Was listening to The American Life podcast 600 (Will I Know Anyone at This Party?) and despite everything that has happened lately still found myself shocked at the outward xenophobia and latent racism that 'regular and kind' Minnesotan people displayed in their discussion on Somalian immigration. Most shockingly maybe when the people present at the town hall were presented with one of the most logical and beautiful statements I've ever heard by representative Tom Emmer and yet they still could not grasp a wider, less selfish perspective;
Now racism and xenophobia are not new things, the 'us against them' attitude is culturally as old as human societies itself. For me personally it seemed for a while that after the horrors of WWII, the end of racial segregation through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the progressive purple period of the 90's in the Netherlands, the west was trying to tackle and get beyond the issues of racism and xenophobia. There were always many signs on the wall that we hadn't even nearly come to solving these issues but it seemed like the world was trying to move forwards somehow. In Holland this started to change around 2002 with increasing fear of the Islam becoming a political issue. Yet it's only been in the past few years that things have really come to an international rise with blatant racism and xenophobia coming out of the shadows into the foreground. In my own country the Netherlands this really started coming to the fore clearly starting with the 2011 protests against our Zwarte Piet blackface tradition. I'm taking this point in time over earlier political happenings such as the rise of Pim Fortuyn (a murdered politician that advocated a stop to the Islamization of the Netherlands) in 2001 and the subsequent rise of Geert Wilders (who has been one of the most outspoken politicians internationally against the Islam and Islamic immigration) from 2004 onward because of the impact of the societal debate.
Despite the Netherlands having been in a serious political debate around the issue Islamic migration with more and more voters showing a willingness to vote for a xenophobic and Islamophobic since 2002 it was only really in 2011 through the discussion around the ethics of our black face traditions that the latent racism and xenophobia of the autochthonous white population started becoming more crystallized and more publicly vocalized across the entire country. This was happening on both sides, anti-Zwarte Piet protesters started being very vocal in calling out the dutch population to their latent racism while, ironically, the pro-Zwarte Piet people started expressing more vocally their insensitivity to racism and angst against multicultural change. The discussion led over the years to a stronger and harder divide between both sides of the debate to the point where people started to become unwilling to even discuss it any further since no side was willing to give in and it started to separate friends from friends and neighbors from neighbors. I experienced this myself first hand at my last work place where I was the only person critical of the black face tradition yet I was not appreciated to vocalize my criticism as people didn't want the debate to ruin the atmosphere at work and when I would speak up I would have the entire office pounding down on me for my opinions in a way that did actually ruin the atmosphere at work. I wasn't even calling people out for being racist or xenophobic, I was simply trying to adres certain historically cultural racist elements of society but that itself was already too sensitive a subject.
Then 2015/2016 came and Brexit happened in the UK and Trump happened in the US. Both political movements that focus on anti-migration (of non-whites) and Islamophobia (thus racist and xenophobic by nature) which very much mirror what has been happening in the Netherlands over the past decade. Coincidentally or not, and I'm not trying to Godwin here, all three leading figures of these movements are blond haired, blue eyed, white people (Geert Wilders, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump). And these movements are taking, if not a majority (Brexit) almost a majority (Trump, Wilders) of the popular vote in these countries. People are getting more and more comfortable it seems with publicly stating their racist and xenophobic tendencies yet meanwhile get also more and more upset when called out for being racist or xenophobic. In the Zwarte Piet discussion in Holland this became a big part of the whole debate, that according to the cultural majority it was not justified to call out the whole population for their latent persistent cultural issues around racism which were born out of a colonization period when white males took over the world. Yet that is clearly still where we are at the moment and the electoral map of the 2016 USA vote shows very clearly that it was still up to white men Trump would be elected by a landslide.
As an anthropologist I've been confronted in my academical studies time and time again with the consequences of the historical period of European, white male, colonization of the non-western world. For many centuries the white men where the most powerful cultural group on the entire planet, and they made no excuse or secret in wanting to subjugate and assimilate any other society to the western (judeo-christian) cultural ways. Naturally this created resistance from local cultures, and nowhere has that resistance been as strong as within the Islamic world. Yet what has been so harrowing is the unwillingness of the western, while male dominated society, to relinquish this colonial power they established and share in a true multicultural world view. The eurocentric way of viewing (in an automatic, latent, subconscious manner) is still very strongly established in western cultures, which has become so poignant in the dutch black face debate where people fail to see beyond their own established traditions and sense of cultural exceptionalism that overrides their ability to see things in a more global multicultural humanist point of view.
Are we seeing the last stand of the white man desperately trying to defend it's colonial empire against the ever continuing process of cultural globalization? Though it seems that unlike in Britain the fear and xenophobia won't win out tomorrow for Trump, we are still talking about roughly over 40% of the population in America and many European countries that have become more united and vocal than ever before trying to protect the western empire against the dangerous forces from outside. Reverting increasingly to a colonial eurocentric way of dealing with the modern world, rather than a progressive humanistic look at uniting cultures and sharing in the globalized world.
Can we even talk about latent racism and xenophobia in large chunks of western culture? Is it even something that can be overcome in a culture, since lets be fair China's 1,4 billion population has issues with the exact same things also. Let me be the first to admit that I have had to overcome innate cultural racist and xenophobic world views and to this day, despite a progressive social science academic education and being a member on this progressive forum for a long time, I still have to confront myself with subconscious blindspots. It wasn't until the protests on the black face tradition of Zwarte Piet that I understood myself that I have had a blind spot to this form of cultural insensitivity for my entire life. Maybe I can't expect others to live up to the same level of cultural self criticism in confronting habitual elements of society.
