Mixed Race Studies

Framing a Deterritorialized, Hybrid Alternative to Nationalist Essentialism in the Postcolonial Era: Tjalie Robinson and the Diasporic Eurasian “Indo” Community

Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies
Volume 16, Numbers 1/2, (Spring/Fall 2007)
pages 1-28
DOI: 10.1353/dsp.2007.0002

Jeroen Dewulf, Queen Beatrix Professor in Dutch Studies
University of California, Berkeley

In her study of Transnational South Asians (2008), Susan Koshy highlights the systematic neglect by scholars of the perspectives and activities of such seemingly peripheral actors as diasporic subjects in the macro-narratives of nationalism and globalization. Such neglect was even more pronounced in the case of the “repatriates” from European colonies in Asia and Africa. The epistemological implications of the dislocated, de-territorialized discourse produced by repatriates from former European colonies remain largely overlooked. One of those groups that seem to have slipped between the pages of history is the diasporic Eurasian “Indo” community that has its roots in the former Dutch East Indies. In this article, I focus on Tjalie Robinson, the intellectual leader of this community from the 1950s to the mid-1970s. In recent decades, there has been a growing interest in what Homi Bhabha, inThe Location of Culture (1994, 38), called “the conceptualization of an international culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture’s hybridity.” Long before Bhabha, Robinson had already published substantially on hybrid, transnational identity. As the son of a Dutch father and a British-Javanese mother, Robinson had made a name in Indonesia with his writings. He left Indonesia in 1954, and soon became the leading voice of the diasporic Indo community in the Netherlands and, later, also in the United States. His engagement resulted in the founding of the Indo magazine Tong Tong and the annual Pasar Malam, the world’s biggest Eurasian festival. With his writings, Robinson played an essential role in the cultural awareness and self-pride of the Indo community through the acceptance of their essentially hybrid and transnational identity.

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Mixed marriage: ‘I am coming to Senegal and I want to marry you’

Surprising Europe: Share Your Migration Experience
Netherlands
2010-03-26

This website is part of the international cross-media project Surprising Europe, initiated by Ssuuna Golooba, who left Uganda in the hope of a better life. Surprising Europe consists of a documentary and a nine part television series. Surprising Europe.com is a community of people who are interested in African-European migration issues.

Turid from the Netherlands fell in love with Moussé from Senegal when she was staying in Senegal. She went back, but realized that Moussé was the one: ‘I called him and said: ‘I am coming to Senegal next month and I want to marry you.’ He replied: ‘Can I call you back tomorrow?’

Turid didn’t know it at the time, but Moussé had to do something important before he could answer her question: ‘I first had to ask my parents, that’s tradition in Africa. But they thought is was great, asked me if I was in love and I said “yes!”, so we married,’ he smiles. Now they live in The Netherlands with their three children…

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Memories of Interracial Contacts and Mixed Race in Dutch Cinema

Journal of Intercultural Studies
Volume 28, Issue 1 (2007)
Pages 69 – 82
DOI: 10.1080/07256860601082947

Pamela Pattynama, Professor of Media and Culture
University of Amsterdam

This essay explores the (post)colonial relationship between the present-day Netherlands and its former colony the Dutch East Indies—a continuing relationship that has generated a wide range of memories. Exploring two Dutch films on the colonial past and comparing them with two autobiographical writings of Dutch writers of mixed race, it argues that the recurrent theme of interracial contacts emerges as the privileged metaphor for the relation between Holland and its ex-colony. A recurring feature of Dutch representations of interracial contacts, it is specifically the figure of the Indonesian concubine, the so-called nyai, which continues to obsess the male gaze. The essay concludes that through their focus on loss, separation and failure in representing interraciality, the films speak primarily to the incapacity of the Dutch nation to engage effectively with its colonial past.

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Another Woolly-Hair Mutation in Man

The Journal of Heredity
Volume 25, Number 9 (September 1934)
pages 337-340

C. Ph. Schokking
Rotterdam, Holland

A Dutch peasant family living near Leiden carries a dominant gene for a type of woolly hair characteristic of the Negro races. This is not to be explained as due to race crossing for two reasons.  In the first place there is no tradition in the family of an infusion of Negro blood and no other evidence of anything but pure Dutch ancestry. Furthermore, hair form behaves in racial crosses not as a simple dominant character but as a “blending” character (in which to or more genes are involved).  Thus simple mendelian inheritance of hair form is not found in Negro-white crosses. Among such hybrids various degrees of curly and wavy hair are observed, and in later generations wooly hare may appear but only where both parents are partly Negro. Thus the occurrence of woolly hair in this family is clear due to mutation rather than race hybridization.

While studying twins in Leiden in 1929 and 1930, I encountered a pair of non-identical twin sisters, one of whom had remarkably curly hair. Since little is known of the inheritance of such genuine woolly hair among Europeans, I followed up the history of this pair. It soon transpired that in the village of Rijnsburg, near Leiden, whence the girls came, many woolly-haired persons were to be found, and that all of these belonged to the same family. After a deal of effort I was able to put together a pedigree chart covering five generations (Figure 3). The founder of the family had already died and no photograph of him was to be had, but an old Rijnsburger, who knew both this man and his father, was able to give me definite information that both of them had woolly hair…

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Consequences of Racial Intermarriage for Children’s Social Integration

Sociological Perspectives
Volume 53, Number 2 (Summer 2010)
Pages 271–286
DOI: 10.1525/sop.2010.53.2.271

Matthijs Kalmijn, Professor of Sociology
Tilburg University, The Netherlands

Much has been written on ethnic and racial intermarriage, but little research is available on the social consequences of intermarriage. Are the children of mixed marriages more strongly connected to the majority, or are they incorporated in the ethnic or racial minority group? To answer this question, this article uses a minority survey from the Netherlands with data collected from both parents and children. The focus is on Antilleans and Surinamese and children of marriages in which both spouses are black are compared to children of marriages in which one spouse is white and one spouse is black. The analyses provide strong support for the integrative effects of intermarriage on children. These effects are not conditional on the socioeconomic status of the parents. Moreover, the effect on children can be explained in terms of the more diverse meeting opportunities that parents in a mixed marriage provide to their children.

Intermarriage has long been considered a core indicator of the integration of ethnic and racial minorities in society (Kalmijn 1998; Qian and Lichter 2007; Schermerhorn 1970). The most important reason for this is that when members of ethnic and racial groups marry with other groups, this is a sign that these groups accept each other as equals. Intermarriage is also considered important, however, for its potential consequences. Intermarriage may reduce group identities and prejudice in future generations because the children of mixed marriages are less likely to identify themselves with a single group (Saenz, Hwang, and Anderson 1995; Xie and Goyette 1997). In addition, the children of mixed marriages are believed to interact more frequently across group boundaries and they tend to choose a marriage partner from the majority more often (Okun 2004). Finally, high rates of intermarriage make it more difficult to define who is belonging to an ethnic or racial group and this by itself could also weaken the salience of ethnic and racial boundaries in society (Davis 1991). In short, ethnic and racial intermarriages are not only considered a reflection of integration in society, they may also contribute to integration.

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