Moments at the veil: Living between two worlds within the Afro-Dutch community

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others…” (Du Bois, 1903, p. 16-17) This research paper explores the experiences of Afro-Dutch men that reside in the inner cities of The Netherlands. By interviewing 10 Black men this research brings attention to how Blackness is experienced within a White dominant culture and the interactions that emerge from this social construct. With the theories, regarding the concept of double consciousness, of Du Bois and Fanon as a foundation, the goal of the interviews was to identify particular experiences that confirmed the two-ness that Black people have been through between their Black and Dutch identity. This resulted in stories that show traces of racial stereotyping, labeling, and othering, but mainly a dominant White narrative that explains these experiences on a macro level with theories of Whiteness and its socially constructed standards. This research concludes that further research is needed as the data used is still limited to what has been collected in these interviews and therefore shows the urgency of Black studies in the Dutch context.