Invisibility Abroad

When I stepped foot in Amsterdam, I didn’t know what to expect. It was my first time being in Europe without family members. I was super excited to study abroad, but my excitement turned into disappointment when I realized a lot of the rhetoric of racism that happens in America—specifically in Seattle—was still apparent abroad. Both cities are known for their progressiveness, which in my opinion is dangerous, because it makes it impossible for both to realize what they need to work on as a society to improve.

In Seattle, I have had multiple interactions in classrooms settings and at work of people describing their opinions on race to be “colorblind,” discrediting the emotions and difficulty that comes with being a person of color in the world. Similarly, since Amsterdam is made up of a predominantly white population, it makes it easy to overlook what type of bias exist towards those who do not fit this population stereotype.

I feel like since both places pride themselves in their ability to coexist in a non-homogenous society with people, they have trained themselves to strip the consequences of race with them. But it is not that simple. Amsterdam looks at America to be an example of how to treat its citizens in general, which terrifies me, since America is a nation that is built on racism; there is only so much good that Amsterdam can take away from it, which was apparent in how I was treated there. I didn’t really face a lot of direct Islamophobic slurs; they mostly came from my educators at the University.

One of the most frustrating days in class was when we discussed the impact of 9/11 in America and how this affected how Dutch Muslims were treated. The professor spoke on how they understood why America was treating Muslim citizens disrespectfully and implied that this was justifiable. This made me very uncomfortable since I could feel all the students in my class watching me while my professor was maintaining eye contact with me as he was saying these negative comments about Muslims.

This experience definitely put a taint on my experience, and everyday I had to struggle enjoying the opportunity I had to explore Amsterdam or analyze how to speak to my professors for what they had said that day. In general, I would say that I would want to go back to Amsterdam, and I see it as somewhere that I call home, but from the experiences I had, it made me more critical in how I navigated my entire trip.

Despite these negative experiences, there were also experiences that left a positive impact on me. My most memorable experience was at my favorite breakfast place while I was in Amsterdam. This is a photograph of my favorite pancake place, which had photographs of American rappers, Ice Cube and Kendrick Lamar. I chose this picture because it resonated with me and is something that I still remember about the trip. As a Black woman, seeing Black people depicted in a positive light outside of America made me feel excited and represented for the first time on my trip. Seeing these two men photographed showed the globalization of hip-hop in real life. I knew that hip-hop has been art form that has influenced music culture all over the world and not just America. It made me happy to be able to see these artists being represented and made my identity as a Black woman less invisible.