A transformation of racist discourse? Colour-blind racism and biological racism in Dutch secondary schooling (1968–2017)

ABSTRACT

Scholars have observed a re-emergence of biological racism in the Netherlands. I question whether this form of racism is also making a comeback in Dutch secondary schooling, by drawing on critical race theory and Bonilla-Silva’s frames of colour-blind racism. Data for this study were gathered through an analysis of 200 history textbooks (1968-2017), 28 interviews of (former) Dutch (mostly “white”) teachers and 35 interviews of former (mostly “Black”) students. The study finds that textbooks employ colour-blind racist frames (and in some cases racially essentialist and anti-racist discourses) regarding black history. Likewise, white (former) teachers consistently use colour-blind discourses and to lesser extent utilise racially essentialist and anti-racist discourses to make sense of race. This study demonstrates that Dutch teachers use very similar frames to what (researchers have found) people utilise in the US. Also, Black former students are much more likely to narrate anti-racist discourses, but showcase colour-blind discourses and (sometimes) racially essentialist discourses, as well. Thus, colour-blind ideologies influence even those who are negatively affected by it. Although the expressions of racism shift over time, this study illustrates that we cannot affirm a re-emergence of biological racism, as colour-blind discourses remain equally intact in the 50 years studied.

KEYWORDS:

• Racism
• colour-blind racism
• history
• education
• teachers
• the Netherlands

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ David T. Goldberg, “Racial Europeanization,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 29, no. 2 (2006): 331–64.

² Charles Hirschman, “The Origins and Demise of the Concept of Race,” Population and Development Review 30, no. 3 (2004): 385–415.

³ E.g. Audrey Smedley and Brian D. Smedley. “Race as Biology is Fiction, Racism as a Social Problem is Real: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives on the Social Construction of Race,” American Psychologist 60, no. 1 (2005): 16.

⁴ Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, “Rethinking Racism: Towards a Structural Interpretation,” American Sociological Review 62, no. 3 (1997): 465–80.

⁵ E.g. Lawrence Bobo, James R. Kleugel, and Ryan A. Smith, “Laissez-faire Racism: The Crystallization of a Kinder, Gentler, Antiblack Ideology,” in Racial attitudes in the 1990s: Continuity and Change, ed. Steven A. Tuch and Jack K. Martin (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997): 15–44.

⁶ Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Austin Ashe, “The End of Racism? Colorblind Racism and Popular Media,” The Colorblind Screen: Television in Post-Racial America, ed. Sarah Nilsen and Sarah E. Turner (New York: New York University Press, 2014): 60.

⁷ Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, “More than Prejudice: Restatement, Reflections, and New Directions in Critical Race Theory,” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1, no. 1 (2015): 75–89.

⁸ Bonilla-Silva, “Rethinking Racism,” 465–80.

⁹ Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2001), 37.

¹⁰ In the famous work of Michael  Omi and Howard Winant (Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s [New York: Routledge, 1994]) racialisation is defined as “the extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice, or group” (14). Bonilla-Silva (“More than prejudice,” 1997, 75–89) adds that racialisation appoints groups into hierarchical categories.

¹¹ Small argues that “the institutional pillars of racialization” are “the routine, recurrent and organized features of society that constitute racialized authority, power and domination” (8). This institutional racism can consist of systemic discrimination, unequal opportunities and racist stereotypes, which generally take place in private and (semi)public institutional contexts, like education, housing, health care, criminal justice, labour market, media, etc., but also through clear public structures like laws, policies and practices. These public structures may disadvantage specific racial/ethnic groups or may be “colour-blind” (and thus cannot help overcome structural disadvantages): Stephen Small, “Theorizing visibility and vulnerability in Black Europe and the African diaspora,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 41, no.6 (2018): 1–16.

¹² Bonilla-Silva, “Rethinking Racism,” 465–80; Melissa F. Weiner, “Towards a Critical Global Race Theory,” Sociology Compass 6, no. 4 (2012): 332–50.

¹³ Bonilla-Silva and Ashe, “The End of Racism?,” 63.

¹⁴ Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).

¹⁵ e.g. Philomena Essed and Isabel Hoving, eds., Dutch Racism (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2014); Melissa F. Weiner and Antonio Carmona Báez, eds., Smash the Pillars: Decoloniality and the Imaginary of Color in the Dutch Kingdom (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).

¹⁶ Philomena Essed, “Afterword: A Second Wave of Dutch Resistance Against Racism,” Frame Journal of Literary Studies 27, no. 2 (2014): 139.

¹⁷ Philomena Essed, “Entitlement Racism: License to Humiliate,” in Recycling Hatred: Racism(s) in Europe Today (Brussels: European Network Against Racism, 2013).

¹⁸ David Gillborn, “Critical Race Theory and Education: Racism and Anti-Racism in Educational Theory and Praxis,” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 27, no. 1 (2006): 11–32.

¹⁹ Daniel G. Solorzano and Dolores Delgado Bernal, “Examining Transformational Resistance through a Critical Race and LatCrit Theory Framework: Chicana and Chicano Students in an Urban Context,” Urban Education 36, no. 3 (2001): 313.

²⁰ Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists.

