Black Man in the Netherlands: An Afro-Antillean Anthropology

220 Pages·2022·2.034 MB·English

by  Francio Guadeloupe

Black Man in the Netherlands

Black
Man
in the
Netherlands
An Afro-Antillean
Anthropology
Francio
Guadeloupe
University Press of Mississippi / Jackson
Any discriminatory or derogatory language or hate speech regarding race, ethnicity,
religion, sex, gender, class, national origin, age, or disability that have been retained
or appear in elided form is in no way an endorsement of the use of such language
outside a scholarly context.
The University Press of Mississippi is the scholarly publishing agency of
the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning: Alcorn State University,
Delta State University, Jackson State University, Mississippi State University,
Mississippi University for Women, Mississippi Valley State University,
University of Mississippi, and University of Southern Mississippi.
www.upress.state.ms.us
The University Press of Mississippi is a member
of the Association of University Presses.
Copyright © 2022 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2022
∞
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Guadeloupe, Francio, 1971– author.
Title: Black man in the Netherlands: an Afro-Antillean anthropology /
Francio Guadeloupe.
Description: Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2022. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021026462 (print) | LCCN 2021026463 (ebook) | ISBN
978-1-4968-3700-4 (hardback) | ISBN 978-1-4968-3701-1 (paperback) | ISBN
978-1-4968-3702-8 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4968-3703-5 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4968-
3704-2
(pdf) | ISBN 978-1-4968-3699-1 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Guadeloupe, Francio, 1971– | Anthropologists—Biography. |
Racism—Netherlands. | Blacks—Netherlands. | Ethnology—Netherlands. |
Ethnicity—Netherlands. | Multiculturalism—Netherlands. |
Anthropology—Netherlands. | Netherlands—Race relations. |
Netherlands—Ethnic relations.
Classification: LCC GN308.3.N4 G83 2022 (print) | LCC GN308.3.N4 (ebook)
| DDC 301.092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021026462
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021026463
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
This book is dedicated to Peter Geschiere, a friend and mentor.

Contents
Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Introduction, or Rather, the Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii

Part 1: My World:
On Urban Popular Culture and Conviviality

Chapter 1: The Beginning of an Answer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Chapter 2: The Secure Dutch World of My Teenage Years. . . . . . . .6
Chapter 3: Appreciating Dutch Caribbean Ways of Being
in the Netherlands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Part 2: The Outside World:
Dealing with Anti-Black Racism
Chapter 4: The Hostile Outside World in the Netherlands . . . . . . 23
Chapter 5: Will You Join Tarzan in Saving Us from the Unruly
Multiculture? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Chapter 6: Another Route: Multicultural Social Parenting. . . . . . . 51
Chapter 7: An Unfinished Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Part 3: My World Emerging in the Outside World:
Urban Popular Culture and the Question of Race
Chapter 8: The Coming of Age of Urban Popular Culture. . . . . . . 73
Chapter 9: Enter Urban Blackness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
viii Contents
Chapter 10: Performances of Urban Blackness in the
Netherlands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Chapter 11: The Transformation of Koen and Judmar . . . . . . . . 100
Chapter 12: What Exactly Is This Thing Called Race Today?. . . . . 112
By Way of Conclusion, or Rather, Another Question:
What Time Is It? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Acknowledgments
The act of acknowledgment is perhaps more than anything else a
confession of communal belonging. I belong to at least six such com-
munities. As a senior researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute
of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, I have the distinct plea-
sure of working with Gert Oostindie, Corinne Hofman, Rosemarijn
Hoefte, Esther Captain, David Kloos, Alex van Stipriaan, Marieke
Bloembergen, Sony Jean, Alana Osbourne, Stacey MacDonald, Sanne
Rotmeijer, and Tibisay Sankatsing Nava, who are opening up area
studies to global flows and therewith critically rethinking the af-
terlife of colonialism. This book is a contribution to our necessary
endeavor.
My second intellectual home is the Anthropology Department
of the University of Amsterdam. Thank you Julie McBrien, Rachel
Spronk, Annelies Moors, Muriel Kiesel, Vincent de Rooij, Oskar
Verkaaik, Annemarie Mol, Mattijs van de Port, Amade M’charek,
Luisa Steur, Marieke Brand, Rivke Jaffe, Robert Pool, Yolanda van
Ede, Eileen Moyer, Milena Veenis, Rob van Ginkel, Tina Harris,
Nico Besnier, Peter van Rooden, Sarah Bracke-Grieder, Erella Gras-
siani, Sruti Bala, Laurens Bakker, Anne de Jong, Alex Strating, Lieve
Connick, and Noelle Steneker for making my academic home a
place that strives to hold the cardinal virtue of a Marxist dedication
to praxis, which opens up scholarship to hidden voices, feminist,
postcolonial, and otherwise.
I have witnessed that such an ethos fosters students who appreci-
ate that pursuing scholarly excellence can go hand in hand with a
rejection of prejudice and injustice. Of the many promising minds
ix