Dutch compassion for white suffering was racially selective and required high drama

Evidence

But Knaap also targeted the hypocrisy of Dutch compassion and its racially circumscribed character. Why was there such an outpouring of interest and sympathy for the South African Dutch (de Boeren) admittedly devastated by the Boer War, he asked, while the dismal fate of European paupers in the Indies left his Leiden neighbors “utterly cold?” He accused them of needing “high drama to stir their feelings,” whereas the “tragedy of quiet distress and submissive social misery escaped them all.” — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 939

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: an essay on how sympathy economies select which suffering is visible—distant spectacle over quiet local misery, colonial and contemporary.