The Recurrent Return of Antiracism – Black Movements in the Netherlands.

This paper sheds light on transformations of Afro-Dutch antiracism from the 1970s onwards. The current day resurgence of antiracist activism is often delegitimized by framing it as a trendy novelty and a mere mimicry of African-American civil rights activism. However, historicizing these endeavors reveals that the idiosyncrasies of today’s black movement can only be fully grasped in the light of previous movements. This paper focuses on Surinamese anti-racism in the Netherlands from the 1960s to the 1980s. Studying the anti-imperialist emancipatory undertakings of Surinamese student movements during that period reveals two key differences with current day antiracism (1) racism was thought of as an articulation of imperialism that should be understood as part divide and conquer strategies of Dutch and Surinamese elites in multiethnic Suriname (2) ‘working class’ and ‘Surinamese’ rather than ‘black’ were the main categories of mobilization for many afro-Surinamese involved in anti-racism activities. The military coup in Suriname in the 1980s turns out to be a key factor in reorienting afro-Surinamese activism from an international anti-imperialist to the current day antiracist discourse that centers around global solidarity with the African diaspora.

We conclude that ‘recurrence’ in the context of black antiracism in the Netherlands needs to be understood not as the repetition of the same, but rather as a dynamic and changing phenomenon influenced by black self-understandings as well as the changing face of racism in the Netherlands.