Here and there: a study in Supremacy
*** This article was published in Teen Art Out issue 54 (July 2018)***
The events in Charlottesville, Virginia, on the 5th of August started because of a statue, but ended up launching America—and the rest of the world—into a debate about supremacy, race, and far-right ideologies in the United States. The statue was one of a slave-owning Confederate general, and the gathering was one of white supremacists, who viewed the statue as a symbol of their heritage. But they were not marching unopposed: a large group of counter protesters showed up, and the scene descended into violence. Police attempted to maintain control, but the rally ultimately resulted in more than 30 serious injuries and one directly related death, after a car was driven into a crowd of counter protesters. A state of emergency was declared, and the city of Charlottesville was put into lockdown. It was, in short, a riot, supremacists against those who oppose the racism they stand for.
The events in Charlottesville were not random, and while the details were uniquely American, the problem was not. As much as I’m sure Europe would like to believe that they are above clashes over race, in a world that is becoming closer, racism in various forms and by various names like those which lead to Charlottesville are coming more frequently to the forefront.
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I was born in America, and am as white as can possibly be. I grew up in one of the whitest major cities in America, a large city in the Pacific Northwest. It is very liberal and left leaning, but without the type of racial diversity you get in the rest of the country. Racism was never overt, growing up, but there’s no doubt that the systematic and casual racism existed there as much as anywhere else. Nobody flew a Confederate flag and we didn’t have statues of Robert E Lee, but things like income disparity, less resources to schools, and a quiet sort of xenophobia meant that people of colour were less likely to be in the same circles as white people in town.
When I was in high school, I had group of friends that were all hell-bent on leaving the United States as soon as possible, denouncing it as a bigoted, terrible place to live. They loved to sing praises of France, Finland, Japan, the Netherlands—all such forward-thinking, socialism-minded places they would say, so much better than our country in tatters. I cannot say I was excluded from this—indeed, I emigrated to Canada before I was even legally an adult, and have lived abroad ever since—but I could never bring myself to fully agree. My primary school education had been almost entirely French, and I had lived in Paris for several months on a school exchange when I was younger. I couldn’t recall it being that different from what I saw around me in the US, but I still subscribed to the idea. Things had to be better abroad, didn’t they?
In my final year of university, I was given the opportunity to study abroad in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. So for six months, starting in August 2016, I lived in Amsterdam, continuing my studies in political science while simultaneously getting to watch the real-life action that was the American political situation unfold from abroad.
Several things to note, before I begin. The majority of my insights will be about the Netherlands, given that I lived there. While I do not see Europe as a monolith, I do think that some generalisations can be made across the continent. It must be said that in America, I am not a visible minority, and I have privilege on my side. Many of the things that follow are anecdotes, and not necessarily hard facts. Finally, for the sake of trying to be somewhat brief, I’m going to stick to a narrow scope and make some overarching statements.
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The narrative among Americans—in my experience, particularly young, liberal Americans—about The Great Abroad is pervasive. Across the internet, articles and pictures circulate, giving examples like how great it is that Sweden has taken in so many Syrian refugees, or how it’s illegal to do the Nazi salute in Germany. It all comes with undertones of “look, America, if you can just be more like Europe, then all your problems will be solved”. And it’s not always just Americans; Europeans can also espouse an air of superiority, especially in the wake of things like the Charlottesville attacks. Their countries are not nearly as bad as the United States.
There are several fundamental problems with this narrative, however. To start off, the United States is not Europe; Europe is many different countries, with varying cultures, histories, and political systems. America, on the other hand, is massive, both in terms of land mass and the diversity of cultures one can find within its borders. All of these different people, however, still live under only one system of government, one which has to try and satisfy everyone. And then, for the crux of the issue: as much as there is perhaps less racism in Europe, there is no lack of prejudice, sometimes strong, often sprouting from regional or national identity.
To oversimplify, America has race, Europe has blood ties, and neither one is truly above reproach.
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In America, I am white: my distant ancestors came from Germany and the British Isles. The girl in my class who came from Ukraine as a child is also white. The family of girls in my high school who fled from Burundi, in Africa, are black. My friend who could trace her family back two hundred to plantations in the American south is also black. All of these people are American. Race is a way to categorise people, but we all share a common American identity. The United States is a country of immigrants, after all, for better or for worse.
