years, there has been an increase in awareness of the struggle that black people face around the world.  With initiatives and movements such as Black Lives Matter, people started to realize how racism towards black people is performed at the societal and institutional levels and how the stigmatization of this community confronts them on a daily basis. Recently, it has been acknowledged that racism is often an internalized process, being at the core of the systems of numerous societies and their institutions, making people often unaware of their biases towards this community. In the exhibition “Facing Blackness”, which can be seen at The Black Archives until December 23rd 2022, the fight of the black community against forms of racism in Dutch society and how their forms of resistance have contributed to make a change is portrayed. In the different sections of this exhibition, it is shown how both in the past and in the present black people have been considered by the Dutch community, consequently putting them a step lower in society. The perception of the black community in the Dutch society is expressed throughout the exhibition by stories from both the Dutch colonial past and the present days, highlighting how discrimination towards this community has existed for many years before now.

A colonial past of racialization
The images that people have about the black community are often biased and come from shared ideas to which they have been exposed for a very long time. At the beginning of the exhibition, there are stories on the walls about how black people have been considered in different historical contexts and periods. In the seventeenth century, people of African descent lived in Amsterdam and worked as soldiers and sailors for the Dutch West India Company and Dutch East India Company. They were often portrayed in paintings by artists at that time, however the way they were seen by the rest of the population had origin in beliefs and ideas which were popular in different historical periods, especially during the colonial times, which deemed them as inferior. An example was the Enlightenment and its thinkers, who strongly believed in progress and rationality but which at the same time were trying to export these values to people living in the colonies who were considered as less intelligent and developed. The colonial period has thus had a strong influence on how black people have been perceived throughout history until now, and the role of religion has also been important in this regard. The colonizers often thought that spreading Christianity and imposing its values to the colonized people would help them to flourish and develop by bringing them civilization. Africans and non-European communities were then regarded as backward and often perceived as inferior by their colonizers. Unfortunately, this has had an effect on how white people think of the black community today, consciously or unconsciously, contributing to the already existent racism and discrimination in society.

The fight today
Although considered as very welcoming and open-minded, the Netherlands still has to come to terms with its racist past. The resistance of people in the Netherlands who fight against racism is still present today and it revendicates injustices and biases within the Dutch society. One topic which has been raised in the last years is the fight against Zwarte Piet, the figure known as the helper of Sinterklaas. According to numerous people, this figure is seen as offensive and many of them protest every year participating at the demonstrations “ Zwarte Piet is racism”. This is an example of a recurrent story which has its origin in the past but which affects black people also today, especially children who, when the festivity is held in December, encounter problems of internalized racism, wishing to wash their blackness away once the party is over.
Fighting against racism means then also fighting against the images and assumed ideas of inferiority towards the black community, which unfortunately have been part of the past but also part of the present.

The exhibition “Zwartheid onder ogen komen” can be seen until December 23rd at The Black Archives, Amsterdam Oost.
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