‘Break the chains’ we celebrate today, the moment slavery was abolished within the Dutch imperial borders. Quite a few white Dutch people feel rather uncomfortable about that. Sometimes I also hear people say that they themselves never owned slaves, never profited from slavery and therefore do not want to be held accountable for that legacy.
It is, of course, also a constant learning process. For everyone, even for types like myself, who truly held the conviction for a very long time that we understood it. Okay, you still make the occasional mistake, I once struggled with a hip-hop artist talking about ‘white people’ and whether I should correct them and if so, how, but real discomfort?
Marniix Gymnasium
Until I had a very pleasant meeting with Charl Landvreugd a few months ago, I had never experienced real discomfort. Afterwards, I did. That's not Charl Landvreugd's fault. We also produced a lovely podcast together, inspired by his book (and dissertation) Dutch Afro Becomings, which was released at the end of March. You can find the podcast, which has since been downloaded over 30,000 times, here listening.
During our preliminary conversation, it turned out we had practically been neighbours in Rotterdam. At least, he lived more or less next door to the school I attended, the Marnix Gymnasium on the Essenburgsingel (now the Henegouwerplein). He mentioned that it had been his childhood dream to go to that school. His CITO score was excellent, partly for that reason, but the primary school he attended didn't think the gymnasium was for him and strongly advised him to go to the nearby ‘black’ City College and do HAVO. This had to do with his background; the Marnix was a very white school in the early nineties.
Motivation
The frustration that this caused motivated him: he ‘stacked’ courses until he could obtain doctorates from two international universities for his research into the typically Dutch way in which art of non-Western origin finds its place.
And so there we sat, side by side. Charl, who has achieved a splendid position as head of research at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and is being mentioned as the next director of that prestigious institution, and myself, who spent eight years at the Marnix, because I sometimes didn't feel like going for good grades.
Liberated?
Should I have been ashamed? Of course not: I was completely unaware of my privileges. With a bit of common sense and a good Cito score, in 1974 I could ‘just’ go to that (then) left-wing school with 200 pupils where a team of teachers was ready to help even the laziest or most hesitant get through. Just like my brothers and sister before me. Any other option wasn't even considered.
For Charl Landvreugd, that wasn't the case, because of his skin colour.
Inequality in the Netherlands is so taken for granted, and it is so foolish to throw that in other people’s faces. Am I to blame for the history of slavery? No, I am just as entitled to feel liberated from it. Provided I remain fully aware that the deep-rooted racism – of which slavery was a horrific manifestation – still leads, every single day, to marginalisation and oppression, which is still experienced on a daily basis by the people with whom you – sometimes – are allowed to sit at the table.
Liberation, yes, but we’re not free yet.
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