16 generations of misinformation and misdirection

I don’t wax lyrical on emancipation and why July 1st should be commemorated as a day of freedom. Slavery lasted for ten generations and it ended 6 generations ago, but we’re not celebrating achieving freedom; we’re celebrating the victory of disinformation and misdirection.

Does the celebration ever look beyond slavery? To what Black people were before they were enslaved?

Does it celebrate the victories of Black people during slavery? Their achievements after slavery? Does it consider that Black people have always been the world’s moral compass? How about Their contributions? And how the world would be a much better place if we stop racism against Black people and other people of color?

Let’s first look at slavery

Consider that people fled the plantations for a reason. And that many people didn’t survive the plantations. What does all of this tell you about the conditions on the plantations? What does it tell you about the treatment the enslaved endured? It was pure hell!

It started in Africa, in the northern parts of Ghana, in Senegal, Mali and so on, where raiders would go around to catch people and march them to forts in the south, where European colonizers were waiting to buy them.  The Europeans had come with guns and money to jumpstart this trade; it was a tricky demand and supply market and the Africans were given no choice but to supply. They built forts along the entire west coast of Africa, where they would conduct their human trade. I visited a spot in northern Ghana where they had a slave market, in Pikoro, all the way near the border with Burkina Faso. You can still see where they would chain people to trees. The holes carved in the rocks from which people would eat. Graves of captured people that died there. Places where the raiders would herd people like cattle, before they would march them to the coast, hundreds of miles away, through forests and barren land. On foot. And once they reached the Forts they would be branded with the mark of the European company that purchased them. Then they were dumped in dungeons, and often these were located under the church of the fort, right below where the racists were praising their god on Sunday. Dozens of people were cramped together in these dark dungeons, sometimes for weeks, months. Every so often the Governor would select one of the women from the dungeon to be cleaned up and brought to his chambers. So only if these women were lucky enough to be chosen to be raped, would they be let out. It was pitchdark in these dungeons. Food and water were thrown to them from a hole in the wall. It mixed with poop, vomit and urine and became a nasty, soggy mush on the floor, in which the captured Africans stood all day, where they ate and where they slept. This is where they lived ... This soggy mush was more than a foot high. Imagine the rats. Imagine being there in that dungeon for months, with only a sliver of sunlight coming in and hardly any fresh air. The person next to you has been dead for days but you don't know it because the dungeon stinks so bad that it drowns out the smell of a rotting corpse. And think about it: at this time their ultimate slavery fate hadn't even begun yet. They still awaited to be shipped away to Suriname, the US, to the Caribbean … On board the slave ships it was inhumane and brutal. People were stacked on top of each other below deck, on wooden planks, chained, in dark, unsanitary, and suffocating conditions. Many did not survive the voyage, and their bodies were just thrown overboard like waste. Many jumped overboard because they would rather die than become slaves. There’s reports that sharks would trail slaveships to feast on the bodies of stolen people. When the ship docked in the colonies, the kidnapped Africans would be sold at auction to the highest bidder. And then they would be branded again by the white man who now owned them by law. They were his property, to do with as he liked. All they were there for was to work to make him rich. To make the Netherlands rich. Work! And then die.

This lasted from the 1600’s until July 1st 1863; more than 250 years. That’s at least 10 generations of people who were born and raised in a system that made them inferior by law. The people who I was just telling you about, those that were stolen from the north, marched to the south, dumped in dungeons and shipped away from Africa? They were the first generation.

When I tell these stories, there will always be someone who will remark that there has always been slavery. That white people have been enslaved too.

That’s true, but I will tell you that the chattel slavery that we’re referring to here was different. People literally had no rights, no autonomy. They could not choose where they lived, they could not choose their own names or the names of their children. They could not marry. They were not allowed to wear shoes or ride horses. They could be sold at any time! The Christian religion that was forced upon them, was watered down so they would believe that being a slave was their fate.

The British colonizers had divized a slave bible in which passages were omitted that could incite rebellion. Among the passages missing is this one: “yay are all one in Christ Jesus”. They did leave the passage in that says “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters.”

Now let me be clear: this bible was used in the US, but there is evidence that the Moravians who were brought in to christen the enslaved in Suriname, used a similar practice to keep the enslaved docile. There was this Moravian pastor in Suriname called Otto Tank, who championed for better treatment of the enslaved, but at the same time didn’t think they should be freed. There’s a school named after this dude in Suriname.

