#BlackInAmsterdamAdventures (Day 8)

Today's lesson focused on the Educational curriculums, disparities and hierarchies within Black European culture, specifically in the Netherlands and Portugal. This was a day that I really had to reflect on my educational background starting from Pre-K to present day Grad school. I truly value not only what I got from the many great teachers that I had, but also the supplemental academic enrichment that I obtained from programs like Upward Bound College Prep Academy, Principal Scholars, & Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate program, among others. So on today I realized how critical it is to have a firm foundation of history. I can remember the many days I would come home from school telling my mama and grandma how we didn't really learn about people of color (particularly Black folks), even as I child I was inquiring about people that looked like me! Also realizing that Blacks people were so much more than enslaved individuals, but revolutionaries, kings & queens, high ranking officials, inventors, and so much more. This is the connection that I saw with schools here in Europe. As I have already discussed in posts from last week race is constantly made to not exist or downplayed as if it is not relevant. What one will find over here is how rampant Eurocentric ideologies & narratives of whiteness are perpetuated in history and taught to children of color (i.e. Afro-Dutch, Surinamese, Dutch Antillies, Turks, & Moroccans). Now it's bad over in the U.S. but it is taken to another level over here. Imagine Black children having to be forced to learn under Christian principles, but their Muslim; or not having any mention to slavery or Africans being seen as enslaved (remember the enslaved were seen as economic wealth); or having to be critiqued daily about the order and cleanliness of your homework; or worse having to take part & witness your white Dutch classmates (sometimes Black ones too) dress in blackface to 'honor' the notorious Zwarte Piet (or risk being fined/and or humiliated for not participating). All I could do was just shake my head. The ugliness of 'white privilege' in the classroom is helluva drug. #PhDChronicles