“So in comes this Eritrean guy who clearly has no intention of understanding how our website works. He doesn’t speak the language and aside from his laziness he, of course, has huge problems taking advice or directions from a woman so he’s always very disrespectful to me. ” She elaborates on what she assumes to be her client’s gender analyses when I interrupt her to ask: “What’s the relevance of mentioning he’s from Eritrea?” After I cut her generalities short by kindly asking her to give us some information about the research and experiences that shaped her understanding of what she labeled as East African culture, her white cheeks made way for a deep red blush and her uncomfortable half smile called for air. “Come on, you know me… you know I’m not like that.” And therein lies the rub.

Even though not many white Dutch people would beat themselves on the chest while proudly exclaiming they’re ‘like that’, information about someone’s racial, ethnic and/or cultural background continues to be gratefully accepted as context for someone’s manners and ideas. It speaks to the imagination, it adds some bass to the “Aaaah aha!” It doesn’t only seem to explain the behavior of the person that’s being described, it also adds weight to the problems the white Dutch describer is facing. Even this lady who has no idea about Eritrea’s cultures, demographics, social structures and traditions knows at least one thing: for a predominantly white Dutch audience it’s too important to not be mentioned. How else would they fully understand the levels of his patriarchy, digital literacy and unwillingness? How could they begin to imagine what “not speaking the language” really means if they don’t know that someone is non-white? Forget the fact that not many Dutch people could locate Eritrea on a blank world map (or know ‘what’ it is, for that matter)… even to a lady who isn’t “like that”, her client’s background mattered more than she cared to admit.

“…because you know I’m not a racist, right?” She seemed more bothered by this word than by the problematic analyses she just made. While she stumbles her way through a history of all the times race “didn’t matter”, I wondered… could it be that the cruxes that continue to cripple Dutch conversations about race are the poor, underdeveloped ideas of what qualifies racism? Perhaps this is the result of Holland’s addiction to euphemisms and strategic avoidance of specifics. Is this why the Dutch choose to throw us all on a pile called ‘Allochtoon’… because being as non-descriptive as possible about their Othering allows them to dodge claims of their isms about racial, ethnic and/or cultural backgrounds?

In their commemorative piece about Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream”-speech, Dutch news paper NRC chose the term racial discrimination over racism. In this tradition national news broadcaster NOS frames the way Oprah Winfrey was treated in Switzerland as discrimination and Eva Hoeke’s Niggabitch-scandal was called an unfortunate choice of words. And in the few occasions the term racism is actually used, the Dutch media always makes sure to water things down by adding linguistic question marks like ‘alleged’ and ‘supposed’. It must always remain a matter of taste, context, interpretation… of the thickness of skin, even. ‘Are we now allowing the Other to put restrictions on our freedom of speech? Is that what this country has turned into… a nation that’s obsessed with political correctness?’

The frantic defensiveness with which too many white Dutch folks try to dismiss claims of racism, implies that their definition of being a racist is so monstrously grotesque that being labeled as such for them feels the same, if not worse, as being called a baby lynching slave master. Is this what the verbal attacking of those addressing Dutch displays of anti-Black racism really is… a venomous reaction to the idea of being called a ‘bad person’? A rejection of the concept that a non-white person has the intellectual authority to challenge the Dutch politics of language and other race related matters that are usually policed and validated by whiteness? There is something about racism that makes the Dutch renounce the claims much, much more and so much quicker than the actual ideology. Which, at least for now, leaves me with one central question…

When a white Dutch person is being told that the remark they just made is racist, what do they hear… how does it translate in their head? Does it sound like we’re asking them if they have a neatly ironed a Ku Klux Klan hoodie in their closet? Does it mean we believe that they feel that Nelson Mandela should have never been released from Robbeneiland or that they would be happy to lose their last breath debating the glory and necessity of apartheid? Does pointing out their racism mean that we firmly believe that every time they hear an Amsterdam tram conductor announce that the next stop is Plantage Middenlaan, they get all warm and fuzzy while longing for those good ol’ plantation days when their family owned ours?

No.

But what we are trying to make clear is that the traditional Dutch ideas about the connection between non-whiteness and social/cultural/religious/genetic/etc. behavior are often, if not always, highly problematic and in dire need of work. It means that too many of the analyses of our communities are insufficient and that we accept neither the carefully monitored quota of Black friends nor white people’s privileged imagination as a compensation for a chronic lack of education. It also means, and perhaps for white Dutch people this is the scariest of all, that whiteness isn’t neutral, it’s not objective… not the norm.

Not wanting to be “like that” is not enough and should no longer be accepted as a reason to sabotage the conversations we, Black and non-Black alike, so desperately need to have. Holland owes this to both its current, self acclaimed intelligence and its beloved myths of being a nation that birthed great thinkers. And we must keep demanding this! From our acquaintances, our colleagues, our families but also from Holland’s media figures and politicians… and not just during election campaigns. And let us no longer allow conversations about Dutch, anti-Black racism to be derailed because we’re dignifying questions about sensitivity and thin skin with anything other than addressing the selfish, childishly irresponsible hearts of those not wanting to be “like that”.

