Hi everyone! Back from a three-day last-minute whirlwind tour of the Benelux. (But then without the Lux. Oh well, maybe next time.) The kids have autumn break and surprisingly enough my German classes have been suspended for this week as well. We had all kinds of errands we needed to run in and around Brussels because guess what?! We've sold our house!!!
So we went to NL, dropped the kids off with Oma and Opa and went down to the booming metropolis of Steenokkerzeel to tie up a bunch of loose ends. One of those loose ends being our loose cannon neighbor. Our car was in the driveway all afternoon so we felt obliged to check in and make sure that everything was OK with him, our house, etc.
We kind of had a feeling he'd be riled up because the buyer has a Congolese-sounding surname-- he let us in and then launched into it right away. So, sold your house. Have you seen the buyer?! HE'S BLACK!
Michiel told him that we hadn't met him yet, but that he's a doctor in Vilvoorde.
YEAH, BUT HE'S BLACK!
I could feel my blood starting to boil-- mentioned as calmly as I could that since he's a doctor and can obviously afford a house in our neighborhood that I doubted that there was any reason to worry. Do you know what he answered?!
WELL I DON'T CARE! THE SECOND GARBAGE STARTS PILING UP IN YOUR YARD I'M GOING TO GO OVER AND SAY SOMETHING!
I was completely stunned.
He was even more rabid than usual-- started spouting off some nonsense about seeing some other black person hanging around the yard. His theory is that she was a random black person from a social housing project. Apparently once black people hear that another one of THEM has moved into the neighborhood that they all crawl out of the woodwork to check out the digs.
We dropped by a friend's house later to pick up some keys. He started laughing when he saw us and said "I hear you've sold your house to a bunch of black people. Your neighbor's been having kittens..."
Vlaams Belang, the right-wing nationalist party (which was previously dissolved by the Belgian court for openly propagating racism) won 25% of the seats in the local elections last month. Why doesn't this surprise me?
8 comments:
OMG, that would piss me off BIG TIME! Congratulations for keeping your cool!
Carol
OMG, that would piss me off BIG TIME! Congratulations for keeping your cool!
Carol
Pfff....when I hear such stories I am ashamed to be a Belgian. I can't understand so many people vote for the Vlaams Belang. If it is some consolation, they seem to have reached their limit around 33% of the votes in Antwerp (their home town). So 66% up to 80% of the people are non racists. And the anti-racist concerts across Belgium just before last elections drew > 100000 people....Hmm doesn't feel much of a consolation really, it remains sad that so many people aren't open for other cultures.
Hi Ellen! :-)
Perk (in the commune Steenokkerzeel) is very small and very homogenous. In general people seem very afraid of anyone who's "foreign", which was very disturbing for me at times.
But of course it's not just a Belgian phenomenon. There are plenty of organizations in the States that I'm embarrassed of right now as well.
My idealist fantasy is that my bigoted (ex)neighbor will get to know his new neighbors and decide that he can't judge an entire race by a couple of bad apples.
Probably more realistically, however, I should just keep my fingers crossed that he leaves this poor man and his family alone and keeps his rabid opinions to himself...
This guy has apparently been working in Antwerpen and Vilvoorde for several years, though, so he must have run into this issue many times before. I'll bet he's had to develop a pretty thick skin over the years.
I suppose no country is exempt, but I was shocked, nevertheless, the first time I heard a racist remark in "small town" Canada.
We had just moved from living 15 years in Toronto where multiculturalism really works because it has to. During that time I taught at two different schools: an international community college where no one race predominated and a private school where I was the only member of my race. In addition, our apartment building directory read like the United Naitons'. No doubt racism was probably present, but I did not experience it in my day-to-day working or personal life.
Then we moved to a rural area (not even a grocery store or stop light) in Ontario, and I was horrified to hear racial slurs from the mouths of seemingly "normal" people. Shades of growing up in the rural southern United States... I had hoped never to experience that again.
This hamlet, like Perk, is homogeneous - almost equally divided between white English and white Dutch (sorry Bets') immigrants. Since moving here I have heard negative comments about Asians, Indians, and Blacks. Interestingly, not a single member of those races actually lives here.
I, like Ellen, am saddened that so many people somehow need hate in their lives.
oh. my. god.
and I thought "eurpoeans" were so much more high-minded...hmm...
lang
It truly is disgraceful and beyond all comprehension. Unfortunately that kind of racism exists not only all over Europe but all over the world. From country to country, one will sadly find that there is a 'chosen' target for hate, and even within Canada one hears cracks about east versus west, English versus French. There are equally rotten inter-country stories for every country on our little blue planet. Personally, I'd love to see some of the hate mongerers take one of the genetic tests being offered by the human genome experiment -- it was written up in National Geographic as I recall. It would doubtless be an eye opener for the 'haters' to find their true roots could very well be in Africa, and wouldn't it be wonderful if that kind of revelation actually opened their color-blinded eyes?
"Seneca"
Hi Betsy, sorry I've been away from your blog for so long I'm trying to catch up!
I like to think like you, that your neighbor will get to know the new owners and open his mind a little, but that's probably magical thinking, unfortunately.
But I'm glad you sold the house, anyway! (And I hope the neighbor doesn't make the new owners miserable.)
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