Black Queer Emancipation: the stories of Black queer activists in the Netherlands during the 1980s and 1990s.

Abstract

Black queer activists, who were active in the Netherlands during the 1980s and 1990s, hold a plethora of knowledge about how to face adversities and how to organize collective action as a minority within a minority. Despite this, little research has been done about them. Therefore, this thesis investigates the question: How do the Black queer activists narrate their trajectories of activism in the Netherlands during the 1980s and 1990s? Oral history is combined with the life course method to answer this query. Besides in-depth interviews, a documentary and a few newspapers, made by some of the Black queer activists in the 1980s, were also analyzed. Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality is used to investigate structures of power and Ahmed’s queer phenomenology is used to explore the orientations and movements of the Black queer activists. Additionally, Meyer’s minority stress model and Perrin et al.’s minority strengths model are combined to give a complete account of the stress experienced by the Black queer activists and how they manage it. From the findings, it can be concluded that the Black queer activists narrated their trajectories of activism in terms of becoming conscious of their Blackness and queerness, becoming motivated to pursue acceptance and emancipation and organizing this pursuit. Acceptance and emancipation were sought in four different ways, namely: individually internal, individually external, collectively internal, and collectively external. Thus, Black queer emancipation was the result of implementing collective Black queer consciousness, which is an anti-racist and anti-queerphobic ideology that emerges from experiences with discrimination, a strong sense of justice and self-esteem. More research should be done regarding the coping, strengths, and emancipation of Black queer activists.