By Rochelle Larkin
Travel Writer, New York, N.Y.
Geographically, the Netherlands,
usually called Holland, the name of its largest provinces, sits in northeastern Europe.
Socially, it stands, where the United States should be, and should have been,
a long time ago. For of all the nations of the world, Holland has the best
record in its racial relations. This sturdy society has integrated itself
with almost no strife, let alone violence, or the vocal outpourings of racial
hatred that have marked the post-colonial history of much of Europe.
Given Holland's long history of colonialism, this is even more
surprising. The Dutch sent their ships around the world from as early as the
seventeenth century, claiming lands and peoples as widely separated as
Brazil, New York (then New Amsterdam), the Caribbean, and southeast Asia.
Dutch Boers settled South Africa, still the worst vestige of the old world
order. There were no good colonialists - that's a contradiction in terms -
and by and large the Dutch were no better or worse than the other nations
that carved up continents at their will. In fact, in Indonesia, where the
Dutch held sway for over three hundred years and independence was only
achieved after bloody and protracted rebellion, people will tell you that
they fared better under the Japanese occupation of World War than they had under the Dutch.
Yet, in the aftermath of independence and ever since, many Indonesians
emigrated to the former mother country. This was the first sizable influx of
non-Europeans to Holland.
Their integration was accomplished with relative ease. With the
independence of Surinam, formerly called Dutch Guiana, in 1975, and even
earlier, many Surinamese came to Holland to work or study. Many of these
former South Americans, of African and Indian ancestry, have stayed.
Interestingly, it is not only the great port cities like Amsterdam and
Rotterdam or other urban centers that have become the homes of choice for
these arrivals. Families have settled in small towns and villages and
throughout the neat and beautiful Dutch countryside. Many American blacks,
artists and musicians among them,
are also finding the good life in this relatively small, stable country.
And all of this has been
accomplished without the hardship and discrimination that gave rise to the
civil rights movement in the United States. There has been no need for the
demonstrations or endless campaigning for legislation that have gained the
hard fought for improvements that are still not enough to achieve equality in
this biggest democracy on earth. Nor has Holland known the bloody rioting
that rocked Brixton, in its near neighbor, England. Or the rise of the
radical right, avowedly racist and anti-Algerian, that has become a
frighteningly potent force in another neighbor, France.
Thus, three of the most powerful nations in the world
have needed everything from complex new legislation to armed protection for its own citizens,
to put them on a par with their lighter-skinned fellowcountrymen. And,
in each of them, the battles are
still raging for fair treatment, equal opportunity, and the rights that
every human being should be able to take for granted.
Why Holland? How has it happened
so easily, so naturally here? The answers rise from two sources: the history
and the people.
The Dutch nation unified itself
in the overthrow of a tyrant many centuries ago and has had little use for
overarching authority ever since. They fought hard and stubbornly to drive
out the Spanish after being conquered by them and subjected once more to the
dictates of an absolute monarchy. Even when the newly strong independent
Holland was colonizing other parts of the world, there was a tradition of
freedom and tolerance at home. Philosophers and thinkers who were forbidden
to express their ideas in their native countries could speak and publish in
Holland. Even after the socalled Golden Age of the seventeenth century,
when for a while it was the leading poor in the world, Holland drew back to
its relative size and influence but never relinquished its ideals of freedom
and democracy for everyone within its borders. More recent history made these
ideals even more precious to the Dutch.
When Hitler's armies overran
Holand, the national nightmare devastated the country completely. Over eight percent
of Dutch Jews were killed in German concentration camps. Dutch patriots,
freethinkers, statesmen, and community leaders were murdered. Industry and
agriculture were raped and ruined. When the war was finally ended, the country
had to rebuild completely. One of the first items to be reborn was the already
liberal Dutch constitution. By 1948, the new national document was in place.
Its very construction tells why the Dutch don't need civil rights laws. Its
very first article bans discrimination of
any kind, in any form, in any area whatsoever. It is a ringing declaration that
can stand as an example to any society in the world.
Additionally, any citizen who feels he or she has been
victimized by a discriminatory act has recourse to all the international and
European Council human rights treaties. For unlike many places where the
high-flying ideals of such documents are mere rhetoric, all these treaties have
direct effect on Dutch law. This applies to anyone, citizen or not, living in
the Netherlands.
Yet, all the legislation in any society is only as
effective as its people's belief in it. Otherwise, it's merely paper, as our
own history of evasions, loopholes, and the whole sorry story of Jim Crow proves.
It is with people, not only institutions, that the fiber of a society is
woven; it is in day-to-day living encounters that the fabric is seen and
tested. It is in the hearts and minds and determination of the Dutch people
that equality is insisted upon.
The shock of Nazism brought the Dutch to their brand of
"never again." Their suffering under totalitarianism made them demand
of their government recognition of the rights of everyone, and of themselves
the responsibility to uphold those rights. This thinking extended to every
aspect of human rights and welfare. Economically, the costs are very high, but
the Dutch are determined to maintain the humanistic society they have built.
You see it on the faces, black and white; in the crowded
but unthreatening streets; in the farms and gardens of a country that's largely
reclaimed itself from the sea (but that's another story!); in the ongoing and
progressive ideas that reach ahead to the future. Until late in this century,
this was a very homogeneous society: European, nordic, blond. Today, Holland is
still homogeneous but in a different way: the gene pool and the population
stock have diversified, but the ideals of the society are remarkably alike for
all, and it is in this determination of the rights and freedoms of all that the
Dutch are united, and can count themselves as the citizens of another kind of
Golden Age - the one that brings freedom and equality to all its people.
This small nation of 14 million, far fewer than the
population of African-Americans in the United States, has a lot to teach us. It is a lesson that
America, and many other countries, would do well to learn. It's also a place
that would do us well to visit. Walk the streets of Amsterdam and the Hague and
experience the welcoming feeling. See the quiet countryside, where flowers
bloom in every window and almost everyone speaks English and everyone makes you
feel at home. This is how it should be. Renew yourself in it and come back with
that energy to resume the fight we're still fighting. Over here.
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