Belgium is a failed state. For a long time–nearly a year–there was no government, in the parliamentary sense of government. There’d been an election, but the vote was too ethno-linguistically fractured, and the parties were unable to negotiate a coalition government. To repeat, Belgium–Belgium!–had no prime minister because of ethnic tensions between the Walloons and the Flemish (French and Dutch, basically). Now the northern, wealthier half (the Flemish) are pushing for autonomy. And just when we’d all gone ahead and forgotten that people in Western Europe have ethnicity too.
There are a few things that are interesting about this. One, I think all of our bemusement, including my own, has got a weird racial tinge to it. News coverage and writing about this tends to be of the “Oh Belgium, don’t you know that white people are supposed to get along?” variety. For examples:
- my first paragraph;
- the fact that the linked NYTimes article is in the Arts section(!);
- the fact that the linked NYTimes article is on the most e-mailed list. If this were a story about Chad, where do you think it would be? (Unwritten, probably.)
How easy to forget what Europe was when our grandparents were born:
Rough to be Poland, huh? (BBC)
Ethnicity redrew that map. But maybe it’s safe not to be troubled by it now. The fact of the EU and impossibility of Belgium dissolving into civil war do make it all seem inconsequential, and thus funny.
But then there’s this second question. If it’s all so inconsequential, what are they fighting about? There’s no political or racial repression. The Flemish are wealthier than the Walloons, but they’re the ones who want to secede. Two explanations, the same ones we always come up with for issues of cultural conflict. It might be economic, like Santa Monica and the Valley trying to secede from LA. Rich people don’t want to share a jurisdiction with poor people (not that anybody in Belgium is poor like south-central, but anyway), because the wealth will get redistributed. Or it might be cultural–the Flemish just don’t want to share a country and its institutions with the Walloons:
Francophones have now come to talk about “linguistic cleansing.” Flemish, many of them openly resentful of subsidizing poorer French-speaking compatriots, who for years lorded it over them economically and otherwise (unemployment today is three times higher in rust-belt Wallonia), say the issue is preserving national heritage.
It’s not quite clear to me what it means to preserve national heritage in this case. Preserve it from what? This whole big article is about how there’s no interaction between the two halves. How is the Flemish heritage being degraded? As in the subsequent quote, there’s an obvious sense that Flemish culture is under attack, and a total lack of specific characterization or identification of the attack. This is one of those arguments like “Gay marriage undermines the meaning of traditional marriage” that seems unable to answer the question “How so?” because it has little or no content beyond “We think they’re icky.”
“It’s gotten to the point that landlords want to rent only to Flemish speakers,” he said. “I used to hire Flemish workers for building projects in Francophone areas, but now French workers need to speak Dutch to be hired by Flemish bosses. At my bank, documents are in Flemish and if you ask for them in French you’re told they’re out.”
Ms. Witte, the historian, responded: “Years ago many Flemish went to places like Liège in Wallonia to work and never got the reciprocity Francophones in the Flemish parts of Belgium now want. Even today, there is still a feeling among Francophones that French is so important they don’t need to learn Dutch.”
Asked if the Flemish side, at this point dominant, might be more linguistically accommodating, Ms. Witte, who’s Flemish, paused.
“In a global society, nations are less important,” she answered. “It’s a moral question. Does a culture have a right to stand up for itself? More than that: Do unity and nationhood take priority over one’s culture? That’s not just an issue for Belgians but everyone.”
As far as I can tell, the Flemish just dislike the Walloons, or, perhaps equally likely, all of this is sublimated economic tension. I think nothing is as infuriating as people who are convinced that the obligation to live on equal terms with fellow citizens and human beings constitutes an attack on their own freedom. It’s not surprising to find out that the party of Flemish secession, the Vlaams Belang, also wants to deport insufficiently assimilated immigrants. Merely sharing a patch of dirt with another tribe is not a circumstance that necessitates a particular “right to stand up.” Sit down.