This is the type of psychology they used to convince the enslaved to accept their fate. And it gets even worse.

There was a white doctor in the US who diagnosed that enslaved Black people who ran away from the plantations, suffered from an illness he called drapetamonia. A total fabrication, to make white people believe they were justified in their treatment of Black people.

And if the enslaved who ran away were caught, they could be killed; their feet or their ears, could be cut off.

There are at least two stories I know of women whose breasts were cut off.

The story of One Titty Lokhay in St. Maarten whose owner cut off her breast, because she kept running away. He threatened her that he would cut off her other breast if she ran away once more. So she ran away again, never to be caught again. There’s a statue of Lokhay on the island. And the story of Alida in Suriname, whose mistress cut off her left breast because her husband loved to rape Alida. And then the wife served the husband Alida’s breast for dinner. This same missus, by the way. The story goes that one day they were on a boat and then an African child started crying. The missus took the baby from its mother and held the child under water until it was quiet …

Note that I used the word rape!. It was not love. White men could rape the enslaved women at will and if children came out of this intercourse, these children were enslaved by default. People had no value, except for what they could earn.

And this took place for ten generations. Ten generations of people were dehumanized, taken apart and brainwashed. By the time abolition came around, people knew little anymore of who they once were.

This is the proclamation that the Governor of Suriname issued in October 1862, in which he informs the enslaved Africans that they would be free as of July 1.

“I sincerely congratulate you on the blessing bestowed upon you by the King's paternal care; you may sincerely rejoice in it, but you must also prove yourself worthy of the privilege of freedom.

WORTHY OF THE PRIVILIGE OF FREEDOM!

The governor, his name was Van Lansberge, made it a point to stress to the Black people that it was His King Willem III who had been gracious enough to end their bondage and that he had done so with a simple stroke of his pen.

And people believed it. On the day they would be freed, Black people were singing a song, praising the king of the country that held them in bondage for centuries. They sang this in churches like a hymn. For months, Missionaries had carefully rehearsed these songs with the enslaved. These types of songs are still sung in church.

Yes, 10 generations of brainwashing will have you praising the people who once enslaved you, in hymns. The disinformation was conducted like a surgical symphony.

Imagine Jewish children praising Hitler as their hero.

The truth is: Willem the Thurd had little to do with the actual abolition. Nowhere in the archives are there any indications that he cared about the fate of the Africans. Contrary, the archives show that he was reluctant to sign the abolition law, because ending slavery could hurt the interest of the elite that had invested heavily in the colonies.

And when the king eventually did sign the law in September 1862 he was actually vacationing in Wiesbaden in Germany. But if you believe the misinformation that is consistent even today, you will believe that Willem truly cared. That he signed the law during a solemn ceremony.

Now!

It is important to know that the debates in Parliament, to abolish slavery, started maybe 30 years before 1863. England had abolished slavery in 1833 and France did so in 1848, so abolitionists started calling on the Dutch Government to follow suit.

There were the economic arguments; plantations in the colonies were earning less, partially because of industrialization.

In addition, while there were less and less Africans being born in the colonies, the transatlantic trade in Africans had been outlawed in 1814.

The plantations needed new workers, but they couldn’t ship in free labor anymore, so they were considering indentured servants … but they could only bring these if there was no more slavery. Otherwise, the servants would obviously not come. 

Also, abolitionists argued that slavery was below kingdom standards. “Slaves” were considered wild people, and the Netherlands needed to be cured of the African backwardness and barbarism in its colonies.

But the calls for abolitions were immediately met with resistance.

Up to five motions to abolish slavery were submitted to parliament between 1853 and 1861, but all were wiped off the table. Anti-abolition Parliamentarians argued that the enslaved were not ready to handle freedom; they were not civilized enough; they would become vagrants and would not work. Mothers would not take care of their children, the elderly and the challenged people in their community.

People really twisted logic into knots trying to justify owning other people. People argued that emancipation was a dream of the liberals to go against “the rules of the almighty god”.

But slowly but surely the abolition mindset gained field. And finally in 1862 the law to abolish slavery was passed in Parliament. Slavery would be abolished on July 1^st 1863.

