2. Uncaging Race: A Proposal for Curiosity and Care for Wild Objects

A Non-Dutch Manner of Death: On Sameness as Otherness

Marianne Vaatstra was sixteen when her body was found on a meadow in the rural area of Friesland (in the north of the Netherlands). This was on May 1, 1999, a day after the national celebration of Queen’s Day. Since the crime scene was not too far away from an asylum-seekers’ center, accusations were quickly directed toward “them,” who happened to come from the Middle East. I will not go into the details, but this suspicion led to a lot of violence and racism vis-à-vis the inhabitants of the center and to its eventual closing.8 The racist response to the gruesome crime grew beyond the rural area to become a national concern. In the media the asylum-seekers’ center was described as “a hotbed of criminal activities.”

Marianne was raped and her throat was sliced by a knife. The late right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn dedicated a column in a weekly magazine in which he labeled the manner of death as “a non-Dutch manner of killing”: a remark that underlines that the suspect had to be one of “them.”9 The knife and the use of the knife became interesting racializing markers. Take, for example, the scenario that the locals had in their minds. It was sketched as follows by the late Dutch crime reporter Peter R. de Vries: “The perpetrator was well prepared. Like a predator looking for a prey he was waiting to attack Marianne from the bushes. After that, he killed her by cutting her throat. Given this modus operandus, the suspect cannot but be an inhabitant of the asylum seekers center.” This so-called modus operandus that was articulated by de Vries in an episode of his TV show dedicated to the Marianne Vaatstra case broadcast on May 20, 2012. To be sure, in that moment in time de Vries did not support this scenario but was merely articulating a dominant view among the local population. The scenario sketched is, one could say, a trope, as it is often encountered in the media. But to understand how it racializes, let me share another example: an excerpt from an op-ed concerning a different murder case that took place in Belgium, at Brussel central station.10 “On video screens you can see them, like predators along the walls of the central station, waiting, alert and on the watch to find an easy prey in the passing herds of passengers for them to kill . . . The unlucky one will not stand a chance. The predators have knives. In childhood they have learned, during the annual sacrifice how to cut the throat of warm-blooded herd animals.”11 This quote helps us understand the framing of the knife, the use of knives to cut throats as well as those who tend to use knives for that purpose. Relating this to a religious custom indicates that the perpetrator is a non-Western, non-Dutch other and, more specifically, a Muslim man. He is inclined to violence and killing, by using a knife. Interestingly the cutting of a throat contributes to the very bestialization of the perpetrator who, through the act, becomes the Other. This Other, to draw on Deleuze and Guattari, who resists or cannot be like us becomes killable.12 Importantly, here, is that suspicion is not directed toward any specific individual but toward a whole group: a group that is phenotypically othered through markers attributed to the assumed perpetrator, a Muslim.

This process of othering comes with a specific version of sameness. This version not only racializes; it leaves no space for differentiation within the group. All individuals are lumped together and the other way around: An individual cannot but stand for the whole group. This version of sameness indeed reduces a group of people to one specific quality, in this case violence. While sameness as otherness produces a homogeneous racialized group, in what follows we will see that sameness can also open up the category and allows for various differentiations. We will consider sameness, not related to otherness but to us-ness.

A Farmer from Here: On Sameness as Us-ness

Crime reporter Peter R. de Vries, whom I quoted above, had initially contributed quite a bit to suspicion vis-à-vis the asylum seekers.13 But then a few years later, in his show of 2012, he argued that “we had it all wrong.” He there revealed new clues about the case. By contrast to the scenario quoted above, Marianne was not killed by slicing her throat. She was first strangled with her bra and only then the knife was used. This, so we were told, is an indication that the perpetrator should be sought in a different population. Dedicating one edition of his TV show to the case, de Vries was actually collaborating in the criminal investigation. Over the years he had been the person most trusted by the local Frisian population, as he was adamant about seeing the case solved and kept provoking new investigations. He was therefore asked to warm up the local population in order to make them participate in a DNA dragnet in the context of familial searching. The message conveyed was that the perpetrator was not among the participants in the dragnet, but that he might be a brother, uncle, or another male relative of the one who submitted DNA.

One month after the dragnet was completed, Peter R. de Vries tweeted: “Man arrested. White suspect. Frisian, lives 2.5 km away from crime scene. 100% DNA-match!” This tweet indicates that the perpetrator was among the participants in the dragnet, rather than a relative, for example, an uncle or a brother of one of the participants. And he was a local Frisian farmer. The response to this fact was both disturbing and arresting. It was inductive for the way sameness as us-ness figures and how it contributes to processes of racialization. A forensic investigator expressed his surprise as follows: “Jasper [the suspect] was just about the last person on whose door you would be knocking, with his farm and little family and all. Because you tend to presuppose a usual criminal.” And the father of the victim pondered: “So it is someone from our midst (van ons), a farmer, a white man.” I was indeed alerted to the production of sameness through the sense of community that emerged when the identity of the suspect was revealed. This was not a community of violence and aggression vis-à-vis the (phenotypic) other or the suspect, but a community of care vis-à-vis “us” and those who belong to “us.”

