I have long put myself on the 'listen first, talk later' mode when it came to how we all deal with the festering sore of racism in the Netherlands. There is so much we don't know about each other, and there is especially so much I can't know about my fellow Black people, because for a long time I was too unaware of my privileges. Even as a poor scribbler with a languishing self-employed existence. But now I have to say something.
Got, after all the discussion, a press release from the Public Broadcasting Corporation today, and I saw a really weird sentence:
'On Sunday evening, De Stelling van Nederland, at 20.25 on NPO 1, led by Jort Kelder, debates the proposition: 'The current racism debate is driving the Netherlands apart'.
Read again carefully
What does it say? A debate is being organised about a debate. In itself, I don't need to explain further how idiotic this sentence is, but am going to do it anyway. Biggest, and first problem is of course that, according to the broadcasting bosses, there is a 'racism debate'. It has already been adequately expressed in various comments by people who have a lot more right to speak, but using the word 'racism debate' is as idiotic as if you were to speak a 'murder debate', a 'fraud debate' or a 'rape debate': racism is a crime and then it doesn't make much sense to put supporters and opponents of it around the table. 'Are you for or against theft? You can say it.'
You can't be in favour of racism, so there could only be a discussion about the seriousness of the case, but then you ignore the victims: 'how bad do we all really feel about women being raped?' Doesn't seem to me that's a debate. That is a question of enforcement.
Raison d'être
But so now there seems to be a "racism debate" going on in the Netherlands, according to the NPO (where? on Twitter? Or at Voetbal Inside?) and instead of having that debate on national TV, we are going to debate whether it is bad that there is a debate.
The broadcaster has made debating into raison d'être declared and so everything is a debate: whether smoking kills you, whether or not you believe Bill Gates is a reptile in disguise, whether Jews are taking over the world and whether or not repopulation is happening. And if so, how.
Match
Racism has thus become a view to be debated, not a crime. Facts, science, visible reality, they have definitively given way to something where, in the end, the best debaters prevail. And the best debaters are usually not the people who have right on their side, but often the people with the greatest charisma, or the sizable marketing budget. A debate is a competition, not a method of expanding knowledge.
Dear NPO: not everything has to be sport. Stop broadcasting debates about things you really just don't know enough about yet. And then don't start debating them either. First start by listening, by looking for the facts, by asking for the story of people who can't or don't want to make that audible right now.
I'm sure the theme day will produce a lot of great stories, but that 'debate' about that 'debate' is only there for the uproar on social media. And, of course, the retrospective debates at Op1. Imagine the talking points
Until it's over, I'll keep watching old science fiction series on pay channels. From those you learn a lot more about how the human species is put together.
Good to know
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