Daniel, just outside Penetanguishene, Ontario, grew up in a family with Oklahoma Cherokee ties and heard his grandfather call himself Black Dutch, apparently to deny Native ancestry in a racist setting. The term is a knotty racial descriptor, sometimes used for people with dark hair, dark eyes, or olive skin, and sometimes as a more socially acceptable label masking Native American, African American, or other mixed ancestry. Daniel’s Canadian partner knew Black Dutch differently, as a slur tied to descendants of Spanish troops in the Netherlands. Black Irish can work as a similar code. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Black Dutch” as a Racial Descriptor for Disguised Ancestry”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, Martha, this is Daniel Justice from just outside of Penetanguishene, Ontario.
Oh, nice. Is that a Native American place name?
It is. It comes from an Anishinaabe word that means place of the rolling white sand.
Nice. Is there sand there?
In some of the beach areas, yeah, there are actually some really beautiful beaches.
Just off of Georgian Bay.
Okay, wow, sounds wonderful.
Well, thanks for educating us.
What can we do for you?
Well, I was curious about a term I grew up with.
So my family, I’m originally from Colorado, and my family on my dad’s side is Oklahoma Cherokee.
And through my dad’s mom’s line were enrolled citizens of the Cherokee Nation.
But my dad’s father, my granddad, actually was the one who looked the more phenotypically native.
But he was really vociferously, he would deny any native ancestor.
And he would always call himself Black Dutch, which was always a term.
And I’d always kind of understood this term as a way for some people, especially in particularly racist areas of the country, to kind of disavow any mixed ancestry.
But when I was talking with my partner, who’s Canadian, and I just mentioned the term, he was actually kind of taken aback because he understood the term as a slur that was used for the descendants of Spanish troops who were stationed in the Netherlands as part of the, well, I guess in the 17th and 18th centuries.
And so the black Dutch would have been a bit of a slur for children of mixed marriages from that period of time.
So they would have the dark haired and the dark featured Spanish fathers, perhaps, and the blonde and blue eyed Dutch mothers.
Yeah. So two very different terms, well, two very different uses of the term. And I was just kind of curious how it’s worked in different areas.
Yeah, black Dutch is a crazy term because it’s a bit of a mess.
If you start to Google it or even look in books that should be reputable, you’ll find that it’s so mixed up, as you rightfully pointed out, with race and our ideas of people, who we are, who we belong to, and what we’re a part of.
So you’ll find black Dutch used again and again throughout history to refer to people perhaps of Dutch ancestry or German ancestry, or perhaps neither of those.
It’s just a way of suggesting that they are of a race that is a little more acceptable than some other race.
Sometimes you’ll find it being used to say that they’re simply dark complected.
They have dark hair, they have dark eyes, perhaps they have olive skin.
And what’s really interesting about what you had to say, Daniel, is that in looking in genealogy for my own family, there is a line where it’s suggested that we have Cherokee ancestors.
Because I come from a part of Missouri where the Cherokee passed on their way to Oklahoma.
And what I discovered is probably, I could be wrong, in our family, somebody decided that Cherokee was nicer to say than African American.
And I probably have African American ancestry, and they just thought it was easier and probably more acceptable to say that they had Native American ancestry.
Isn’t that interesting?
So for them, Cherokee was the code for African American.
Wow.
Yeah.
And you look in the genealogical, and you’ll find black Irish kind of works the same way.
I was going to ask about that term because I heard that as well.
So it’s all a mess.
It’s more than we can tackle on this show.
But what you’ve introduced here is this idea that we are looking for ways to express our identity in a way that other people around us will find acceptable.
And so you said it was your grandfather who insisted that he was black Dutch, even though he looked more like a Native American, like you would expect a Native American to look?
Right, yeah.
Phenotypically, his features were very kind of the stereotype.
Whereas my grandmother, much fairer skin, she actually, the pictures we have of her, she has the 20s bob.
But he was really insistent, and he was a bit of a bigot, too, which plays out in all kinds of ways in politics.
But yeah, he was really insistent that he was not an Indian, he was black Dutch.
Really interesting stuff.
And so your partner in Canada, his problem with black Dutch is that he knows it as a term to be avoided altogether.
You wouldn’t say it about yourself.
Right, right. It’s more of a slur.
Daniel, this is great.
It sounds like you’ve done your fieldwork on this, but for everyone else who’s listening, we’re going to link to some resources online where the different kinds of Black Dutch are explained.
And if you’ve got something to add, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send in an email to words@waywordradio.org.
Thank you so much, Daniel. This was wonderful.
Oh, this is great. I really appreciate it.
Love your show. We listen to it on podcast all the time.
Thank you.
Right on.
Bye-bye.
Thank you, Daniel. Bye-bye.
Bye.
As I mentioned, when we come together from different parts of the country or different parts of the world, we have these language encounters.
Why don’t you share them with us?
877-929-9673 or email us words@waywordradio.org.
