White Passing
Writer and TV presenter Samya Hafsaoui has a native Moroccan father and a native Dutch mother. Apparently this is super confusing to the world – does this make her Dutch or Moroccan? Ever since she started wearing a hijab, the confusion has only increased. She writes about it in a blog post, first shared on her Instagram.
Before I wore my headscarf people assumed I was Dutch. I introduced myself as ‘Sam’ and because I didn’t have an accent nobody thought twice about it. My dad didn’t want to teach me Arabic. He knew the system. He wanted me to be able to ‘pass’. He did everything in his power to make me less Moroccan. He got bullied and harassed at work. He didn’t want that life for me.
When I was 19 I chose to wear a hijab (headscarf) for the rest of my life. It seemed like I had ‘turned on’ my North-African heritage. Nobody saw me as Dutch anymore. When I was on vacation, people saw me as an immigrant or refugee. At work, at uni and in my daily life all I heard was ‘You don’t look Dutch.’ ‘You act Dutch.’ When I grew up, all I wanted to be was white. White meant acceptance. White meant safety. White meant normal.
What does Dutch look like? Blond hair? Blue eyes? Does Dutch have a certain level of intellect Professionalism?
My internalised racism had broken me. It had made me hate myself. My eye color. My nose. My features. Without my hair showing... all of a sudden... I wasn’t white anymore. I had lied to myself.
I
Wasn’t
White
The one that hurt me the most was ‘Dutch people have blue eyes’. My mother and father had apparently given birth to a Moroccan daughter, and a Dutch son.
I strongly feel that the identity my brother and I hold are based on the fact that people decided to remind me I’m Moroccan, and remind my brother he was Dutch.
But my headscarf only covers my hair, not my heritage. I refuse to accept things like: ‘Oh you wear the hijab because you’re Moroccan.’ I wear hijab because I’m muslim.
I have brown eyes because my mother is Dutch.
And I no longer let ‘whiteness’ hold any power over my self worth.
My mother a White-European. My father is a Brown-North African man. My name is Samya, and I am consciously rejecting the pressure to put more worth on either.