‘Philomena Essed has put racism in the Netherlands on the map as an object of study’

‘I think Philomena Essed deserves a place in the collective memory. I want to contribute to that with this film,” says documentary maker Ida Does. In Everyday Dignity – Philomena Essed, Thursday on NPO 2, she portrays the Dutch pioneer in the study of racism. Does: “Philomena Essed has put racism in the Netherlands on the map as an object of study. She brought it here to science. In the 1980s, Essed advocated a national approach to combating racism at all different levels, including institutions and the police. In that sense she was ahead of her time.”

Ida Does is a journalist, including for Omroep West. Since 2008 she has been making documentaries independently, including about the Surinamese resistance fighter Anton de Kom. In 2021 she made a documentary about the painful process of creating the slavery exhibition in the Rijksmuseum. She made it last year It’s not the past, about the December murders. The latter brought out a dark period for her: Does moved to her native country in the early 1980s to help with the reconstruction, but had to flee again after a few months when the Surinamese dictator Bouterse murdered fifteen of his opponents on December 8, 1982. , including a friend of Does.

Documentary maker Ida Does

In the 1980s, Does was familiar with Essed’s work, but: “I was mainly busy rebuilding my life here after the December murders and processing what had happened.” Only later did the idea of ​​making a documentary about Philomena Essed come up. However, it was always present in her life. The anthropologist wrote two groundbreaking studies in the 1980s, Everyday racism and Insight into everyday racism for which she was severely attacked at the time, including by the academic world. Reason for her to move to the United States and become a professor there.

Opposed

In recent years, her work has been widely recognized. In the documentary we see archive footage of a confident young woman who makes statements about Dutch racism that would only become commonplace decades later.

Most striking in the documentary are the young black women who speak – academics and activists who emotionally underline the importance of Essed’s studies, not only for their own work, but also for their lives. In Essed’s words they see confirmation of the racism that they experience every day, but which is still denied by white colleagues and friends. A few students meet Essed and get excited. Does: “That’s great, it’s as if they are talking to their mother or an aunt. While filming I discovered how important her work is for the young generation. That her books are among the standard works for researchers dealing with racism.”

What also struck Does when making the documentary was that Philomena Essed was so opposed in the beginning. “She wanted to become a professor here, but she couldn’t really get a foothold in the Netherlands. She was not given a place. She could have worked so well with other people here who deal with racism all these years, she could have trained students here. We really missed her for forty years.”

Not only

This opposition in the 1980s and 1990s applied to white science and the white press. Black people immediately recognized themselves in her books, as the documentary shows. They saw them as accurate descriptions of what it means to live as a black person in a white world. A black woman says in the documentary: “The press wrote negatively. So we thought: this must be good, we have to buy it.”

The documentary includes a meeting with students from the Zetje In foundation, which advocates making education about racism mandatory in schools. An initiative that was adopted by parliament. “They are the youngest generation I knew who is putting anti-racism on the map in the Netherlands. In the film Philomena Essed says: every generation has to reinvent its own wheel. So that it is their own wheel. At the same time, the conversation between the different generations is so important.”

About those racist experiences: “Ask people of color. One has an even more intense story than the other. Such hurtful and humiliating experiences affect your self-image, the way you present yourself in society, and the friendships you make. It is important that people know: you are not alone. You are not the only one experiencing this. I wanted to capture that energy of being understood, receiving recognition, and fighting spirit in my film.”

2Doc: Everyday Dignity: Philomena EssedThursday on NPO2, 11:35 PM.