‘How Does One Survive the University as a Space Invader?’: Beyond White Innocence in the Academy

Abstract

In this interview, Gloria Wekker looks back on how her experiences as a young student of colour and later full professor inspired her to write White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race (2016). While exposing the university as a place whose modi operandi have historically been shaped by ingrained imperialist notions of race, she also offers administrators, researchers, lecturers and students practical suggestions that may help them turn academia into a more diverse and inclusive environment.

Keywords:

• Intersectionality
• knowledge production
• division of labour
• racism

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This interview transpired in the context of a study day organized by the Dutch Studies section at the University of Liège on ‘Reading White Innocence. Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race’ on 24 March 2021 in honour of Gloria Wekker’s appointment as Visiting Professor (2019–2021) in the context of the King Willem-Alexander Chair for Low Countries Studies. It revisits observations Gloria Wekker made during her lecture and the Q&A that followed it. Kris Steyaert was responsible for the transcription and editing.

2. Morrison, “Home,” 3.

3. In 2018, it came to light that in the 2010s over 26,000 parents, many of whom had migratory backgrounds, were wrongly accused by the Dutch government of having fraudulently claimed childcare benefits. They were driven into poverty as they were forced to pay back the allowances they had received.

4. Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral, 208.

5. The third Tuesday in September when the King addresses Dutch parliament, announcing in general terms what governmental policy will be in the coming year.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gloria Wekker

Gloria Wekker is an Afro-Surinamese Dutch socio-cultural anthropologist with specializations in Gender Studies, Sexuality, African-American and Caribbean Studies. She is emerita professor in Gender Studies at Utrecht University. Wekker is connected to the introduction of intersectional thought in the Dutch-speaking world with the edited volume Caleidoscopische visies: De zwarte, migranten- en vluchtelingen-vrouwenbeweging in Nederland (2001). Among her other noteworthy publications are The Politics of Passion: Women´s Sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora (2006), for which she received the Ruth Benedict Prize of American Anthropological Association, and White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race (2016). She is currently working on a mixed-genre fiction/nonfiction book about her four grandparents, entitled Families Navigating Empire. In 2017, she was distinguished as one of the ten most influential academics in the Netherlands. Between 2019-2021, she held the King Willem-Alexander Chair for Low Countries Studies at the University of Liège, Belgium. In 2022, she is the Amnesty International Chair at the University of Ghent, Belgium. The same year she was awarded the Harper’s Bazaar ‘Woman of the Year’ Lifetime Achievement Award in the Netherlands.