Gaza, Black Face and Islamophobia: Intersectionality of Race and Gender in (Counter-)Discourse in the Netherlands

Applying and advocating a transdisciplinary ethnographic approach, this chapter critically explores the intersectionality and friction of race and gender within the racialised context of hegemonic- and counter discourse in the Netherlands.

It does so by presenting illuminating snapshots of the negotiated, contradicting, contested and moving claim-making routines of Palestinian solidarity activists and anti-Black Face (Zwarte Piet) campaigners over the summer of 2014. Catapulted by Israel’s military operation against Gaza and by the court decision that Black Face, as part of the Dutch national holiday festivities of Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas), displays racial stereotypes and thus constitutes a breach of the European Convention of Human Rights, this period saw increased and intense activity of these interrelated yet separate activist initiatives.

Furthermore, this period saw increased criminalisation of all “Muslim protests” and exclusion of both anti-Black Pete and Palestinian solidarity activist from the imagined national collective, or from being truly Dutch. This racialised nationalist exclusion formed numerous obstacles for the activist initiatives but also created a shared experience which forged new contentious repertoires, fresh alliances and the beginning of an intersectional social justice activism movement in the Netherlands that challenged very local hegemonic discourse and practise through a transnational lens.

Consciously presenting the ethnographic data as snapshots of current activism in the Netherlands and posing the analysis as open -ended questions, this chapter aims to capture ongoing changes within their local contexts in a manner that may further transnational and intersectional scholarship without locking inherently flux developments.