Oh Happy Day....

When I was a high school student in Ann Arbor, Michigan, one of my good friends was a member of the Holy Rollers congregation. As I understood it from her, at the Holy Rollers, everyone stands up, sings and dances together. Every Sunday, it's one big celebration. When she told me about it, I found it a little silly; all of that over-joyous, fevered singing embarrassed me.

Incidentally, my friend, an African American, was one of the smartest students in a high school, in a town, with one of the top Universities in the United States. She's a lawyer in Atlanta now.

Every now and again in my cramped life in The Netherlands, I explore Internet radio. In the past few days I've started to appreciate African American gospel music. And I find myself thinking, there's no place like home.... It's wonderfully exuberant music. This, combined with footage of African American women giving their opinions from beauty parlors on Obama and Hilary has made me a bit envious of Black American communities. They seem so tightly knit. They have each other.

As a student at New York's Hunter College, I worked with several African Americans on the school newspaper. They are all intelligent, ambitious young people who went on to respectable careers.

While at Hunter I also had the privilege of tutoring numerous young African American college students who'd come from inner city schools. They were all hard working, holding jobs, and sometimes raising children, while studying. I'm sure they all "made it." They were lovely people, and it was a joy to help them learn to become better writers.

I also lived in Black Harlem, 110th Street and 5th Avenue in the late 1980s. The turn-styles in the Subway were permanently broken, and almost no one ever threw a token into the box set up at the entrance. I even dared not to throw a token in there a few times....

Funnily enough, while at Hunter, I also ran for office with a group of African American students head by a huge black guy with corn rows. They had their own newspaper at school, and were known never to associate with white students on principle. But they associated with me. I was glad. We never became good friends, and we lost the race, but we were always friendly with each other after that. It was something I liked doing, building bridges across boundaries that other people weren't willing to cross. I've said it before. I've always felt like I had no boundaries.

The Netherlands is a different kind of place, even more segregated and rigid than the supposedly deeply divided United States. You'd think that because I have European heritage (I'm about as white and blond as they come), and come from a "Western" country, I'd be accepted into the fold here, but it isn't the case. Even when I think I've made a friend with a Dutch person, that person always puts up a wall for me. I feel like I'm constantly being judged. My Dutch is perfectly good, but it's never good enough, and no one here has ever put their faith in me, given me a chance. It's like the land of zero opportunity. If I'm lucky, I might get thrown a few scraps here and there. After I moved here I got job offers at Newsweek, Business Week in New York, but no one called me for any jobs here.

A popular theme in Dutch media is of the "underdog" African American communities in the United States. The Dutch media adores pointing a finger at the United States for not taking care of its African American citizens. There are undoubtedly problems in many of these communities, but there also exists in many parts of the United States, strong communities of African Americans, and there are many thousands of success stories.

Last week I went to the book signing of a (white) Dutch (male) thriller writer who's making his career out of writing books about African American "loosers." He won an award for his first novel, and is gaining momentum in his career here and in other non-English speaking countries.

Funny. It struck me. There wasn't a single black person at the signing. His book is called "Born Loosers," in Dutch, or Geboren Verliezers. I don't know why he's chosen this as a subject matter, but it struck me that he doesn't know a single black person, probably never has, never will. Certainly he's never known an African American. I suppose the premise of the book is to lambast and mock the United States. He was called the best thriller writer in the Dutch language in the most prestigious Dutch paper, the NRC Handelsblad.

Yesterday I read an article about Jimmy Breslin in the New York Times. One of his premises as a journalist is that when someone fails, there's always a story. He's well-known for having contacts in the mob, and for interviewing the boxer who lost. Maybe it's true. Perhaps failure does make a better story.

Last year I took my kids to the World Museum in Rotterdam where they have an exhibit for children of hotel rooms in different parts of the world. With a glint in her eye, the receptionist sent us to the Native American room. They didn't have much to say about Native Americans, their cultures, languages, customs, way of living. But they did have a lot to say about how persecuted they've been since white Europeans landed on their territory many hundreds of years ago. They spoke about the persecution done by white Americans, not white Europeans. I know about this history, and it has saddened me much of my life. But I also think that there's something to be said about saying something positive about a person's culture, and this is what the Dutch museum was wont to do. Native Americans say this themselves. They're ready to move on as communities, and they too would like to focus on the positive aspects of what being them is all about.

I'm ready to move on, too.... Maybe I'll go join the Holy Rollers.