My condolences to the innocent people of Brussels whose lives have been disrupted, radically altered, or even taken from them.
At the same time I am struck by two things that greatly temper, or at least complicate my feelings about this.
The first is that there has been no comparable media coverage or social media outcry for the people similarly killed in Ankara, Turkey, on March 13, just over a week ago, and there has been even less said of those so killed in Cote d'Ivoire that very same day. There has been little news coverage of the subsequent terrorist bombing in Istanbul, Turkey, on March 19, just two days before the attack in Belgium.
This is not some deviation, perhaps attributable to the horrible, shocking, and disorienting nature of this violence. There is a consistent pattern of dismissal, omission, and silence about terrorism when the victims are people of color, and it stands in stark contrast to the very visible and public expressions of outrage, grief, and compassion when the victims are predominantly White, or are targeted in White, Western countries.
Like most people of color, I grieve for the victims in Brussels.But I also wonder why the people of Brussels, and France, and Great Britain, and the United States find it so difficult to grieve, indeed to even be aware of the victims in non-White, non-Western places.
The second complication for me is that Belgium is, historically, the author of horrific human atrocities, most particularly the plunder of the Congo by the enslavement and genocide of at least 10 million Africans under the rule of King Leopold II. The motive was not religion, but money to be gained from the harvesting of rubber. Those who enforced the enslavement frequently punished the African victims who did not meet the demanded quotas by chopping off their hands. Women, children, no matter. Long before the horrors of Auschwitz, there was the Belgian enslavement of the Congolese people.
As with all grotesquely exploitative ventures, the Congo was extremely lucrative for Leopold, and he poured his earnings into lavish infrastructure and development in Belgium, all of which ultimately became state property. The wealth and beauty of Brussels, is in no small measure, built with the forced labor, torture, mutilation, and genocide of millions of African people.
While the modern residents of Belgium, and certainly those who lost their lives yesterday, did not commit the atrocities of their state, the things that Belgium has done in the world make it difficult to see the country as an innocent victim.
I grieve for the victims of terrorism in Brussels, but I also grieve for the victims of terrorism by Brussels.
It's complicated.
At the same time I am struck by two things that greatly temper, or at least complicate my feelings about this.
The first is that there has been no comparable media coverage or social media outcry for the people similarly killed in Ankara, Turkey, on March 13, just over a week ago, and there has been even less said of those so killed in Cote d'Ivoire that very same day. There has been little news coverage of the subsequent terrorist bombing in Istanbul, Turkey, on March 19, just two days before the attack in Belgium.
This is not some deviation, perhaps attributable to the horrible, shocking, and disorienting nature of this violence. There is a consistent pattern of dismissal, omission, and silence about terrorism when the victims are people of color, and it stands in stark contrast to the very visible and public expressions of outrage, grief, and compassion when the victims are predominantly White, or are targeted in White, Western countries.
Like most people of color, I grieve for the victims in Brussels.But I also wonder why the people of Brussels, and France, and Great Britain, and the United States find it so difficult to grieve, indeed to even be aware of the victims in non-White, non-Western places.
The second complication for me is that Belgium is, historically, the author of horrific human atrocities, most particularly the plunder of the Congo by the enslavement and genocide of at least 10 million Africans under the rule of King Leopold II. The motive was not religion, but money to be gained from the harvesting of rubber. Those who enforced the enslavement frequently punished the African victims who did not meet the demanded quotas by chopping off their hands. Women, children, no matter. Long before the horrors of Auschwitz, there was the Belgian enslavement of the Congolese people.
As with all grotesquely exploitative ventures, the Congo was extremely lucrative for Leopold, and he poured his earnings into lavish infrastructure and development in Belgium, all of which ultimately became state property. The wealth and beauty of Brussels, is in no small measure, built with the forced labor, torture, mutilation, and genocide of millions of African people.
While the modern residents of Belgium, and certainly those who lost their lives yesterday, did not commit the atrocities of their state, the things that Belgium has done in the world make it difficult to see the country as an innocent victim.
I grieve for the victims of terrorism in Brussels, but I also grieve for the victims of terrorism by Brussels.
It's complicated.
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