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PHILIPSBURG – Omayra Leeflang, the former Minister of Education, Science, Sport and culture of the former Netherlands Antilles expressed her opinion about the history of slavery almost twenty years ago during presentation at a primary school in Sint Maarten. “I am not a slave. I was born free,” she said on that occasion.
In an interview that was recently published on the website of curacao.nu, Leeflang shows that she has stuck to her beliefs throughout the years. Reacting to the Dutch plans to establish a thinktank designed to create measures for dealing with the history of slavery she said that she will not be labeled as “a descendant with traumas and health problems. “That is a stigma,” she said,
The University of Amsterdam researched the effect of slavery on health and sent its report to the Dutch parliament. Leeflang objects to the fact that the history of slavery is consistently linked to victimhood.
“That approach is the pitfall of the complete slavery history,” the 71-year old former minister is quoted as saying, adding that the term descendant implies that people are the heirs of a criminal system. “And now they add that you are having health problems and traumas. You are seen as a problem. Who is going to accept such a mark?”
Leeflag is not having it. She feels that, as a black woman, she is being addressed personally when groups are defined as the carriers of an historic trauma. “I take my distance from that. This affects me directly. Labeling us as descendants results in a systemic form of stigma that can even have racist characteristics.”
Leeflang also contests the idea that current health and social problems are a result of slavery, saying that the idea lacks convincing evidence. “Some studies contest the epigenetic transfer of trauma,” she says. “There is no absolute proof.”
Leeflang maintains that upbringing and education are the decisive factors for having opportunities in life. She refers to her own youth where her parents told her not to set limits for herself based on social expectations. The Dutch expression “those who are born for a dime will never become an quarter” was forbidden in the Leeflang household. “My father said: I have become a quarter and you will become a guilder.”
Progress cannot be achieved by hammering on historic victimhood, she notes. “It is about strengthening education and fighting poverty. Invest in education, invest in opportunities, but don’t put a label on people. Otherwise we keep looking back at the past while we keep staring at today’s problems.”
Leeflang emphasizes that she is not denying or downplaying the history of slavery, adding that racism an inequality still exist and have real consequences. “As a black woman I have to work ten times as hard to get the same opportunities,” she says.
The former minister and current influencer says that the debate must shift from biological and historic explanations to present day solutions. “The past is not the problem. The problem is how we use it. If we want to throw money at it, we must focus on fighting poverty and strengthening education. That is where the real answers are.”
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