Generational Perspectives: Navigating Racism and White Innocence in the Dutch National Football Team, 1960-2000

This project examines players of postcolonial descent in the Dutch men’s football team. There has been an absence in academic literature on how these players narrate their experiences of racism. Starting with the first generation in the 1960s, this project explores how narratives on racism within the Dutch national team evolved across different generations.This project argues that white innocence significantly influences how players of postcolonial descent express their experiences, and it examines various forms of white innocence. In addition, this project examines various forms of racism, to indicate how player from a postcolonial background narrates their experiences of racism in the Dutch national team. Therefore, the research question addressed is: ‘How did players in the Dutch national football team, who are or were (children of) colonial and postcolonial migrants, narrate their experiences of racism in the media and in biographies from the 1960s to the 2000s?’. This project employs both a newspaper approach and a biographical approach to analyse forms of racism and white innocence. Additionally, it uses two case studies per timeframe to demonstrate how an incident surrounding racism was being dealt with at the time. The evidence used in this analysis demonstrates a development in how these players addressed racism, and how the newspapers and biographies reported on racism. Initially, it was handled individually in the first generation, but gradually shifted toward companionship among players of postcolonial descent in later generations. The main finding is that racism and various forms of racism and white innocence were evidently present throughout the second half of the 20th century. The Dutch football organisation KNVB, and the Dutch media, which repeatedly asserted limited action against racism, played a role in shaping perceptions. Consequently, the final generation, despite their achievements in Dutch football, still feels underappreciated in the Netherlands.