Last night I met Marietje Schaake, European Union MP, representative of Dutch party D66. I already knew her politics in some depth because I’ve been following her work in European Parliament for a while. I love her work and the ideas she stands for. If there is one woman politician whom I could see taking on the same center stage role that Femke Halsema had in Dutch politics until she retired a few weeks ago, it would be Marietje Schaake. Smart, switched on, aware of the world at large and supporting different human rights causes. So, anything I say about meeting her will only be positive, because I love the woman.
However, also in attendance was Gerrit Brunink, fraction leader for D66 at the city center’s Council. Meeting Mr. Brunink had to be the highlight of my week. What do I say, my year! I got to fill the “Privileged Guy”, the “Dude defending women’s rights better than you” and the “Smug politician” bingo cards, all in the course of the most unfortunate fifteen minute conversation I had to endure this year so far. It all began when he posed a question about trafficking of women for sex trade. His question was misguided and full of stereotypes, lacking in a nuanced perspective of sex work (you know, the White Knight Syndrome). I mentioned that there were many variables he wasn’t taking into account speaking of “trafficked women” as a homogeneous group and that the reality was much more complex than the question he was posing. He wasn’t happy that I challenged. He pretended not to understand me and did a brief eyeroll. I let it go because it was a round table so I didn’t feel good getting attention on myself. Still, when the round table was over, he decided to come over and give me a lesson. And what a lesson it was! He shut me down because I didn’t use the correct terminology (in Dutch, he felt his duty to inform me, there is not such a thing as “human trafficking”, instead, the proper wording to use is “human trade”). He also determined that, since I didn’t use the approved word in the Dutch language, I am totally ignorant of the issue at hand and he was going to teach me. He went on an extensive solo speech talking about “the poor women from small villages in Hungary”, the rights of sex workers and the epidemic of criminality they cause. All of this master moment, while preventing me from saying anything because he couldn’t figure out my difficult accent and odd choice of Dutch words to speak about the subject at hand.
And this, this is how you shut minorities out of the debate. That a White, native Dutch politician feels it is his duty to close all dialogue because he doesn’t approve of the choice of words used, that he, an authority, a democratically elected member of City Council will lecture a woman (me), from a minority group who doesn’t speak the language in which he, as a representative of an institution approves of, is how you disenfranchise entire groups of people. This is the way in which you make a democracy imperfect and how you make sure some never sit at the table as equals.
Here is the thing: I could have decided, right at that moment, to level the playing field and only debate him in English. I have the precision of industrial machinery when debating in English. It is the language I am, arguably, the most fluent in. However, I play by the rules of the game and debate, politically, in the official language of Dutch democracy. And this is the mechanism in which people get shut down: if you debate in a language other than the official one, you will not be heard because you are a non integrated foreigner. If you do debate in the official language, you will be shut down as ignorant for not using the approved terminology. The end result is the same: you are left out and your voice is ignored, your points dismissed beforehand due to lack of jargon, or “strange accent” or lack of knowledge of specific terms.
I contend that this kind of institutionalized racism is much more dangerous than the open, loud one that populist politicians engage in. Because it is this kind of subtle form of discrimination, the one that puts people down, “in their place”, at the bottom of the ladder, shutting them up so that their issues are never heard. It is not by loudly declaring someone “less than” (which few would dare do in public, anyway), but by making them feel “less than” so that they do not challenge, protest or complain too much. I have carved my own spaces (for instance, through my writings), where I do not need permission from anyone to put my ideas out there, but what about those who haven’t been able to do so? What about those who depend on institutions to afford them those spaces? Sadly, those will have to fight tooth and nails to be heard, and mostly, have to navigate a system that insists on narratives that highlight their intellectual inferiority, demanding that they “educate themselves” so that they can be heard. Because otherwise, representatives of the political class will make sure we all know whose voices matter and whose voices speak the proper language.
For the past decade and a half I have been making all my content available for free (and never behind a paywall) as an ongoing practice of ephemeral publishing. This site is no exception. If you wish to help offset my labor costs, you can donate on Paypal or you can subscribe to Patreon where I will not be putting my posts behind a lock but you'd be helping me continue making this work available for everyone. Thank you. Follow me on Twitter for new post updates.