Loving black culture but not black people

The Dutch version of this article was first published on August 20th 2018.

“Chopping off hands, Congo is ours!”

“Digging up diamonds, Congo is ours!”

“Congo is ours, Congo is ours!”

We are not on a rubber plantation in Congo in 1895, but on the site of Pukkelpop in 2018. These people talking are not Belgian soldiers but drunk young men.

On Saturday night, Sarah (19) from Brussels, her sister and a friend were working their way through the crowd at Pukkelpop to watch the performance of Kendrick Lamar. On their way they were treated to some racist jokes. Sarah tells her story on Twitter in an emotional thread. “People were grabbing my afro and wanted to take pictures with us.The amount of insults or ignorant reflections I got was insane.”

Some people were shouting “Congo Congo” when they were passing by (for the record: Sarah has Rwandan roots). Others were pointing at her hair and body and shouted that she was ‘The Get Down’ (a musical drama series on Netflix). “I felt like a caged animal.”

“Unfortunately there are still many racist people in Flanders who have never spoken with black people.”

When the trio wanted to get closer to the stage to have a better view of Kendrick Lamar – note: a black artist who regularly stands up to racism – they ran into the men who started singing. Nobody did anything. On the contrary, the bystanders were laughing along or were acting aggressively towards the two young women. Someone even poured a drink over the youngest girl. The performance started but Sarah couldn’t enjoy it. “I was crying during the entire set. I felt the bad vibes all around me and I just felt like disappearing.”

Jonathan Z., (who doesn’t want his full name to appear in the media), the friend who was there and made the video, is disappointed but not surprised by the incident. “Unfortunately there are still many racist people in Flanders who have never spoken with black people. You have to prepare yourself for that  when you go to a festival, especially because you will meet people who are ignorant and live in a bubble.” Jonathan stayed calm and filmed the incident. “If I would have made a scene right there on the spot, I would have been ‘the angry black man’.”

Sarah’s story and the video of the singing men was widely spread on social media and it didn’t take long before the men in question were recognised. One of the boys already deleted all his social media profiles. The organization of Pukkelpop was informed and were asked to apologize. UNIA also received a report.

“Racist incidents are not happening in a vacuum.”

And indeed: festival organizations shouldn’t underestimate how unsafe people from minority groups often feel in a setting where others can have fun without any worries. Pukkelpop should put more effort so everyone can enjoy a pleasant festival experience. This weekend there were also reports coming in about young women who were harassed on the festival site. There were drugs found in one girl’s drink. She spent the rest of the night at the first aid service.

Unfortunately you can’t prevent all transgressive behavior by adding surveillance and security measurements. It’s a structural and more exhaustive problem. Racist incidents are not happening in a vacuum. In Belgium there is a distressing lack of knowledge about our colonial past. The horror that king Leopold II has caused and the millions of deaths his soldiers were responsible for, is still not an obligatory part of the history classes in our schools.

“Belgium is unique in its bias of the public consciousness about the colonial past.” says Idesbald Goddeeris, professor of colonial history (KU Leuven) in the national newspaper De Standaard.”In other former colonial powers you can also find tributes for the colonized. Minds are expanding but very slowly.”

“With these nonsense you create the idea that white people can use the genocide as a running gag without any problems.”

You can still find statues of king Leopold II in our streets and squares: a thorn in the sides of many people whose great-grandparents have experienced this horror themselves. In the past few months, explanatory inscriptions were added to the statues to show the complete picture. But can we really talk about an insight if one of the signs on a statue simply says that the colonial politics had both ‘positive and negative’ sides?

“Racism is everywhere and you just can’t stop it,” Sarah says when we talk to her by phone. “The only thing you can do is to educate your kids, so that the future generation will have more knowledge about other cultures.”

We are all responsible if we want things like these never to happen again. Not only the bystanders who didn’t do anything and abandoned these women to their fate were at fault, but the media was as well. If you have a popular magazine with an almost completely white staff, publish ‘jokes’ about severed hands of the Congolese on a regular basis (we are looking at you, Humo), then you are not aware of the effect this has on black people. On top of that: with this nonsense you create the idea that white people can use the genocide as a running gag without any problems.

“Sarah would prefer that everyone would think a bit more about racism and that they would educate themselves as well.”

“Both the line-up and the crowd at Pukkelpop was very diverse this year. It seemed like we were really making progress, but then you hear about an incident like this afterwards. That is a huge disappointment,” says Renaldi, one of editors with Congolese roots herself. She was also at the festival. “I didn’t have any bad experiences but maybe that was because I was surrounded by white friends. Black people shouldn’t have to mentally prepare themselves for a bunch of racist comments or have to surround themselves with white friends when they want to go to a festival so they don’t have to worry.”

Sarah says that she is grateful for all the support she got but she was also surprised by the fact that news editors just used her social media posts without permission. She doesn’t want there be a witch hunt for these young men. She would prefer that everyone would think a bit more about racism and that they would educate themselves as well.

“It’s okay,” she says on Twitter to someone who knows one of the men. “Please, I’ll wire you some money so that you can buy a big book about the origin of what he was singing about. Put a map of Africa in there as well and teach him that not all black people are from Congo.”

*Update: one of the men in the video has made a public apology for his behaviour in an e-mail to the press. The organization of Pukkelpop issued a statement saying this kind of behavior is not welcome at their festival.

Photo: Istock
Text: Jozefien Daelemans, with cooperation from Renaldi Diombo