Description
Book SynopsisIn
White Innocence Gloria Wekker explores a central paradox of Dutch life—the passionate denial of racial discrimination and colonial violence coexisting alongside aggressive racism and xenophobia—to show how the narrative of Dutch racial exceptionalism elides the Netherland's colonial past and safeguards white privilege.
Trade Review"
White Innocence explains why white Dutch people seem unable to grasp the racism of Zwarte Piet: Assured of their own social progressivism, they can a priori think and therefore do no wrong. . . . Wekker concludes her work with a plea for 'another "embarrassment of riches,"' for acknowledging the racism staring us in the face. In the United States, we might start by recognizing that there is, and always has been, no more audacious identity politics than white identity politics, as Trump and his white-supremacist ilk gleefully demonstrate. At least the illusion of innocence has been stripped away. Or perhaps not?"
-- Nick Barr Clingan * The Nation *
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White Innocence exposes how Dutch racism is infused with classism, sexism, and homophobia in discussions of everyday racism that includes [Wekker's] own personal exoticization as a child and criminalization as an adult, TV talk shows and films, experiences of mixed-race families, white gay liberation that constitutes Dutch homonationalism . . . and the 'siloing' of gender and race/ethnicity in politics and academics that makes intersectional policy and scholarship impossible. In doing so, Wekker reveals the very real personal consequences for people of color when their very existence is in service of white people." -- Melissa F. Weiner * Journal of Anthropological Research *
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White Innocence provides a welcome and thought-provoking impetus to think more acutely about the long-term impacts of imperialism, as well as about the interrelations between colonies and metropole." -- Bart Luttikhuis * History: Reviews of New Books *
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White Innocence makes a significant contribution to the field of critical whiteness studies by examining the role of race, especially whiteness, and the legacy of colonialism in the present-day Netherlands." -- Shannon Sullivan * philoSOPHIA *
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White Innocence is an enticing invitation to confront the contradictions of Dutch discourse on race, colonialism and violence. . . . Wekker’s work is of vital relevance for those willing to unlearn the legacy of
colonialism." -- Lucía Berro Pizzarossa * European Journal of Women's Studies *
"This book has been a long time coming. . . . An exemplary work of critical scholarship." -- Paul Mepschen * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. "Suppose She Brings a Big Negro Home": Case Studies of Everyday Racism 30
2. The House That Race Built 50
3. The Coded Language of Hottentot Nymphae and the Discursive Presence of Race, 1917 81
4. Of Homo Nostalgia and (Post)Coloniality: Or, Where Did All the Critical White Gay Men Go? 108
5. "For Even Though I Am Black as Soot, My Intentions Are Good": The Case of Black Pete 139
Coda. "But What about the Captain?" 168
Notes 175
References 193
Index 215
