Rotterdam apologizes for colonial past: pathway towards decolonization

It's time. Finally. Mayor Aboutaleb announced that Rotterdam has officially apologized for the city's colonial past. He announced that feelings of regret and responsibility will be converted into a city plan full of 'education, dialogues and cultural initiatives'.

Rotterdam BIJ1 has been insisting on the importance of an official apology for years. Rotterdam can make a new start based on this modest speech. This is an important first step. Yet, in addition to joy, there is also a sense of concern. Apologies should and could have been made sooner. The timing is wrong. Wouldn't it have been more appropriate to apologize on June 30, the day we commemorate the abolition of slavery?

Besides the fact that the apology comes too late, Aboutaleb's and his Labour Party proposals also offer too few points of departure for a decolonial future. We see a positive development, but we cannot deny that there is insufficient progress. Why is it just an apology whilst not a word is said about further recovery, based on what those involved need? Why is the worship of national 'heroes' in the form of street names, statues, buildings and festivals not tackled decisively? Why no detailed standpoints on looted art? Why is the discussion about decolonization not being started? Why are whiteness and its associated privileges and excesses unaffected?

More than ever, Rotterdam needs a city council that devises and implements radical anti-racist policies. In this way we not only reflect on an 'ugly past' together, but we actively fight against the way in which that past continues to work from day to day.

Rotterdam BIJ1 has already spoken out about the importance of an official apology before. As research by the Leiden Institute of Linguistics, Land and Ethnology shows, Rotterdam has played an important role in transatlantic human trafficking. Ships departed from our ports to transport enslaved people to Western European colonial areas, a journey where people were transformed into commodities and after which they were put to work on plantations. The profits from human trafficking and exploitation flowed back to Rotterdam and partly laid the foundation for our current prosperity.

Recognition of our city's active role in this colonial past is important to a large proportion of Rotterdam's current residents, of whom 1 in 8 stems from ancestors who were once enslaved. Like Aboutaleb, we hope that the apologies made contribute to the healing of old wounds. Yet we expect more from the city government. Why not talk about concrete restoration for the suffering caused by slavery and often passed on from generation to generation?

We do indeed become a stronger city when we, as Aboutaleb puts it, 'look in our rear-view mirror', but at the same time we see through the windshield that the consequences of the colonial past have been distributed extremely unfairly among the current inhabitants of the city. Real apologies must be accompanied by reparation, in consultation with those involved.

We have also been asking questions about street names, images, buildings and festivals in which the names of 'Dutch heroes' appear for some time. According to Rotterdam BIJ1, there is only one solution: this worship must stop as soon as possible! Give streets and buildings new names, pull Piet Heyn off his pedestal in Delfshaven. As a city council, take the well-being of all Rotterdammers seriously and ensure that we are not confronted with nationalistic glorification of perpetrators from a criminal past. Choose a positive course, unconditionally choose anti-racism!

An explanation of the street names based on QR codes is a middle ground that is of no use to anyone. Certainly not when, as Alderman Karremans points out, all street names must be explained – whether it concerns perpetrators or real heroes from history.

As far as BIJ1 is concerned, Rotterdam's colonial past must indeed be interpreted, but in a different way. Aboutaleb's idea to roll out a city plan full of 'education, dialogues and cultural activities' in 2022 sounds shaky and insufficient. Although the content of this plan is not yet known, it mainly sounds as if anti-racism and decolonization are no more than an afterthought.

BIJ1 does not deny the importance of culture and education for a decolonial future. On the contrary! For us, anti-racism is at the heart of the matter. That is why we object to the idea that a 'city plan' is sufficient in the fight for radical equality. We argue in favour of including these important social tasks permanently in education and in the local cultural sector. We want to firmly anchor diversity and anti-racism in education and culture.

We want municipal support for the Culture Inclusive manifesto, which states that an inclusive art and culture sector must also be outspokenly anti-racist. We want municipal recognition of the Diversity & Inclusion Code and the Fair Practice Code. We want more money and attention for Rotterdam's colonial history and the history of slavery, but from the perspective of the former colonies. We want a municipality that forces local museums to return looted art to their countries of origin. In education, we advocate a diversity committee in all schools, for training of all teachers to grow knowledge, awareness and recognition of decolonization and anti-racism.

We want Rotterdam's colonial and slavery past to be taught in all schools; year in, year out. A city plan alone is not enough! Only with structural measures can we fight the racism (institutional, structural and personal) that comes from the colonial thinking that still exists.

Fortunately, Aboutaleb does not look away from the link between past and present in his speech. He is visibly concerned about social cohesion and expresses the hope that his apologies will make a positive contribution. As mentioned, we as Rotterdam BIJ1 do not doubt this. Recognition of responsibility and regret is important. However, it does not alter the fact that there is no mention of the most nefarious drivers of human trafficking, slavery and colonial exploitation, namely whiteness and racial capitalism.

These thoroughly harmful political concepts have given shape to a set of toxic, racist privileges. Like for many Rotterdammers, it is incomprehensible to Rotterdam BIJ1 that the politics of white privilege and racial capitalism remains unnamed. We have recently seen so many painful examples of the way in which municipal institutions act racist. Take the police, for example, where racist treatment of people of coluor is clearly visible in ethnic profiling, or in deeply racist language in mutual app groups. Take the tax authorities,who determine whether or not someone might be a fraud on the basis of origin and surname.

Whiteness is the common denominator and as long as the discussion about this is avoided, all measures will mainly carry water to the sea. In the Laurenskerk, Aboutaleb talks about Rotterdam as an international society and is moved by the personal stories that make up our city. He hopes that the apologies made today will ensure that 'everyone redefines their own role.' Rotterdam BIJ1 emphatically adds that this indeed applies to everyone.

So not only for people of color, but also for the thousands of white townspeople who refuse to face their privileges. Also for the racist cop, the prejudiced teacher or civil servant who should be fired. Today, the city of Rotterdam has shown moral leadership, but now also has to persevere and build bridges to a truly decolonial future.

Based on the speech in the Laurenskerk, BIJ1 asks the mayor and responsible aldermen the following questions: