Whiteness and urban space in the construction of Dutch identity

Blog post by Rozemarijn Weyers, KU Leuven and University of Antwerp, Belgium

On the 22nd of November 2023, the party of far-right politician Geert Wilders was elected the largest in the Netherlands. His statement that 'the Netherlands will be returned to the Dutch' alludes to the question of who is considered Dutch and who is not, and what the role of whiteness is in the construction of Dutch identity? In my research, I look at such questions in the context of urban neighbourhood spaces. More specifically, I research how a distinction between 'us' and 'them', and more specifically, white Dutch identity and racialized otherness, are created through daily interactions in such spaces?
 
The case of Geert Wilders is only one example of how the relationship between whiteness and national identity is marked out. In the context of Europe, several studies show other ways of how national identities are entangled with, and shaped by, notions of race (see for instance Beaman 2019; Muller 2011; Clarke 2023; Garner 2012; Cretton 2018). What those studies have in common is that they argue that those national identities often exist in contexts that claim to be colour-blind and perceive whiteness as the norm.

Nevertheless, in such colour-blind contexts, whiteness is (implicitly) at the core of various national identities: being, for example, French (Beaman 2019), German (Muller 2011), British (Clarke 2023; Garner 2012) or Swiss (Cretton 2018) is equated with being white. Similarly, many people in the Netherlands see whiteness as 'not important', devoid of meaning and normal (Wekker 2016; Essed and Trienekens 2008). Gloria Wekker (2016) argues, in line with other scholars (Essed and Trienekens 2008; Yanow and van der Haar 2013), that 'an unacknowledged reservoir of knowledge and affects based on four hundred years of Dutch imperial rule plays a vital but unacknowledged part in dominant meaning-making processes, including the making of the self, taking place in Dutch society'.
 
My Identities article, 'Producing whiteness through urban space: the socio-spatial construction of white identities in Amsterdam', expands on work about racialized national identities and looks at how white identities come into being in everyday urban neighbourhood spaces. The role of space in the construction of racial identities is especially relevant as a growing number of scholars have explored how racial and spatial processes influence one another (Neely and Samura 2011; Bonam et al. 2017; Bonnet and Nayak 2003). They argue that space is materialized through social relations and vice versa: our everyday actions and relations are shaped by space. From this perspective, racialisation needs to be understood in relation to a normative position of whiteness that situates people of colour as in and out of place (Brunsma et al. 2020).
 
In order to unpack this socio-spatial process of racialized identities, I interviewed people racialized as white, of colour and mixed whilst walking around and visiting several newly established 'white spaces' in their diverse neighbourhood in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. My research participants directed my attention to four practices through which people in urban neighbourhood spaces construct and maintain white Dutch identities.
 
The first practice is that white people construct racial boundaries through space, because they use physical markers to decide who is considered white and who is not when someone enters a space. Not just upon entering, but also when already present in a white space, such as a neighbourhood cafe, the 'white gaze' of white people lets people of colour know that they have entered a space in which they are seen as different from the dominant white group. The second practice is that people learn what to discuss and not to discuss in white urban neighbourhood spaces, because those spaces can be centred around white values, beliefs, logics and ideologies. For instance, in order to feel (more) comfortable in certain spaces, people learnt to comply with 'taboo topics' of the national white discourse and refrain from mentioning issues related to race, racial inequalities, discrimination and the Dutch colonial past.
 
The third practice is that whiteness becomes an identity through specific ways of moving through public space, such as dog walking or cycling. Such forms of mobility are associated with whiteness and - in a dominant discourse where Dutchness is conflated with being white - performing such a white practice makes a person more likely to be 'Dutch'. The fourth practice is when white people perform white activities, such as drinking alcohol in public neighbourhood spaces. In doing so, they unconsciously construct racial boundaries in space based on who feels welcome and who does not. To white people, certain practices are often so deeply embodied that they appear natural and through which they unconsciously reproduce the racial inequalities that produced them. Together, the four practices that I identified show that spaces are racial boundary sites: spaces are constantly defined in terms of 'insiders' and 'outsiders'. In such processes of spatial meaning-making particular racial positionings are established and maintained.
 
In demonstrating several ways in which dominant white identities are constructed and maintained in and through urban neighbourhood spaces, my research also underscores the call to shift the analytical lens towards whiteness. Although the focus on researching racialized groups of colour addresses important matters of material and psychological racism that they are facing, turning attention to the agency of privileged groups in creating and reproducing dominant identities is important as well. Since groups maintain dominance precisely through the characterization of their actions as 'normal', I believe it is partly through unpacking the often-unmarked structures of whiteness that we can better understand processes of racialization and inequality. 

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Image credit: Photo by Grant Lemons on Unsplash

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Read the Identities article:
Weyers, Rozemarijn. (2023). Producing whiteness through urban space: the socio-spatial construction of white identities in Amsterdam. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2023.2295163

Read further in Identities:

Cultural discourses in the Netherlands: Talking about ethnic minorities in the inner‐city

Ethnography, diversity and urban space

Diversity, urban space and the right to the provincial city   OPEN ACCESS