It is remarkable that the suspect was addressed as a white man. In a context where whiteness is the norm, it hardly ever gets articulated. However, in this case, despite the huge investment in DNA familiar searching and by consequence, the hypothesis that the suspect was related to the local population, the whiteness of the suspect still sparked surprise and disbelief. It thus marked the persistent suspicion that was placed on migrants and refugees, a group that was phenotypically othered. But whiteness was also related to the occupation of the suspect, being a farmer who takes care of his dairy cows and someone with lots of land. The link between Frisian whiteness and his traditional occupation further alerted me to race. While any of these markers by itself does not necessarily enact race, together they become a potent technology of racialization.14 The occupation of the suspect that we already encountered previously was something that came up again and again in the media. A fellow villager of the suspect was quoted as saying: “‘Well, DNA doesn’t lie,’ mumbles Nycklo de Vries (19). But it remains hard to believe. He knew the arrested man. Just like everyone else, here in Oudwoude. A very normal, social man. With a lot of land and a livestock farm. Married, a son and daughter in her twenties.”15 In another account of what the villagers were going through, we read: “Yesterday people in Oudwoude responded with dismay to the arrest of the friendly fellow townsman, who was always in for a chat with everyone. His family was quickly relocated to a quiet area. His nearly 100 dairy cows are being looked after.”16 To underscore his care for his livestock, the suspect declares in court that he and his father went out at eleven ’o clock to milk the cows, on the evening of the rape and murder of Marianne Vaatstra.17 “He is one of us, a farmer from our midst,” as the father of Vaatstra said. This coupling between whiteness, land, and relation to the land, as well as activity (caring for his cows) or occupation (being a farmer), is a classical way of racializing a community.18 However, though the suspect was made a member of a community of us-ness through his color, occupation, and relation to land, the accounts above also make space for him as an individual. He is somebody everybody knows, he is kind, normal, a social man, and has a friendly word for everybody. Also, in a long and calm interview with his lawyer, the viewer is presented a portrait, not of a monster or beast but of a torn person, full of remorse and shame for his uncontrolled behavior on that night thirteen years before.19 In an interview about this TV appearance, his lawyer Jan Vlug said, “There I have tried to portray Jasper as a human being, as a nice man who had done something horrible.”20 This room for individuality, I want to suggest, is a key element of this version of sameness in relation to us-ness. Where the coupling of sameness and otherness takes away all individuality and reduces individuals to a homogeneous and othered group, sameness in relation to us-ness, on the other hand, makes space for individuality. In this case the suspect-ness of the suspect came as a surprise because he was so normal and kind. More generally, this retention of individuality is key to the proverbial “rotten apple” that does not impact the identity of the whole group. This is a mechanism through which white right-wing terrorism often leads to a psychologization of the suspects (think of the Norwegian Adres Berivik), rather than the default mobilization of culture, background, or religion as typical explanations in cases of, say, Muslim terrorism.

Sameness in relation to us-ness makes room for individuality but it does more than this. Already, as seen previously, the suspect was referred to as a family man: He is married with a son and a daughter in her twenties. The family figured prominently in the care articulated by the local villagers. The municipality organized a meeting for the villagers after which the interviewed mayor was reported saying, “About 300 residents showed up in the village hall. Bilker [the mayor] speaks after a ‘modest and heartwarming’ meeting. The village will not let the family down, he says. The mayor knows the parents of the arrested man. ‘They are overloaded with cards, phone calls and best wishes expressing support. That gives a good feeling.’”21 This excerpt makes clear that the family aspect of sameness is not only the fact that the suspect has children, but that he himself is a child of parents who are also part of the same community. The mayor of the village Oudwoude continues:

Everyone knows the parents; they are very well known in the village. Imagine: you lead a very normal life and then suddenly something like this happens. It was my pleasure to convey the commonly shared feeling among the inhabitants of Oudwoude. The feeling of: “You belong here, you belong” (Jullie horen hier, jullie horen erbij). The parents were very happy with that. They responded very emotionally, in tears. They are doing reasonably well under the circumstances. . . . . I did expect that something like “we stand by and around the family” (we staan om de familie heen) would arise, but I am pleasantly surprised that it is so strong.22

It took me some time to understand how this care for the parents of the suspect was relevant and to see that it signals a particular family relation. Here the suspect is not merely a family man, with his own household and children. What these quotes make clear is that the suspect is addressed as a child, the child of someone. Thus, by caring for the parents, the suspect becomes a child. This obviously evokes a sense of “innocence”—even if the child is a man who is forty-five years old, he is still addressed as the object of care and concern for his parents.23 In addition, the attention to the parents puts the suspect in a genealogical relation, a relation of kinship. In this way we come to realize that not only does the suspect have a family and children of his own who deserve care and attention, but he has parents, and probably grandparents, and thus a history in that place. The continuation of kinship produces a longue durée and a historical connection to the place, to Friesland and the village Oudwoude. “You belong here,” said the mayor.

