Writer Sibahle Nkumbi was in Amsterdam to support and report on the exhibition of her friend Zanele Muholi in the Stedelijk Museum, staying in an AirBnB flat. When according to their “hosts” they were late checking out, one of them threw Nkumbi down the stairs, leaving her concussed and injured. As shown in the video and interview below, it could’ve been so much worse.
Nkumbi’s experiences in Amsterdam showcase that tolerance and liberalism in the Netherlands is often no more than skindeep, that white Dutch people can be all smiles on the outside, but racist as fuck as soon as something breaks through that facade. In this case, Nkumbi and friends were late checking out and there came the racism flying out because how dare a Black woman mildly inconvenience a white man, culminating in assault. That’s the limit of white tolerance in the Netherlands: as long as everything goes well and you as a person of colour are not bothering anyone, we’ll accept you and thumb our chests about how liberal and accepting we are, until you do something we disapprove of.
