My name is Sylvana, I was born in Amsterdam. My mother was a redhead (father from Germany, mother Amsterdam Jewish) and my biological father was from Indonesia. I'm a 1/2 Indonesian, 1/4 Jewish, 1/4 German dark haired, dark eyed woman with wreckles. And one beam of the sun and I have a sunburn.
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| me now |
My mother divorced when I was 3 years old and when I was about 9 years old she remarried a Dutch man and we moved from Amsterdam to Den Helder (middle-of-nowhere).
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| wedding day from my mother with the Dutch dude |
Probably because I didn't know my biological father I felt Dutch, I think (I'm still a bit confused when people talk about races, gender et cetera. I still have that 'naive' thinking of 'a human being' which is nice or not. There are assholes everywhere).
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| family of my biological father |
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| family of my biologal father |
I remember my first year in Den Helder (a navy, army city in The Netherlands). On my way back home from school I passed a house where always a couple of brothers were playing outside, they were Indonesian. Over and over again I got spit on while they were screaming 'hey Blauwe' (hey Blue one). I didn't understand this. Later I found out that a half-breed like me, half Dutch, half Indonesian, is also discriminated by Indonesian people ... hence 'Blauwe / Blue one'. By the way, the spitting and calling names stopped after one day when I jumped off my bike and got in a fight with them. At that moment I found out that these kind of fights (and I had a couple of them) are not about winning but about acting, about doing something about it.
Hey slit-eye / gook! Hey Blauwe / Blue one!
Are you adopted?
Where are you from? Mongolia? North Africa? Spain? South America? Are you an eskimo?
And the profiling *sigh*, passing customs, enter festivals, big concerts, theme parks ... ... ... They always pick me out of a mass of people. The weird thing was a couple years ago when I went to the States, Florida. I expected hell at customs ... nothing! A friend told me they do facial recognition over there, so I was probably picked out by the scan but they didn't bother me with it. You just go through the whole system and the system says Yes. The moment I came back in Amsterdam, Schiphol, though ... they checked out everything again. They even asked my daughter if she was my daughter.
I'm used to it by now. But reading 'My Name Is Ahmed. Am I white?' and reading the word 'sand nigger' shocked me and made me realize that I'm a coward. I'm 'used to it'. I'm used to something that isn't okay. I have to do something. Protest when it happens again. Have discussions. Let it escalate. If not for me, than for everybody else, but also for my daughter.
When she was born I went with my ex to his parents in the South of the Netherlands. My daughter was still a baby, the weather was beautiful and she was lying on a blanket in the garden. The neighbours looked at her, than looked at me and said: "You can see that she's not 100% Dutch". I had to laugh, but it's ridiculous.
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| my daughter as a baby |
After my divorce I lived for a while in Amstelveen, Westwijk. Suburbia. The first evening I was in that house, one of the neighbours came by to say hello. The first thing she said was: "You're the second single mother who lives here", followed by: "How could you have paid for this house? Oh, I know, of course, alimoney". (To make it a bit clear: I never got alimoney, nor for me, nor for my daughter).
A couple of days later another neighbour came running out of his home while I was passing to go to the supermarket with my daughter and while a good friend of mine was working in the small garden in front of the house. This was so pathetic, I really pitied the guy. He wanted to get acquainted: "Hi, I'm ... ..., so you're the tinted single mother who's living at #4 now? I'm so sorry to hear, I'm so sorry for your daughter. Is that man working in your front garden your new boyfriend?".
I rest my case. I didn't know if I had to get angry, if I had to start crying or just roll over laughing. I did the last thing.
As a woman, I'm never beautiful or pretty. I'm intriguing or mysterious (or weird, or a bitch). To be honest, I don't know if that only has to do with the way I look. Perhaps also because of who I am.
How I'm going to deal with this now? It's easy to just ignore it. But is that the right thing to do?
Anyway ... I'm Sylvana Knaap. Period.
Very interesting post. fwiw I think you are pretty and have a lovely smile. You seem like a kind person not to lower yourself to the level of those thoughtless fools.
ReplyDeleteAs a half-Indian guy having grown up in the UK I feel lucky to have never heard comments similar to yours, not even once that I can recall! Maybe my hearing just isn't so great, lol.
p.s. your blog has many good posts. Cheers.