Thoughts anyone?
Now racism and xenophobia are not new things, the 'us against them' attitude is culturally as old as human societies itself. For me personally it seemed for a while that after the horrors of WWII, the end of racial segregation through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the progressive purple period of the 90's in the Netherlands, the west was trying to tackle and get beyond the issues of racism and xenophobia. There were always many signs on the wall that we hadn't even nearly come to solving these issues but it seemed like the world was trying to move forwards somehow. In Holland this started to change around 2002 with increasing fear of the Islam becoming a political issue. Yet it's only been in the past few years that things have really come to an international rise with blatant racism and xenophobia coming out of the shadows into the foreground. In my own country the Netherlands this really started coming to the fore clearly starting with the 2011 protests against our Zwarte Piet blackface tradition. I'm taking this point in time over earlier political happenings such as the rise of Pim Fortuyn (a murdered politician that advocated a stop to the Islamization of the Netherlands) in 2001 and the subsequent rise of Geert Wilders (who has been one of the most outspoken politicians internationally against the Islam and Islamic immigration) from 2004 onward because of the impact of the societal debate.
Despite the Netherlands having been in a serious political debate around the issue Islamic migration with more and more voters showing a willingness to vote for a xenophobic and Islamophobic since 2002 it was only really in 2011 through the discussion around the ethics of our black face traditions that the latent racism and xenophobia of the autochthonous white population started becoming more crystallized and more publicly vocalized across the entire country. This was happening on both sides, anti-Zwarte Piet protesters started being very vocal in calling out the dutch population to their latent racism while, ironically, the pro-Zwarte Piet people started expressing more vocally their insensitivity to racism and angst against multicultural change. The discussion led over the years to a stronger and harder divide between both sides of the debate to the point where people started to become unwilling to even discuss it any further since no side was willing to give in and it started to separate friends from friends and neighbors from neighbors. I experienced this myself first hand at my last work place where I was the only person critical of the black face tradition yet I was not appreciated to vocalize my criticism as people didn't want the debate to ruin the atmosphere at work and when I would speak up I would have the entire office pounding down on me for my opinions in a way that did actually ruin the atmosphere at work. I wasn't even calling people out for being racist or xenophobic, I was simply trying to adres certain historically cultural racist elements of society but that itself was already too sensitive a subject.
Then 2015/2016 came and Brexit happened in the UK and Trump happened in the US. Both political movements that focus on anti-migration (of non-whites) and Islamophobia (thus racist and xenophobic by nature) which very much mirror what has been happening in the Netherlands over the past decade. Coincidentally or not, and I'm not trying to Godwin here, all three leading figures of these movements are blond haired, blue eyed, white people (Geert Wilders, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump). And these movements are taking, if not a majority (Brexit) almost a majority (Trump, Wilders) of the popular vote in these countries. People are getting more and more comfortable it seems with publicly stating their racist and xenophobic tendencies yet meanwhile get also more and more upset when called out for being racist or xenophobic. In the Zwarte Piet discussion in Holland this became a big part of the whole debate, that according to the cultural majority it was not justified to call out the whole population for their latent persistent cultural issues around racism which were born out of a colonization period when white males took over the world. Yet that is clearly still where we are at the moment and the electoral map of the 2016 USA vote shows very clearly that it was still up to white men Trump would be elected by a landslide.
As an anthropologist I've been confronted in my academical studies time and time again with the consequences of the historical period of European, white male, colonization of the non-western world. For many centuries the white men where the most powerful cultural group on the entire planet, and they made no excuse or secret in wanting to subjugate and assimilate any other society to the western (judeo-christian) cultural ways. Naturally this created resistance from local cultures, and nowhere has that resistance been as strong as within the Islamic world. Yet what has been so harrowing is the unwillingness of the western, while male dominated society, to relinquish this colonial power they established and share in a true multicultural world view. The eurocentric way of viewing (in an automatic, latent, subconscious manner) is still very strongly established in western cultures, which has become so poignant in the dutch black face debate where people fail to see beyond their own established traditions and sense of cultural exceptionalism that overrides their ability to see things in a more global multicultural humanist point of view.
Are we seeing the last stand of the white man desperately trying to defend it's colonial empire against the ever continuing process of cultural globalization? Though it seems that unlike in Britain the fear and xenophobia won't win out tomorrow for Trump, we are still talking about roughly over 40% of the population in America and many European countries that have become more united and vocal than ever before trying to protect the western empire against the dangerous forces from outside. Reverting increasingly to a colonial eurocentric way of dealing with the modern world, rather than a progressive humanistic look at uniting cultures and sharing in the globalized world.
Can we even talk about latent racism and xenophobia in large chunks of western culture? Is it even something that can be overcome in a culture, since lets be fair China's 1,4 billion population has issues with the exact same things also. Let me be the first to admit that I have had to overcome innate cultural racist and xenophobic world views and to this day, despite a progressive social science academic education and being a member on this progressive forum for a long time, I still have to confront myself with subconscious blindspots. It wasn't until the protests on the black face tradition of Zwarte Piet that I understood myself that I have had a blind spot to this form of cultural insensitivity for my entire life. Maybe I can't expect others to live up to the same level of cultural self criticism in confronting habitual elements of society.
Thoughts anyone?