Europe, on the other hand, is a different sort of situation. Race, or at least the American concept of it, does not exist there, and therefore neither does the same sort of racism. Somehow, this can lead otherwise intelligent people to believe that Europe is a sort of utopia, free from racism and the ugly problems produced by it.
But—particularly historically—Europe is less diverse. Populations are homogenous, and different cultures meaning different nations. Oddly enough, this does not mean that “racism”—or rather, prejudice—does not exist. From what I observed and learned in the Netherlands, the divide is not one of black versus white, but rather native versus foreign. It is not so much of a question of skin colour, but rather where your family’s from in forming in groups and outgroups. The wording may be different, but there is still an underhand of prejudice against those “not from here” that prevails through Europe.
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I have a ten-year-old kid-cousin who lives in the Netherlands. My cousin—his mom—is from the United States, and her husband is from Scotland. My kid-cousin was born in America, but they moved to the south of the Netherlands when he was four months old, and was legally made a citizen. He speaks English at home, but has always gone to Dutch schools and speaks fluent Dutch.
I have a friend who I knew growing up. She had lived in my home state all her life, and was a stereotypically small-town hippy for the area. Her dad had been born in the Netherlands, but had moved to the United States when he was eighteen, about thirty years ago. My friend went back to the Netherlands ever few years to visit her family, but she never learned Dutch, and never intends to move back there.
My kid-cousin was still viewed by his community as foreign. My friend, on the other hand, is viewed as Dutch through and through.
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This is not to equate either of these experiences to the intensity of racism sometimes experienced in the United States; far from it. Indeed, despite their difference, both my kid-cousin and my friend look Dutch, being pale, tall, and having light-coloured hair. Even I, having only lived in the Netherlands for six months and speaking the language mediocrely, was passably Dutch, as long as you didn’t try and engage me in a long conversation.
But this foreign versus native narrative means that there is still greater prejudice against people of colour in Europe, for the simple fact that skin colour can mark someone as being foreign in the first place. A good example of this comes with the influx of refugees following the crises in the Middle East-North Africa region. These have given a new sense of urgency to this prejudice, a heightened sense of us versus them in Europe. Far right parties and candidates, like Geert Wilders and the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, Marine Le Pen and the National Front in France, and policies such as Brexit are just a few things that are demonstrative of the growing xenophobia, the fear that the other coming in and changing what it means to be Dutch, or French, or British. This sense of national identity has always been there—ask a Brit if he thinks he is the same as a Frenchman, for example—but with more people coming in from areas beyond European borders, extremist candidates are more easily able to prey on the idea of what it means to be native.
And so the situation in Europe is similar to that in America, but subtly different. In America, the sense of the “other” has been within the country, culture clashes that exist within the national borders. In European, the “threat” tends to come from the outside instead, but usually just as unwarranted in their sense of the danger of the other.
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Europe is perhaps not the utopia that my American high school friends had hoped for. But Wilders, Le Pen, Nigel Farage, and the wide array of other far right politicians aren’t Donald Trump; Europeans would never support or elect someone like that. Right?
I was in the Netherlands during the 2016 American election. I was with many others in thinking that there was no way that Trump would win; I was comforted by my little bubble, where I and everyone else I knew had voted for Hillary Clinton. The election results came as a shock, and after a day of numbness, I did as one does and went out to a bar. Eventually, I found myself seated across from a young Dutch man and two Dutch women who were explaining to me, with glee, how happy they were that Trump had won. They talked about how exciting things would be now, and I could only listen in stunned silence that they would be so glad to watch my home country possibly fall to pieces.
Their words were, to say the least, unexpected. The Dutch were supposed to be the ideals of liberalism for America (at least, according to the internet), and there I was, listening to three Dutch people talk about how great and interesting Trump was. In the light of the next day, I tried to justify it to myself; after all, it wasn’t their country that was going to be laid to ruin (things were a bit more dramatic directly after the election). But I was still disappointed and upset, hoping that there had been some sort of mistake, that the internet hadn’t lied to me. Speaking to a more level-headed Dutch friend of mine a few days after this incident, she didn’t share in my sense of panic at what her countrymen had said, though she seemed just as dismayed as I was. She did, however have something in the way of an explanation.
“Dutch people,” she said, “can be pretty fatalistic.”
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That’s not to say that the Dutch would have elected Trump if it was their own country at stake; indeed, I believe that even those three young people in the bar would not had voted for him, if in my shoes. Nor do I believe the majority of the Netherlands would have chosen him as their leader. But this fatalism demonstrates a basic lack of understanding of exactly what Trump represents.