²¹ Amanda E. Lewis, Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the Color Line in Classrooms and Communities (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2003): 6–7.

²² In 1968, a major revision in secondary education was enforced with the Mammoetwet.

²³ Basic training is education for students aged around 12–15 years old: year 1–2 for vmbo (vocational/theoretical training) and 1–3 for havo/vwo and for the theoretical routes: Havo (providing access to HBO) and vwo (providing access to universities).

²⁴ Anselm Strauss and Juliet Corbin, “Grounded Theory Methodology: An Overview,” in Handbook of Qualitative Research, ed. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage publications, 1994), 273–85.

²⁵ e.g. Sjaak Braster and Maria d. M. del Pozo Andrés, “Education and the Children’s Colonies in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939): The Images of the Community Ideal,” Paedagogica Historica 51, no. 4 (2015): 455–77.

²⁶ Maria L. Sijpenhof, “The Black Child: Racist Depictions in Dutch Secondary School History Textbooks (1968–2017),” History of Education & Children's Literature 13, no. 1 (2018): 327–52.

²⁷ Melissa F. Weiner, “Racialized Classroom Practices in a Diverse Amsterdam Primary School: The Silencing, Disparagement, and Discipline of Students of Color,” Race Ethnicity and Education 19, no. 6 (2016): 1351–67.

²⁸ Maria L. Sijpenhof, “The Black Child: Racist Depictions in Dutch Secondary School History Textbooks (1968–2017),” History of Education & Children’s Literature 13, no. 1 (2018): 327–52.

²⁹ Maria L. Sijpenhof, “Racialized Narratives in Dutch History Textbooks: A Critical Race Examination”, Historia y Memoria de la Educación 10, no. 1 (2019): 131–74.

³⁰ Ibid.

³¹ Lulu Rodriguez and Daniela Dimitrova, “The Levels of Visual Framing,” Journal of Visual Literacy 30, no. 1 (2011): 48–65.

³² Marc Depaepe and Frank Simon, “Sources in the Making of Histories of Education: Proofs, Arguments, and Other Forms of Reasoning from the Historian’s Workplace,” in Educational Research: Proofs, Arguments, and Other Reasonings, Educational Research vol. 4, ed. P. Smeyers and M. Depaepe (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009): 23–39.

³³ Tyrone A. Forman, “Color-blind Racism and Racial Indifference: The Role of Racial Apathy in Facilitating Enduring Inequalities,” in The Changing Terrain of Race and Ethnicity, ed. M. Krysan and A.E. Lewis (New York: Russell Sage, 2004): 43–66.

³⁴ Thomas Pettigrew and Roel Meertens, “Subtle and Blatant Prejudice in Western Europe,” European Journal of Social Psychology 25, no. 1 (1995): 57–75.

³⁵ Simons is a Black Dutch politician, who has been very outspoken about racism and because of this she has received major backlash (death threats, racist abuse, etc.).

³⁶ Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists, 55; Patrick Solomon et al., “The Discourse of Denial: How White Teacher Candidates Construct Race, Racism and ‘White Privilege’,” Race, Ethnicity and Education 8, no. 2 (2005): 147–69.

³⁷ Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists, 57.

³⁸ Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Amanda Lewis, and David G. Embrick. “‘I did not get that job because of a Black man …’: The Story Lines and Testimonies of Color-Blind Racism,” Sociological Forum 19, no. 4 (2004).

³⁹ Goldberg, “Racial Europeanization,” 339.

⁴⁰ Bonilla-Silva, Lewis, and Embrick, “I did not get that job”.

⁴¹ Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists, 57–63.

⁴² Weiner and Báez, Smash the Pillars.

⁴³ E.g. Gloria Wekker, White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016).

⁴⁴ Philomena Essed, “Racial Intimidation: Socio-political Implications of the Usage of Racist Slurs,” in The Language and Politics of Exclusion, ed. S.H. Riggins (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997).

⁴⁵ e.g. Lewis, Race in the Schoolyard.

⁴⁶ Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists, 132–3.

⁴⁷ The murder of (Black Dutch teenager) Kerwin Duinmeijer by skinhead Nico B. in 1983, is considered to be the first racist murder after WWII in the Netherlands.

⁴⁸ Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists. 170–1.

⁴⁹ Derald Wing Sue, Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race (New Jersey: Wiley & Sons, 2016).

⁵⁰ Pettigrew and Meertens, “Subtle and Blatant Prejudice,” 57–75.

⁵¹ Bonilla-Silva and Ashe, “The End of Racism?,” 63.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria Luce Sijpenhof

Maria Luce Sijpenhof holds a master’s degree in Sociology and a master’s degree in International and European Law and State and Administrative Law from Erasmus University, Rotterdam. After working as a criminologist researcher, she is now pursuing an International doctorate in Education at the University of Alcalá. Her research interests include sociology of education, history of education, critical race studies, and critical whiteness studies. Her (forthcoming) research addresses institutional racism in Dutch (historical) educational contexts, racialised discourses and depictions in textbooks, and racial identity formation in the context of education in the Netherlands. Sijpenhof is a co-founder of Counter/Narratives, a collaborative platform of diverse experts challenging narratives on colonialism, slavery, imperialism, and racism.