This brief analysis of events makes clear that here, racialization is related not only to color—whiteness—but also crucially to religion (churchgoing people), lineage (the suspect has children and is the child of someone), and belonging to a place as well as occupation (farming). Moreover, sameness as us-ness encompasses not only the community but also the family, as well as individuality. This rendering is in stark contrast to sameness as otherness, which is intolerant for differences within, as it makes the individual stand for the collective.

Doing Sameness, Racializing the Migrant Other

The issue of migration and the fact that large groups of people are on the move in an attempt to find refuge constitute a wide and large problem. Yet, what has come to be known as “Europe’s migration crisis” is inextricably linked to the uprisings in the Arab world. These started as democratic movements in 2011 in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain, and Syria, but soon resulted in crises and massive violence in many of these countries as well as the ongoing war in Syria. These political changes led not only to political instability in countries such as Libya (one of the transit countries for migrants) but also to an increasing number of migrants and refugees who tried to reach Europe.

In the midst of the enfolding crises, the EU response has consistently focused on care, not for people in need, but for Europe’s borders.24 Casting Europe’s borders as vulnerable and in need of attention has led to their ongoing expansion and militarization.25 The lack of infrastructure and care for the people who were fleeing war (especially from Syria), and who were trying to reach Europe, had caught the attention of the masses when, in the summer of 2015 the suffering of thousands upon thousands of people became public. And it was, in particular, the image of the toddler Alan Kurdi that moved the people in Europe, and beyond. The picture of the young boy washed up on the shore of the Turkish coast town Bodrum has produced proximity to the people who were knocking on Europe’s door. This child, dressed with care in a red T-shirt, blue shorts, and leather shoes, could have been your own or that of your neighbors.

Despite the powerful effect of the picture, soon the political mood would start to flip, first with the Paris Bataclan terrorist attacks in November 2015, and a month later with the sexual violence against women on New Year’s Eve in German Cologne. On that evening, a large number of women were victims of robbery and sexual harassment by young men that acted in groups on the public square of Cologne where the celebrations took place. The welcoming mood in Europe started to make way for suspicion and fear vis-à-vis the other.

While these horrific events helped legitimate the restrictive and inhumane border management regimes, they also contributed to the racialization and sexualization of the other. There was, however, a remarkable difference between the initial responses to Paris and to Cologne. In the framing of the terrorist attack in Paris it was Islam and religious fundamentalism that were foregrounded. Pictures would show how innocent and calm Paris would be attacked by a Muslim sniper from an unexpected corner. The depiction of the attack in words and images portrayed the perpetrators as fundamentalist, fanatics, enemies of democracy, modernity, and civilization. By contrast, in the Cologne events the perpetrators were not Muslim fanatics per se. They were, after all, drinking and partying, just like many others were doing on New Years’ Eve. The framing in the Cologne case was rather that of the sexualized Arab, who poses a threat to “our” women and to “our” modern ways of living.26

Although references to the “refugee crisis” were implied in the responses to the Paris attacks, in Cologne they were made explicit. For example, Cologne’s chief police, Wolfgang Albers, stated that “the overwhelming majority” of suspects were asylum seekers and illegal immigrants who had recently arrived in Germany, and he went on to suggest that they were men of “Arab or North African appearance.” Importantly, there were hardly any pictures of the events is Cologne. The images available showed a crowd of people on the square between the central station and the Cologne Cathedral lighting fireworks. Perhaps the very lack of pictures captured the public’s imaginary. It led to various representations, which seemingly attempted to both capture and transform the issue.

I will highlight two examples that were published in well-respected German and Dutch newspapers. One illustration in the German Süddeutschen Zeitung accompanied an article called “Auf Armlänge” (At arm’s length); a denunciatory reference to a statement made the mayor of Cologne, Henriette Reker, in which her primary response was to advise victims of sexual violence to keep these men at an arm’s length.27 The graphic black-and-white image clearly shows a black arm groping a white woman between the legs. The impression of a threatening Black sexuality, a sexuality that is invading (our?) white women, cannot be misunderstood. The Dutch newspapers chose an oriental depiction for one of its cover pages, from a painting by Otto Pilny, from 1910, called “The Slave Market Presentation,” to accompany an extended op-ed in which the Arab man was depicted as backward, with an animal-like sexuality, and therefore not ready to deal with emancipated and independent white women.28 In the image we find ourselves in a desert with a caravan in the back as well as a Bedouin tent. Central in the painting are two delighted Arab men each holding an enslaved woman, one of them completely naked and white, displaying them to invisible buyers. The idea conveyed by the image was of an Arabic man for whom the white woman is both a commodity and an object of sexual desire. In these examples and the debates that ensued, migrants were not per se discussed as people who hate our democracy, or civilization, but as people who never arrived in modernity—as if still in a state of nature, caught up in their sexual drives. Sexuality thus became a hinge to casting the refugees as a threat and to racialize them. On January 13, 2016, the French Charlie Hebdo published a cartoon that underscored the racialization through sexualization in a blunt way. In the upper left corner, we see a small image, a reminder of the toddler’s body on the beach. The main image shows two adult men chasing after two panicking women. The main text reads: “what would little Aylan have become if he had grown up?” The answer is given at the bottom of the cartoon. “A buttocks scooter in Germany.”

One could say that the sexualization of the migrant other makes the threat even more visceral, than a representation of the migrant as a terrorist. The potentiality of his proximity and the violation not of our democracy but of our body feeds into the racist sentiments that have surfaced since these events. The Charlie Hebdo cartoon points in a radical way to a version of sameness, namely sameness as otherness. There are no “innocent migrants,” if that’s what the image of Alan Kurdi is trying to show. All migrants and refugees are bound to turn into this sexual threat, invading our (white European) bodies. This version of sameness, then, racializes through sexualization,29 where the threat of proximity necessarily provokes a response, namely that of distance, exclusion and ultimately, expulsion.

During the past year these sentiments vis-à-vis refugees had flipped dramatically in Europe. Let us take a loop from 2015/16 to 2022 and consider how next to sameness as otherness a sameness as us-ness emerged.

Doing Sameness, Racializing Europe

While the problems of migration and EU responses have accumulated and have become ever uglier, with thousands upon thousands of deaths at Europe’s borders, and while Poland was building walls that trapped migrants and refugees who were trying to find refuge, in February 2022 the war in the Ukraine began. Within the first seven days, almost two million people fled from Ukraine and found a welcoming Europe.30 Governments, the public, and the private sector responded generously, helping people find shelter. Although all those who need shelter should be offered such, it was surprising, as many have observed, to see the difference in sentiment and response toward the refugees from Ukraine versus those from Syria, for example. For my proposes here, the discourse of sameness, and the sense of community and belonging is striking and interesting. To be clear, the problem of Ukrainian refugees and borders is way too complex to address in this chapter.31 Here, I will limit myself to a small collection of quotes from the media to tease out everyday and almost innocent markers that together produce a racialized version of sameness.32

Propagating a politics of xenophobia and expulsion, and while building a wall to keep other people out, Poland opened its arms to welcome hundreds of thousands of refugees from Ukraine, as did other neighboring countries. To explain this political shift in sentiment, in a conversation with journalists, the Bulgarian prime minister Kiril Petkov was quoted as saying: “These are not the refugees we are used to . . . these people are Europeans . . . . These people are intelligent, they are educated people . . . . This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists.”33 The Ukrainian Deputy Chief Prosecutor, David Sakvarelidze, was interviewed on BBC saying, “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed.”34

Various journalists were trying to make sense of the welcoming mode they were witnessing. On NBC, journalist Kelly Cobiella commented on this difference as follows: “Just to put it bluntly, these are not refugees from Syria, these are refugees from neighboring Ukraine. That, quite frankly, is part of it. These are Christians, they’re white, they’re very similar people.” In a similar vein, the Al Jazeera English reporter Peter Dobbie stated: “What’s compelling is looking at them, the way they are dressed. These are prosperous, middle-class people. These are not obviously refugees trying to get away from the Middle East . . . or North Africa. They look like any European family that you’d live next door to.”35 And Daniel Hannan (The Daily Telegraph) commented: “They seem so like us. That is what makes it so shocking. Ukraine is a European country. Its people watch Netflix and have Instagram accounts, vote in free elections and read uncensored newspapers.”36

It is clear that these refugees are different from other refugees, refugees from Syria, for example. These refugees are part of “us.” Just like we saw through the forensic case, sameness as us-ness makes space for individuality, family, and belonging to a community. And just like in that case, religion (Christianity) and whiteness are mobilized as markers of racial belonging. But what is striking are the variety and details of everyday markers of us-ness that have been mobilized to produce sameness and to make them part of us-ness. Blue eyes, blond hair, whiteness, Christianity, well dressed, intelligent, Netflix watching, using Instagram—all become markers of making us-ness: all become markers for making race. Importantly here is that what is racialized, through these very details, is not just Ukrainian refugees but Europe itself. Europe, as democratic, Christian, white, and modern, emerges as the space and a community to which Ukraine, as families and individuals, belong and to which they contribute.