I have yet to meet someone who was racist, or at least deeply prejudiced in some other way, who did not vote for Trump. My sample size of Trump voters is small—as I said, I live in a bit of a liberal bubble, and even those more conservative friends of mine were not willing to vote for him, voting third party or abstaining. I would like to believe that I choose my friends wisely enough for this to be the case. What I cannot choose, on the other hand, is my family.
I have cousins who live in the backwoods of Virginia, flying their Confederate flags with pride, drinking moonshine, and toting guns. They denounce all sorts of people of colour for stealing their jobs, even though I’m fairly certain some of them have never seen a person from Mexico in their life. They’re Trump voters, and they’re racists. But they all live at or below the poverty line, stuck in an area where education is all but inaccessible.
My grandparents on one side of my family also all voted for Trump. They’re different enough from my Virginia cousins that I doubt they’d get along: these grandparents are well-educated, from wealthy families, successful in a way that has allowed them to travel the world. They would never fly a Confederate flag. Their brand of racism that is more quiet, hidden things like “but we have black friends”. But it’s still there, with things like worrying about “thugs”—black men—who in their minds cause the majority of crimes, or refusing to fly because “Pakis” might hijack the plane.
These, of course, are just anecdotes from my own life. I’m sure there are non-racist people who voted for Trump, considering there were 63 million people who voted for him. And it’s not even that Trump is vocally or overtly racist. Indeed, Trump hardly seems to be overtly anything, except for one thing: an attention seeker. Refusing to acknowledge that you’re being supported by racists and the more intense white supremacists may be morally redeeming, but allowing things to escalate to the point of violence will get you attention, a nation and a world waiting with bated breath for your statement. Conflict, as the news media knows all too well, is much more exciting than peace.
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It’s tempting to paint the Charlottesville protesters as people like my Virginia cousins: poor, rural, stereotypical rednecks, without enough education to know any better. Those of us who oppose their actions would like to think of ourselves as the smart ones, but in a measurable sense, this is simply not the case. The truth of is that as information came out about those protesting, that these people are much more like extreme versions of my grandparents. Many have university educations, and good jobs that allowed them to maybe take a Friday off and drive five hours to go to a racist protest. The man who killed a counter protester with his car was from Ohio, more than an eight hour drive from Charlottesville.
The same, to some extent, goes for Trump. Sure, he comes off as somewhat of a buffoon, and in terms of government and policy, appears not to have the slightest idea of what he’s doing. But in terms of attracting attention to himself and having people listen to him and his crazy idea-du-jour, he knows exactly what he’s doing. To what end, I wouldn’t be able to say, but I can’t think of a day since his inauguration that I haven’t heard about him. He should not be underestimated.
I think part of the draw for talking in Europe about the racist activities in the United States and Donald Trump—beyond the fact that, clearly, people do often genuinely care—is that it placates people. Things in the United States are so sensationalised, and the news about it is so widespread. It’s easy to look at people marching in Charlottesville, shouting racist slogans and go “See? The United States is bad. We aren’t that bad over here”. This allows them to ignore or conveniently detract from videos like those of Dutch youth beating Pakistani store owners, or when Europeans complain of immigrants and refugees not because they don’t have the means to support them, but simply because they are foreign. Racism may be alight in America, but prejudice is alive and well in Europe.
Comparing racism in the United States to racism in Europe is, as they say, comparing apples to oranges. But to criticize one or the other without fully acknowledging one’s own… to use another turn of phrase, people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
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So, where does that leave us? America’s run by a man who subtly encourages conflict, which allows racist protesters to march in the streets, loud and proud and with their faces for all the world to see. Europe operates, at the very least, on the suspicion that foreigners are bad, and often unwelcoming to newcomers, particularly if they look different than the “natives”. Far right parties worldwide gain momentum as demographics change and shift. For the sake of some brevity here, I did not touch on Canada, but believe me that the common American mantra of “let’s run away to Canada” is very much not the solution either.
There is no simple solution to all of it. I would love to say that education and improved infrastructure is the answer, that if these people just understood the world better and had more opportunities, they would change their ways. And I do believe that, to some extent: if my Virginia relatives had better education, better opportunities, then they wouldn’t have to find a scapegoat to problems that exist only because of circumstance. And in the Netherlands, people in provinces who have historically felt forgotten by the government feel that now the government is jumping in to help foreigners, while still ignoring their countrymen. While the prejudice and racism that result from these ways of thinking are bad, they are not unchangeable. Nobody is born racists, and racists can be reformed.
