The day my hair got a free Iced tea treatment (Part I)

On a cold, windy, gloomy day (typical Holland weather at this time of the year) four young journalists set out on a mission. Braving indolence (try getting up at 7 in the morning!), famishment (who can eat at that unearthly hour?) and the weather (can’t be blamed for complaining about it, can I?), we set out on the first field trip of our “theoretically relevant and practically useful” minority media project.

Now, journalists being late for interviews is ordinary. Journalists reaching on time is unusual. But journalists reaching before time is like an oxymoron with more than two contradictory words. But the sheer will to get a great interview for a project that is so very dear to all our hearts made us do the inconceivable. Armed with all the journalistic tools and equipment we needed (I carried my ’mightier than sword’ pen…which is on display on the masthead of this wonderful blog…thanks Robin…high five!), we tackled the multiple tasks at hand.

Task 1: Find a place called Verrijnstuartweg 95B in a place called Diemen, in a place called Amsterdam….wait, that last one sounds familiar!

Strike 1: Take out map of Amsterdam…locate place Diemen…figure out bus and metro routes. Board bus. The journey begins!

Task 2: Locate the right metro line from Amsterdam Central Station.

Strike 2: Wait underground for metro number 53. Determinedly ignore the wafting aroma of coffee and freshly baked bread from Albert Heijn (first find and reach the place, then think about breakfast). Curse the stupid Murphy’s law for all but metro number 53 arriving (51 came not once, but twice while we were waiting patiently!). Finally see it, or are my eyes deceiving me? No, four sets of eyes can’t be deceived (or…can they?)

Task 3: Alight at the right metro station. Now to find the way to the street and building. Dali has a print out ready (I like that about her…for her, the Net is the solution to any and every problem!).

Strike 3: Okay, so we cross the bridge on our right. Great! We are in the right street Verrijnstuartweg and there is still an hour to go for our interview. Yeah! We made it people! Now for a well deserved breakfast.

Task 4: Finding a café or restaurant. Not a soul in sight (bless them, they are still blissfully asleep). Look around more closely. Realization dawns. It’s an industrial area! By now, dying for a mug of hot coffee.

Strike 4: After making sure that we did not miss any place that even remotely looked like a café, we almost give up. Then, take a last chance…spot a gentleman, ask him in the hope that there will be someplace he knows about. Get an answer in the negative. Prepare to conduct interview half asleep and on an empty stomach.

Task 5: Get back to number 95 B

Strike 5: Wait….spot a fancy sign board that reads GoD’oro: Learn, Eat, Drink. Is that what we had been looking for? No…maybe its just a corporate house…but eat? Then a girl wearing an apron waves at us from behind the glass wall of the “place” (still wondering what it is). Hope flickers alive (again!), decide to check it out!

Task 6: Is it? Isn’t it? Is it? Isn’t it?

Strike 6: It is! A cookery class center, which doubles up as a restaurant (in an industrial area!) We are escorted to the table (it isn’t everyday that four beautiful international girls drop by!). Elixir at that instant…coffee, not water. Steaming mugs of cappuccino and espresso bring us back to life! Laugh about our good fortune…thank our saviors at GoD’oro with a promise of coming back for lunch!

Task 7: Locate number 95 B

Strike 7: Back on Verrijnstuartweg. An African guy walks towards us and inquires if any of us is Robin (she was in touch with the Founder Editor Mr Elvis Iruh for the interview). What luck! Briefly exchange names with him and follow Mr Iruh to building number 95 B for “The” interview.

PS. Desperately need a coffee break now.

PS 2. I dedicate my first ever (no, I don’t live in an ancient civilization…) blog to Robin. Robin, this one is for you…it would never have been possible without your constant words of <egging> encouragement, your <threats> practical approach to matters and most importantly, <genuinely heartfelt> your amazing spirit of team work. Gratitude is also due to Dali and Katrin for being such wonderful team mates…thanks all. In the end, thanks to our very own “celebrity” Bas! Without you (a native Dutch person), we would never have made any headway! Three cheers everyone and long live Africa!

To be continued…

Sakshi

African Cultural Night

Free dinner at ISMA’s African cultural night

 

I’ll be honest: I went for the food. The International Students MeetingPoint Amsterdam (ISMA), a Dutch Christian organization devoted to helping international students in Amsterdam, sponsored an African cultural event last night. ISMA posters stressed a free meal, and that’s all I knew prior to attending.

I spoke to Dutch students as the organizers called up tables, one by one, to the buffet line. Alas, being in one of the last groups, we received paltry offerings due to a poorly executed rationing plan. I wondered, briefly, if the African theme + a scarcity of food was an intentional, ironic connection (I went home hungry).

A Kenyan called Sarah presented a slideshow on African culture. Everyone laughed at one of her bullets: In Africa, there is “no hurry.” We learned about the religious breakdown, with the largest groups being Christian and Muslim, followed by traditional African beliefs. She spoke about the diversity of the continent and common misconceptions—perpetuated by Western media—from the developed world. She showed photographs of skyscrapers and commerce usually hidden from African coverage, which normally focuses on crime, war, and tribalism. It’s this kind of coverage that prompted an American friend of mine, upon returning from his first visit to Africa, to remark with surprise at how developed Africa is. Was he expecting grass huts?

This presentation, along with all of our class readings, made me question my own biases and construction of reality based on a Western filter. When the majority of stories focuses on war, violence, and corruption, we cannot ignore how this shapes our perceptions. It mirrors some of the ideas from the texts we’ve been reading about minority representation in mainstream media. If my friend assumed grass huts and tribes to represent much of Africa, will a public besieged with stories about immigration, crime, and culture clashes not also reach similar, lopsided conclusions about “the other”?

Last semester during a class discussion, one of our classmates tried to argue that cultural biases are present everywhere—that when we think of Germany, we think of bratwurst, beer, and efficiency, or when we think of New Zealand, images of sheep come to mind. This trivializes the issue. When we read news stories about Germany, those stereotypical factors do not seep into every single story. When we read news about Africa, however, violence, poverty, and conflict are inherent elements to the story’s framework.

 

Consider coverage of the next World Cup, scheduled to take place in South Africa in 2010. Most stories have centered on Africa’s questionable “ability” to handle the world’s largest sporting event for the first time in the continent’s history. Perspectives focus on crime and a lack of infrastructure. As a soccer fan, I’ve followed coverage of the event closely, and every media outlet from the BBC to the Guardian and the Associated Press cannot resist the allure of connecting the event to questions of violence and infrastructure—even if it’s only one line in the story. The result is an indissoluble link between Africa, violence, and poverty in the minds of Western readers. Sure, there are severe and real problems of social and economic justice in the world’s poorest continent. I am not advocating a glossing over of the violent statistics of rape and murder in Johannesberg, often called the “world’s crime capital.” But what about more nuanced coverage, as this BBC reporter tried to provide? And speaking of the World Cup, I point to Brazil. It is certainly no peaceful, corruption-free haven, but every story is not fixated on safety issues. Rather, there is an emphasis on the country’s illustrious soccer history and el joga bonito.

Before studying minority representation in the media, I barely gave a second thought to ethnic minority media outlets. I thought of them more as advocacy journalism, a slightly biased portrayal of the “objective,” mainstream news. I now see a definite need for these alternative voices, as mainstream media is neither neutral nor “value-free.” The big question for me: how can these underfunded outlets impact the larger public discourse and not remain separate silos, merely functioning as echo chambers containing compelling ideas that stay underground?

Robin

The Best From All Worlds…

This is the headline of the website promoting Bazar Vest in Aarhus. The bazar, according to the website the largest in Scandinavia, is one of the most vibrant and interesting places in the town. It is definetely the best place to buy Turkish music, sandals or a pink alarm clock in the shape of a mosque; or if you want to eat Arabic bread, oriental spices or simply the best and cheapest Felafel in the city. As the bazar is situated in Brabrand, where a lots of immigrants live, most visitors are from states like Somalia, Turkey, Armenia or other African or Arab countries; but some ethnic Danes are also among them and have a look at the huge and colourful stands of fresh fruit.

This is probably one of the few places in Aarhus were immigrants and ethnic Danes get together. However, people usually walk around the hall with people from the same ethnic background. With so many people from different nations at one place, there still seems to be a glass wall where you cannot really break through.

The republishing of the Mohammed cartoons in Denmark and Robin’s last post on immigrants and minorities in Aarhus made me think about these experiences and some interviews I conducted at the bazar with women from Somalia. Some were very reluctant to talk about how they felt about living in Denmark, but some opened up and told me about their experiences. Most of them have had to flee the war in their country, and although many of them were only children at that time, most of them claimed to miss it. One young woman told me that she would go back immediately if there was peace (the situation in Somalia is still pretty unstable), also because she felt a certain racism in Denmark. She said that she also had Danish friends, but that she spent her time mostly with other Somalis and felt a certain latent racism in society. Others said they didn’t feel discriminated against, that they liked living in Aarhus and were thankful that they had found a refuge when they had to leave their war-torn country.

As most of them are believing Muslims and wear headscarves, I also asked them about the Mohammed cartoons and how they felt about it. The answer of one woman struck me. What she said was basically ‘Why do you ask me those political questions? I am a Muslim, but that doesn’t mean that I want the Danes to follow my religion. I don’t insult Christians either, so why can’t they just leave us alone?’

For her, the issue was obviously not about democracy or freedom of speech, it was the media picking on a minority. What often gets lost in the discussion on this issue is that’s it’s not all about fundamentalists attacking liberal values. It’s also about people trying to get attached to a different country and culture, and, at the same time, being able to keep their traditions and beliefs.

This point of view often seems to be overseen in the public discussions on the issue. This may now be a very simple and not very original statement, but it might help if people would just talk to each other more.

Katrin

Meeting summary + action items

As we prepare for our interview next week, I’ve attached a summary of our discussion from today along with action items (boldfaced with owners highlighted).

Almost all items should be completed and ready by Monday after class for our next meeting.

Thanks,
Robin

Cartoons, Part II

Two of my former Danish flatmates in Aarhus wrote to me last night about the resurgent cartoon controversy. One wrote: “I don’t really think that’s the correct solution in this situation, and we can’t continue to enrage them like this.” The other updated me on how the domestic media were handling the affair, along with his interpretations of the political landscape:

Yes I just read it on the news paper Politiken’s homepage. Though making a fuss about it being printed in a newspaper seems strange since they are shown on TV each time they mention the cartoonist.

The three news papers are Berlingske Tidende, Politiken and Jyllandsposten (JP).

It is quite remarkable that Politiken prints them since its chief editor, Thøger Seidenfaden, led the criticism against JP back then. Also Berlingske Tidende have not printed them before.

It could seem Seidenfaden is afraid to end up looking like a bad guy defending the religious fanatics (in the Danish media at least) as he did the last time.

http://jp.dk/indland/article1263415.ece

http://politiken.dk/indland/article470475.ece

http://www.berlingske.dk/article/20080212/ledere/80212059/

And yeah the place the police raided was just where the 15 goes by.

***

The “15” to which he refers is the bus route we all took to and from central Aarhus from the lovely Skjoldhøj. It passes through what is often called the largest ghetto in Denmark, Gellerupparken, for its sizable immigrant population. After visiting the local DR TV and radio stations in Aarhus, I thought the opinions expressed by media personnel about Gellerupparken bordered on the paranoid.

The personal stories I had heard from ethnic Danes about interaction with minorities in Aarhus did not sound good, either. One flatmate, who looks as Viking and Nordic as possible with his pale blond hair, blue eyes, and almost bloodless skin, described a walk he took through a grassy area in Gellerupparken. He had just gone grocery shopping and decided to take a shortcut home. It was the middle of the afternoon, bright and sunny. As he walked through the park, some elementary school kids of minority descent started shouting at him “f*ckin’ Dansker”—”f*ckin’ Dane.” In another incident, he was sitting at the back of the bus when a group of boisterous, minority teens boarded the bus (you board from the back in Denmark). They exhibited loud, intimidating male behavior and moved to the front of the bus, where a fellow classmate of his sat. He described this classmate as “about as harmless and dorky as you can get.” Right before the teens exited the bus, one turned to the unassuming kid and spat in his face. They laughed and ran out. My flatmate, outraged, sat there stunned. Then, he looked behind him and noticed a big wad of spit oozing down the window behind his head. They had missed.

I noticed a bit of the tension in Denmark myself, as a minority “not of contentious origin”—there aren’t many East Asians, and the ones there keep to their own communities. It is also disarming, I imagine, for a foreigner to hear me speak perfectly fluent English. So I found my situation different from those of my other international classmates. Almost all Danes I encountered were super friendly and helpful. I remember my first extensive contact with a Dane was with the bus driver who drove me from the airport to the city. He went out of his way to figure out my rendezvous site with my mentor, and took pains to drop me off at another location not really on the bus route.

The “contentious minorities” in Denmark mostly left me alone. One time I was walking to the #15 bus when a car slowed down and stopped. A dark-skinned man asked me which direction I was heading. Puzzled, I told him I was going to football practice. “Oh,” he said, “I am going to the opposite side of town, otherwise I would drop you off.” It was random and nice, and I don’t think he had any ulterior motives except to help out.

Most forced social interaction happens on the bus. Public transport is sometimes the only way in which people experience the “other,” which is why I like New York City so much, as opposed to Los Angeles. You’re forced to encounter all kinds of people and behavior in daily life. And since you’re practically living on top of your neighbor, squeezed up against some guy’s bum on the subway, or dining with someone’s elbow in your soup, most people eventually form many relationships they would not normally have elsewhere. Los Angeles, its polar opposite, facilitates strong cliques based on location and familiarity. People stay in their cars and communities and ethnic leanings, creating a relative—but separate—peace in the California sunshine.

Aarhus sits in a precarious spot between the extremes of New York and Los Angeles. There’s enough interaction to increase prejudice, but not enough to forge relationships and understanding. Another time I sat on the bus with a classmate when a loud minority male got on the bus sporting a backwards baseball cap (a universal sign of “dunce”). He sat behind my classmate and proceeded to hit the back of her seat obnoxiously, completely aware of his actions. My soft-spoken African classmate endured the thumps. After several minutes of repetitive whacks, I turned deliberately and made eye contact. He carried on, in what I am sure he considered to be a defiant and cool attitude. Right at the moment I was about to say something loud and attention-gaining, he stopped. A group of school kids boarded the bus; they formed an animated mass of blond heads and cherubic cheeks rouged by the winter winds—except for one. A cute dark-haired, dark-skinned boy romped around with the other kids, laughing and talking in a scene typical of my multi-ethnic hometown, Cerritos, California. Mr. Knucklehead noticed this kid, too. And as he stood up to exit the bus—in sharp contrast to the disenfranchised, boorish demeanor with which he greeted the rest of the world—he tenderly tousled the boy’s hair and went through a “got-your-nose” routine with him. The boy, puzzled and a bit disturbed, immediately went back to his friends.

I noticed The New York Times removed its characterization of Aarhus as a “quiet university town” today in the cartoon arrests story from last night. An experienced editor, no doubt, knew that such a simplistic characterization is almost never on the mark.

Robin

Cartoon Showtime?

The Dutch wires are reporting at this hour that in the wake of today’s arrests in Aarhus, Denmark for a plot to assassinate one of the cartoonists involved in the 2005 Prophet Mohammed caricature controversy, three of the largest Danish newspapers have decided to republish the cartoons.

Jyllands-Posten, the original perpetrator, already has a cartoon displayed prominently on their English Web site.

After examining media in Denmark last fall, many of our classmates have grown weary of the whole Danish cartoons affair. In fact, two of the required readings from last week focused exclusively on the media’s role in the brouhaha and how minorities are portrayed in Denmark. One text published in 2000 by Mustafa Hussain analyzed Islam and minorities in Denmark, asserting that an “interdiscursivity of powerful societal institutions” promotes a negative public opinion, creating political intolerance (97-98).

On a comparative scale with other European nations, Denmark stands out. Hussain offers supporting evidence:

• Only 17 percent of Danes reported they were absolutely non-racist, according to a 1997 European Commission survey on racism, qualifying as the lowest percentage of self-defined non-racists in the EU. For comparison, the average EU self-defined non-racist was 34 percent; fellow Scandinavian country (and place where all is sweetness and light) Sweden was even higher at 42 percent.

• 83 percent of replies in Denmark scored as having low to very high racist attitudes in the same study. Again, for comparison: Austria and Germany, both associated with neo-Nazi movements, both hovered around 70 percent.
• Despite this, Denmark has one of the smallest percentages of immigration in the EU from countries outside the EU, Eastern Europe, and North America.
• 37 percent of Danes would not want to have a Muslim for a neighbor and 64 percent would not want a close family member to marry a Muslim. These figures drop considerably to 18 percent and 36 percent, respectively, when “Muslim” is replaced by “a person of another race,” according to a 1995 national survey by two political scientists from Aarhus University.
• 85 percent of ethnic Danes had no social interaction with minority individuals or groups, as cited in the previous study.

These statistics seem damning, but it’s much more complicated than simply concluding that Danes are simply more racist. Hussain analyzes how the media influence public opinion through the use of repetitive headlines, negative minority topics (like crime, immigration, and other problems), and creating an us-versus-them framework for stories. Public service media were worse offenders than commercial media in this regard.

Hussain uses John Zaller’s theory on the origin of and formation of mass opinion to support his idea on media influence. In a nutshell, Zaller’s theory says that people’s opinions depend on the “ideas and thoughts activated immediate” rather than a thorough evaluation on the subject in question (Ibid. 101). So whatever the dominant information flow is at the time—as perpetuated by the media—will also dominate public opinion. Given that most Danes have little to no experiential knowledge of minorities, this phenomenon is perhaps even stronger.

Another text, a book written after the cartoon controversy in 2007, analyzed the media’s handling of the controversy in 14 different countries. The authors claim that an editorial in The Economist sparked the initial idea for the project: to understand how “freedom of speech was defined, defended, and criticized,” under international scrutiny, both in and by the press (Kunelius and Eide 9). One of the researchers, in an essay called “The Right to Communicate,” took the moderate stance, weighing individual expression against duties towards society. “[T]he right to be understood,” he writes, should imply that others have a duty to try and understand the “other.” This requires society to “distance itself from egocentric acts of communication” (Ibid. 19).

Now that the controversy looms large once again, our project to interview minority media outlets here in the Netherlands might take a more interesting twist.

Stay tuned…

Robin

References
Hussain, Mustafa (2000). Islam, Media and Minorities in Denmark.
Current Sociology,48(4), 95-116.
Kunelius, Risto, & Eide, Elisabeth (2007). The Mohammed cartoons, journalism, free speech and globalization. In Risto Kunelius, Elisabeth Eide, Oliver Hahn & Roland Schroeder (Eds.), Reading the Mohammed cartoons controversy: an international analysis of press discourses on free speech and political spin (pp. 9-23). Bochum/Freiburg: ProjektVerlag. Available online at
http://ncom.nordicom.gu.se/ncom/research/the_mohammed_cartoons_journalism_free_speech_and_globalization(19166)/

Our Mission

Welcome to the African Voice, a weblog dedicated to a research project analyzing minority media in the Netherlands.

We are a team of international journalists from China, India, Germany, Holland, and the United States currently studying at the University of Amsterdam. We have selected The Voice, an Amsterdam-based news magazine and Web site dedicated to the advancement of Africa, as our focus. The magazine uses English as its lingua franca to reach its global audience of Africans and African migrants in such disparate places as Bulgaria, Belgium, the Gambia, Greece, Russia, the United States, and Zimbabwe.

Over the next several weeks, we will interview the editors, correspondents, and some audience members in addition to analyzing magazine content and story coverage. We will learn about the economics of running an independent, ethnic publication in a western country and try to understand the challenges presented by mainstream media in terms of cultural perception and the promotion of alternative discourse within the elusive “public sphere.”

This weblog serves as a record of our collective experience, providing a more personal interpretation of news coverage and life in Amsterdam as it relates to broader issues and reflections regarding ethnicity, politics, and culture. With four-fifths of the team falling into the “minority” category in the Netherlands, we hope that our observations will amount to more than the sum of individual parts, serving to complement our academic work. Furthermore, we wish to add dimension to our research, and not just reduce our interviewees—and the inspired work that they do—to a position paper.