A quick remark about the choice of July 1st for Emancipation Day. That day was not chosen at random, don’t be fooled. Seasonally, July is not the best time for farming in Suriname, so slavers would always allow their people a couple of days off in July. The Africans lived toward this period of leisure and they would use it for their own festivities. That is why the Dutch government decided to let Emancipation day coincide with the period when Black people were already partying. Do You see the tactics they used to smooth over their disinformation?

So when emancipation day came and went, the colonists allowed the Africans five days of partying and churchgoing and so on. But on July 6 the freed Africans had to report back to work on the plantation. Emancipation day was not the end of the marginalization.

Firstly, it were not the enslaved people who received compensation for their free labor, but the plantation owners for letting go of their property. 300 guilders per enslaved person. So a slaver, who owned a few hundreds of people, was wealthy in an instant.

Another quick anecdote here. England had also compensated the slavers and not the enslaved. And to pay this money, the Brits loaned 20 million pounds from the Treasury, that taxpayers only paid back in full in 2015! Think about that; anyone who paid taxes in England until 2015, paid to make people rich who owned people. … any Black person who paid taxes in the UK until 2015 … their money was spent to pay back a loan that made racists rich …..  , who owned Black people by law!

Now to what happened after emancipation. Back to Suriname in 1863.

People weren’t free immediately after the abolition of slavery. The Dutch instituted Staatstoezicht, state supervision. The freed people were policed and monitored, the same way you would monitor an unstable child. If they would dare to stay away from work on the plantations, they could be locked up!

Staatstoezicht was intended to re-form the freed African people along western lines.

To make them white people, in a world that would forever make sure they knew they were not white people.

They were given European names, they were not allowed to speak Sranan, the language they created during slavery and they could not practice their African religions. In fact, the Afrocentric religion Winti that the enslaved Africans had created in Suriname, was forbidden until the early 20th century.

Staatstoezicht kept people in bondage for ten years. And this is why some Surinamese people do not accept 1863 as the year that slavery ended. They count 1873 as the year to commemorate; so this year, they say, it’s not 162 years, but 152 years ago.

I do not join in that discussion. It’s a waste of time. For one, like I just mentioned: Whether you commemorate 63 or 73, you’re commemorating someone else’s achievement.

Secondly Staatstoezicht was not just meant to keep the people enslaved for ten more years; it was meant to further force them into a mold that fit society. Why didn’t they use those ten years to help Black people find out who they once were? What their ancestors had achieved before European colonization? That never happened, even up until today. Because when you learn that you started from slavery, then you'll be happy with what you have achieved since slavery. I had an argument with a Black man once, who was convinced that Africa had no history before the Europeans arrived there. (But) When you know that slavery was only a temporary drop from the top, then you'll realize that what you've achieved so far ain’t nothing yet.

The slavers knew what they were doing. The misdirection was surgical.

The third reason I don’t join in the discussion, is because of the island of St. Maarten. St. Maarten has a Dutch side and a French side. The Dutch side was forced to finish slavery earlier than 1863, because when the French abolished slavery in 1848, enslaved people would just cross the border to the French side and be free! There has always been freedom. Think about the Maroons who were free in the hinterland of Suriname.

So again, why are Black people celebrating July 1^st? Why are we having these trivial discussions? It’s hard to change the brainwashing. The slavers did a superb job of brainwashing people into being grateful with scraps.

But okay. After slavery finally ended somehow Black people rose from the ashes. They learned how to speak the best Dutch, they would go on to become teachers and civil servants, but don’t forget, they didn’t receive any backpay for their enslavement. Everybody else had received money. A new disadvantage, monetary, and that still has its toll today.

You must also know that during the colonial years, slavery was kept far away from the Netherlands, so People here hardly knew what was happening in the colonies. And then, on top of that, after slavery ended, the Dutch simply swept it under the rug.

We’re now about six generations further and even up until today, slavery and the role the Netherlands played in it, are hardly mentioned in schoolbooks. Instead, there are still textbooks filled with stereotypical colonial terminology. You will regularly still find schoolbooks that speak of Europeans “discovering countries” like there were no people already living there? The condescension is taught in school!

There are still monuments all over that honor megalomaniacs who enslaved people and pillaged countries in the name of the kingdom. The 18th century is still called “the Golden Era”; was it golden for the enslaved?

When I was growing up, people could tell Black people to know their place and to act according to their skin color. I have  been told that: “gedraag je naar je kleur!” People were locked up and even killed because they dared to demand humane treatment for themselves. And that was normal. 

Comic books that I read as a boy, had Black people with BLACKBLACK skin and red lips and bones sticking through their hair and noses. And that was normal! The self-hate was taught early on through what we were given to read! Nobody knew any better. Ignorance is bliss. We’re supposed to know better now.

But still last year I was taking a philosophy course with a renowned institute here and the textbook called me the n-word.

That’s because the Netherlands didn’t properly deal with its slavery past. Black people had been freed, but they were not restored. Like I said they were turned into white people in a world that would forever tell them that they were not white people. That’s why some white people still consider themselves superior to Black people. That’s why some Black people will obstinately play zwarte piet. Call themselves the n-word. Or say things like “our n-word brothers in Africa sold us.” That’s why Black people celebrate their slavers’ achievements on July 1st. Because school didn’t teach the entire story. You could almost admire the smoothness of the misdirection. We have not come to terms with the reality of our present that is influenced by our slavery past. This is why racism persists!

It’s this ignorance that resulted in a report in 2020, that said that 50% of Dutch people proudly proclaim a few years ago that they were proud of their colonial history. Why else do you think many white Dutch people are still convinced that their zwarte piet fun is more important than the pain that Black people tell them they feel with its racism? Because they really believe it! “It doesn’t hurt you because I am not trying to hurt you!” Or “oh, it’s so long ago! You weren't there. I wasn't there. Get over it." That’s so dismissive.

I have been told that I am better off because of slavery because I was born in Suriname, otherwise I would have been born in Africa! The most prominent writer from Suriname said this! That’s what you get from 16 generations of disinformation. From 16 generations of misdirection and misinformation. 

But honestly: the past ten years have seen a lot of good developments, especially after Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. For instance two years ago the king issued apologies for the role the Netherlands played in slavery. He also asked for forgiveness. That was a beautiful, important step and since then more things have happened. You can now change your name for free if it was related to slavery. 

But it’s still superficial. We still have a government cabinet that fell just over a month ago, over racist behavior toward refugees and migrants. In December there will still be zwarte piet. There are still children who get lower study advice because they are of African descent. And it’s not coincidental; it’s part of a systemic government culture. There’s research that has shown that teachers monitor Black boys more than they monitor white boys.

There are still Black people who will not be invited for job interviews, because of their skin color or their name or their hair or their head scarf. There are Black people who will not apply for a job because they know they will not be hired, even when they’re overqualified. Some Black people have been beaten down by the system so often that they no longer believe, that they have the right to do whatever they want ,and go wherever they want to go, because they know it doesn’t make any sense to do it. There are still schoolbooks with racist terminology. There is still racism in the law. There is still medical apartheid that teaches doctors that Black people have a higher pain threshold than white people.

St. Maarten deals with hurricanes every year, that cause severe flooding. Meanwhile, here in the Netherlands, we have the best flood management systems in the world! We literally live below sea-level. Why didn’t we help put similar systems in place in our overseas territories? In 2017, hurricane Irma demolished thousands of people’s houses in St. Maarten. And when these people came here they were called refugees. How the hell can you be a refugee here when you have a Dutch passport?

So is Keti Koti really a celebration of freedom that we have achieved? Did we truly deal with the disadvantage that has been caused by colonialism?

Colonialism is like a big gaping hole that you dug in your neighbor’s yard, because you really thought that it was your yard. And when you realize that it wasn’t yours, do you not close it? Or do you leave it open for your neighbor to trip and fall into it? Do you throw him a party while the hole is still agape?

Are former colonizers fixing the extractive relationships that they have with countries that they plundered? Is Congo reaping all benefits from its cobalt? Are we giving Ghanaian farmers fair pay for their cocoa? Why is Africa a dumping ground for European toxic waste?

Are we giving the Caribbean islands all the support they need or are we criticizing them for trying to stand on their own feet?

Geert Wilders, the leader of PVV –the governing party-, wanted to sell the islands to the highest bidder. Instead of fixing the problem the Netherlands created, he wants to get rid of the problem the Netherlands created.