But white supremacists like those in Charlottesville are more than just racists. They’re educated, they know the facts, and they must know, to some extent, that they’re wrong. I can understand my Virginia cousins, and the Dutch people who feel like their voices aren’t heard; I may be adamantly against their conclusions, but I can at least see where they’re coming from. But I was talking to an American friend of mine soon after the events in Charlottesville, and I think she summed up my thoughts perfectly:
Can you even imagine waking up and genuinely feeling like you are superior just because of your race?
Improving education and infrastructure, then, are not magic solutions to supremacy. I also do not subscribe to the “punch a Nazi” way of thinking: violence, while it has its place, is not a long-term solution, and I feel like a well-placed punch is likely just giving these people what they want. Banning hate speech and gestures and removing statues of people who stood for racism are helpful, but they’re just a plaster on a wound that needs stitches.
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But the situation isn’t hopeless. Things look bad and there’s no easy fix, but two things are certain: things have gotten better, and things will get better with time. The majority of people in America are not white supremacists, in the same way that the majority of people in the Netherlands don’t attack Pakistanis. It may look as if things are stalling, but if we compare things to 50 years ago, it’s clear that life has been improving, and prejudiced views have been fading. Slow progress is still progress, it’s just less exciting to report on. There’s still a long way to go, but there are many reasons to believe that this is not the end of the world.
Time has a way of automatically fixing certain things. My subtly racist grandparents are old; they won’t live forever, and when they go, their ideas will go with them, abandoned by their children and grandchildren. And the shrinking of the world is not just an impetus for conflict; instead, it’s an integral part of the solution. As people are more often in contact with people different than them in a friendly, casual way, differences between people such as race and nationality become less important. It’s not a fix-all— “but I have black friends” is no excuse to be racist—but it’s harder to be hateful when your kindly neighbour is Syrian, or when your favourite high school teacher is black. It’s a matter of stopping the ideas of racial supremacy before they’re allowed to develop.
Standing up to racism and prejudice are important. Listening to and understanding others is important. And if people who care enough can encorage actual policy, rules that protect the oppressed and help to elevate them, in time, things can—and I believe will—begin to get better.
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For all the negative aspects I have drawn from here, there are plenty of positive instances as well. Two years after I graduated, my generally white high school sponsored its black students to form a Black Student’s Union for the first time. A friend I mentioned above is actually a resident of Charlottesville, and she told me about how they’re looking to make things better, moving forward. Given time, after all, counter protests against supremacists are nearly always bigger than the racist demonstrations themselves. I cling to the fact that Hillary Clinton did, in fact, beat out Donald Trump by nearly 3 million votes. America did not ultimately choose him and what he stands for.
And finally, much of what I have written here about the Netherlands would not have been possible without a class I took while in Amsterdam, with an insightful Dutch professor and many Dutch students to show what the Netherlands is really like (even if they are, indeed, a bit fatalistic). I must admit that I love the Netherlands, and despite its flaws, have every intension of moving back at some point.
If I get across nothing else, it’s that there is no place—not in the Netherlands, not in Europe in general, not in America or anywhere else in the world—that is completely free from prejudice in one form or another. But no situation is unfixable, no place unredeemable. It will take things happening, protests and counter protests and time and exposure, but I want to believe that fundamentally, people can escape the cycle of prejudice.
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One final story about change. The day after Trump’s inauguration, I participated in the Women’s March in Amsterdam. More than 3 000 people showed up, which, while small compared to the US marches, filled the Museumplein in the centre of town. The crowd was from all over—Dutch, Americans abroad, other international visitors who wanted to stand in solidarity. My cousins and some of their friends came up from the south, and we explained to my kid-cousin and the friends’ daughter what was going on, that we were standing in solidarity with people all over the world. They were both thrilled, and even more so when we were given hats to put on.
As we walked towards the American embassy, I talked to the friend who had come up with my cousins, an American woman who had emigrated with her daughter for her husband’s job. She told me about how this was the first time she had been in a protest in a long time, but that her mother used to take her to them all the time when she was a child. I asked her about it, thinking she meant rallies like this one.
No, she said. She would have been counter protesting this march, with the bigots, with her family. In fact, maybe her family still was. But she wasn’t.
“I’m so glad I learned better and that I’m not like that anymore.”
Mariah Weber