With my Curaçao guide I walk for the first time after seventy years through the bario Fleur de Marie, in my younger years a not entirely safe emigrant neighborhood above Willemstad. A few residents sitting on the sidewalk in front of their colorfully renovated houses, look at us with interest and greet us kindly. I tell my guide that I would not have dared to walk here at the time because of my white skin color. She looks at me intently: “Your problem is precisely that you have no color.”
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A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper on June 13, 2023.