Yesterday night while checking the Twitter timeline of Egbert Martina (@wearebots) for new articles, I spotted a conversation between him, professor Christina Sharpe (@hystericalblkns) and a young Black man who tried to tell her that Dutch cops aren’t violent against Black people. His analysis? “Some of them play arrogant but that’s all they do.” Aside from affirming that Clarence Thomas has sons all over the place, the Brother’s untrue, utterly problematic and insanely lazy statement proves at least one thing: our definitions of violence need work.

Is Holland haunted by images of Black bodies swinging in the Amsterdam breeze? Did any of the Dutch cities ever carry a Mississippi Goddamn in their drinking water or created what Nina Simone, while introducing ‘Feelings’, once described as “the conditions that produced the situation that demanded a song like that”? No. Can any of the Dutch provinces ‘hang’ with Florida when it comes to laws that kill and jurors that acquit? Is there a Dutch Zimmerman? Also, no. But should these be our only definitions of violence? “Flesh covered bullets or it didn’t happen!”… is this the blood spattered feather against which we weigh the hearts of the people who represent the Dutch government?

The anti-Black violence of the Dutch police and other government bodies who’re here to keep/create ‘order’ is usually displayed as a more verbal, psychological form of racism. I remember being in a magazine store in the Bijlmer (Amsterdam’s Caribbean and African neighbourhood which is being gentrified with the speed of Brooklyn) when a troop of police officers barged in looking for what they called “illegals”. They used the rudest words and body language to keep new customers from entering the store and put those who were already inside in what they considered ‘their place’. One Black woman confronted the officers with their demeaning approach. They made it very clear that “nobody in this fucking neighborhood should have the gall to say anything about good manners.” After she left they continued to loudly analyze the “uncivilized nature” of the people who live there and who will forever fail to understand that Amsterdam isn’t “the banana republic they’re used to.” Meanwhile their colleagues insulted and intimidated the owner and his employees.

From what I have seen and learned from the politically active Sisters and Brothers who have lived here longer than I have, this is a pretty accurate representation of how white police officers cowboy their way around the Bijlmer. It would surprise me if it’s different in the Black neighborhoods in cities like Rotterdam or The Hague and I’m not even talking about how they ‘value’ the Black inhabitants of predominantly white cities and villages. Am I comparing our run ins with Holland’s finest to the horrors that were unleashed on the bodies of Abner Louima and the thousands of Black men and women whose stories didn’t become headlines or hashtags? Absolutely not. Did the cops who took over the store stormed in there guns blazing talking about this being “Giuliani time”? No. But is this the only thing that separates the Justin Volpe’s from every cop that could have been part of the Police Academy franchise? Should violence be an all or nothing thing?

How non-violent are the forces that serve a nation that considers racism subject to taste, humor, sensitivity and sometimes even paranoia? How ‘Black folk friendly’ are the cops who’re in the business of making a country that is or at least should be known for its murderous asylum regime that justifies the most obsessive methods to hunt down, lock up and deport African refugees a “safer place”? What about Fred Teeven, State Secretary for Security and Justice (which kind of makes him the grand wizard of the Dutch police forces) who is always crying about budget cuts but didn’t think twice about dragging Cheikh Bah and Issa Koulibaly (two Guinean asylum seekers who were on a hungerstrike and haven’t had solid food in 70+ days) on a specially rented charter plane to deport them to Guinea? What about Holland being so outrageously xenophobic that the European High Court had to step in and cancel their planned deportation of the Somali men and women who fled from a war torn country? What about the excessive force that’s being used to “controle” (either on the spot or on their way to the overused solitary) West, East or Central African asylum seekers or the ease with which they are thrown out on the street again with nowhere to go, a couple of euros and the promise to leave Holland within 5 days after the IND decided they’re sick of ‘em?

Perhaps what the young man was trying to say is that he can’t remember the last time he or his Black friends were kicked in the liver by a police officer who yelled racial slurs or that there are no stories of white Dutch cops thundering 41 bullets at an unarmed Black man. Maybe to him, “no violence” means that his sisters or aunties were never pulled over by the police only to be shot twice and framed for crimes they didn’t commit. Or it means that he’s unfamiliar with the Ramadan shifts of the Amsterdam police forces or the philosophies behind the “random frisking” of certain people in very specific neighborhoods. But the most frightening possibility of all is that he meant exactly what he said which basically proves that Holland is doing an excellent job covering up its racist assaults. Not so much by being super subtle but by successfully lulling us into a passive state of okay-ness because “at least it’s not that bad!” NL has successfully conditioned too many Black people (and trust me, even one is too many) to believe that anything that isn’t modeled after the American blueprints of racially motivated assaults doesn’t deserve to be qualified as “violence against Black people”.

Let it be known that whatever the Dutch version of anti-Black violence “lacks” in physicality, it compensates with its intolerable levels of social, verbal, economic and intellectual assaults against the African and Afrodiasporic communities who live here. It is everywhere every day and we are losing precious time and brain cells trying to feed these hierarchies of oppression, racism and/or relevance by entertaining ourselves with wondering who got it worse.