The F(r)Ictions between (non)Whites and Whiteness in the Netherlands: Race, Religion, and Christian-Muslim Intimacies

How can the concept of whiteness be understood and applied in the Netherlands? This paper examines the socio-cultural constructions and expressions of whiteness that are multiply (re)formed, often contradictory, and contingent upon its various racialized Others within the Dutch context. In the Netherlands, where the notion of “race” is still virtually an inadequate paradigm, whiteness operates as a convoluted and shifting signifier, intricately entangled with religion, ethnicity, and class. To explore these relational and entangled formations on a more intersubjective micro-level, this paper draws on ethnographic insights from Christian-Muslim couples in the Netherlands, focusing on how these formations are understood, experienced, questioned, and challenged by the couples themselves. Given the co-constitutive relation between race and religion, particularly in the context of European nativist discourses that correlate whiteness with Christianity and/or secularism—and thus Europeanness, often in opposition to Islam—examining the discursive accounts and experiences of Christian-Muslim couples, where each partner embodies different degrees of normativity, can provide us deeper insights into the ambivalent, contextual, as well as malleable forms of whiteness. By contemplating on whiteness as a valid category of analysis and putting it in a conversation with other modes of differentiation, particularly Christianity and secularism, I explore how it functions as an instantaneous element of natural belonging to the nation for certain racialized groups, an indelible mark of foreignness for others, and as a site of provisional acceptance or impossible inclusion for some. By highlighting the intimate lives of these couples, I aim to go beyond asserting the normative and invisibilized construction of whiteness, and instead, explore its divergent registers, forms, and expressions, which can, in turn, contribute to the ongoing scholarly and activist efforts of anti-racism and socio-cultural change.