Two months ago right wing parliamentarian Thierry Baudet remarked IN PARLIAMENT that the Netherlands should go back to colonialism. That we should send Dutch people to take over the islands. Baudett spouted this backward neo-colonial nonsense a few weeks ago!

So nah, we are not yet at that spot where I want to join in anyone’s celebration.  Not only is it not my party, but it’s also not time for a party yet.

 

Has anything really changed?

I often think of what the Netherlands did to Suriname; first they turned the country into a slave nation, then they drained it of its resources. Then they tricked it into accepting a cheap independence, without making sure that all conditions were in place for the country to be successful. They set Suriname up to fail and then they steadily criticize it for failing.  

A few years ago, former Foreign Affairs Minister Stef Blok called Suriname a failed state. He criticized the country, because people vote along ethnic lines. Does he not realize that those ethnic lines were purposely laid by the Netherlands during colonial times? And btw don’t people here vote ethnically?

A few months ago a white Dutch man told me that the borders in Africa restrict movement and business in Africa. He was right, but still ignorant, because obviously, he does not know that borders in Africa were set right here in Europe in 1884, during the Berlin Conference. 14 European nations just got together in Germany and divided Africa up. No African nation was present at that meeting.

Before European meddling, Africa had complex kingdoms and ethnic societies, many of them with historical rivalries. These new borders the Europeans made, simply ignored this, which has led to ethnic conflicts, power imbalances, and civil wars.  The Colonial borders are one of the key historical causes of political instability in Africa today. It’s a divide and rule game from which Europe benefits even today!

And people don’t see it. We have accepted as a norm, that system that was created to keep the rich rich and the poor poor. It all has to do with greed.

This is not just about the Netherlands I must stress. This is also not just about Keti Koti. What I’m talking about here, is misdirection through miseducation. I’m talking about greed, that masquerades as a party. How many more wars are going to erupt because of greed, while we just celebrate misinformation?

The system that we’re living in, that system that made certain people superior and others inferior, is keeping us in a box lined with lies. We’re told not to look outside of the walls of the box. But what if we would?

A goldfish that’s kept in a bowl doesn’t get bigger than the bowl. It’s called stunted growth. But put him in a river and he could take advantage of the freedom and the better water quality to grow. We’re like goldfish in a bowl in a box and we’re accepting the lie that keeps us inside, because we think it’s safe. And then every so often they throw us a party inside that bowl and they make us believe that that party is for us.

We could be goldfish in a river. We should look outside the box. There’s unlimited possibilities there.  I have peeked outside of the box, and I know what’s there. My growth is no longer stunted. I understand how much better we could be if we would all open our eyes. All we have is each other.

So no, I don’t celebrate freedom on your Emancipation Day. Not because I reject remembrance.  Because remembrance without truth is hollow. And celebration without justice is an insult. To all of us! This is not just about Black people

Honestly, if I would choose a day to celebrate freedom, I would choose one of the days that the freedom fighters won a battle. Or forced the colonizers into signing peace accords … October 10 1760 for instance, when the Maroons in Suriname signed the first accord. January 1, 1804, Haiti Independence Day, when the freedom fighter army of Toussaint Louverture beat the French and the first independent republic in the Caribbean was born. Tula Day, Dia di Tula, in Curacao, that commemorates the uprising on August 17 1795, led by Tula.

Freedom isn’t free. Abolition was not liberation.  Slavery just took on another form

The chains were not just physical. They were mental, spiritual, structural. And they still remain. In our institutions. In our textbooks. In our laws. In our companies. In our expectations of each other. In our minds.

WE can no longer claim ignorance. We’re perfectly situated in time and space, with constant, unrestricted access to the entirety of human knowledge, so we have the facts. We know the truth.

It’s time.

We should finally use the lessons of our past to forge a different future — one in which freedom is not commemorated, but truly lived!

It’s not a one-day, one-off thing. A July 1^st or a June 19^th or Black History Month thing. It’s a lifestyle.

If the truth is a lie, it will set you free.

And if anyone here feels like I’m dumping on your party; hey, you’re the one here today, reading me. 🤣 But fuh real: If what I am introducing to you here is disturbing to hear, it only means that you’re human …