Posted: Tue 14 Jun 2005 20:22 Post subject: Missing Ala. Teenager Case Highlights Race
What is interesting is that the racism allegations all come from outside of Arba. Inside the people insist that race relations are not much of a problem. It is also interesting that it is stated the black Americans are "jumping to conclusions". And finally, it states that classism may have played a part - in keeping with what we've said about class superceding race in latin America (not sure if Aruba is pt of Latin America but still.
It goes gack to what we said about Americans looking at everything hrough an American (race-based) lens.
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Missing Ala. Teenager Case Highlights Race
By MICHAEL NORTON, Associated Press Writer
Mon Jun 13, 4:53 PM ET
ORANJESTAD, Aruba - When a white teenager from Alabama disappeared, the search drew people from every shade of the rainbow-hued population on Aruba, a Dutch Caribbean island where 52 ethnic groups coexist relatively peacefully and four of every 10 people are immigrants.
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Still, the case brought questions about Aruba's race relations after two black men were quickly detained for investigation while three lighter-skinned men who were last seen with Natalee Holloway weren't taken into custody until later.
Arubans — who are descended from Africans, Asians, Europeans and indigenous Indians — are overwhelmingly adamant that the island has an unusual degree of colorblindness. Even defense lawyers and friends of the black men say race had nothing to do with it.
"Racism you have everywhere. But I refuse, as an intelligent person, to believe that the racial issue has influenced the Aruba justice system," said Noriana Pietersz, who is representing one of the two black men, Nick John.
John is a naturalized Aruban citizen born on the island of Grenada; Pietersz is a black native of neighboring Curacao who is married to a white Dutchman.
Alvin Cornett, a 33-year-old friend of the other black suspect, Abraham Jones, also discounted race as a factor on Aruba. "It's a peaceful place between the races," he said.
Julia Renfro, editor of Aruba Today, said the English-language newspaper received 250 e-mails about race in Aruba after the detention of the black men, but none came from within Aruba. Renfro, a white American who has lived here for 15 years, said black Americans were jumping to false conclusions.
"It's not like the Dutch people walk around and order Arubans around," Renfro said. "These two men are in jail because somebody pointed the finger at them and because the prosecutor and judges think they have enough evidence to keep them in jail."
Surinamese of East Indian descent on Aruba said they hadn't seen any backlash toward them since two brothers from their small community, Satish and Deepak Kalpoe, were taken into custody in the case along with a 17-year-old Dutch friend.
"The Arubans are kind and cooperative people. We've never had any problems here," said Raj Misier, the 52-year-old owner of a car rental company who has lived in Aruba 11 years.
Aruba was claimed by the Spanish in 1499, but they didn't consider it worth colonizing and shipped the indigenous Arawak Indians off to Hispaniola to work and die in the copper mines. The Dutch seized Aruba in 1636 and used it to graze livestock as a source of meat for other Caribbean islands.
In 1986, Aruba seceded from the Netherlands Antilles and became an autonomous Dutch territory that has been experiencing a construction boom fed by growing tourism. Offshore banking and oil refining also are important for the island, whose 97,000 people have average incomes of $22,000 a year.
Dutch is the official language, but almost everyone speaks Papiamento, a Creole language with vocabulary drawn from Spanish, Portuguese and English — a reflection of the island's varied population and history.
"Compared to other countries, racism is rather insignificant in Aruba," said political scientist Jocelyne Croes.
Croes' grandfather came to Aruba from Haiti in the 1950s. Her mother is Aruban, like her husband, who is an artist and gallery owner. She went to school with children of Aruban, Chinese and Dutch origin.
It wasn't until she attended Brandeis University in Massachusetts that she became conscious of color, Croes said. Because of her dark-olive skin, she was labeled as Hispanic, she said.
On Aruba, "there are a lot of interracial marriages," she said.
Some Arubans say that while race may not have played a role in the detentions, class could have. The Dutch man in police custody is the privileged son of a Justice Ministry official, and his two Surinamese friends are from a middle-class family.
The two detained blacks, meanwhile, live in a poor town of oil refinery workers. Cornett said his friend was taken in by police because he is "a regular guy."
Authorities insist they are doing everything they can to keep life safe and happy on the island, which has one of the lowest crime rates in the Caribbean.
"We want this case to be solved as quickly as possible," said Prime Minister Nelson Oduber, who is of European and Arawak extraction. "On this island, nobody stands above the law."
Posted: Tue 14 Jun 2005 21:31 Post subject: Re: Missing Ala. Teenager Case Highlights Race
Liana wrote:
What is interesting is that the racism allegations all come from outside of Arba. Inside the people insist that race relations are not much of a problem. It is also interesting that it is stated the black Americans are "jumping to conclusions". And finally, it states that classism may have played a part - in keeping with what we've said about class superceding race in latin America (not sure if Aruba is pt of Latin America but still.
It goes gack to what we said about Americans looking at everything hrough an American (race-based) lens.
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Could be. Some of my family members swear race played a role in all of this.
Arubans, who are primarily mestizos, are often assumed to be racist by some Caribbean people. Many people assume they are white people or think of themselves as white.
If memory serves CNN or MSNBC interviewed a black female immigrant in Aruba who appeared to be from the English-speaking Caribbean. She insisted that race played a role.
It's revealing that one of the black suspects' lawyer insists the racial angle is nonsense. Class may have played more of a role in all of this.
According to MSNBC, the two men have been released. If they stayed in custody we may have been treated to Al Sharpton taking a trip to Aruba to demand their freedom or going on a hunger strike until they were released.
Answer depends on nationality, culture
By Christy Oglesby
CNN
Wednesday, June 15, 2005 Posted: 7:23 PM EDT (2323 GMT)
(CNN) -- The last people to see Natalee Holloway on the night she disappeared in Aruba were the white teenage son of a local judge and two middle-class young men of Surinamese descent, according to local police.
Within days of when Holloway was last seen in the early hours of May 30, Aruban police arrested two black security guards who worked at a hotel near where she was staying.
One question swirling around the investigation was whether police initially targeted the security guards -- who were released without charges eight days later -- as suspects at least in part because of their race or class.
Views on that question depend on who is speaking and on what may be differing cultural frames of reference for people living in Aruba and in the United States.
Police have not said why or how they identified the guards, Abraham Jones, 28, and Mickey John, 30, as suspects.
But apparently they were led to them based on the words of three young men who were the last people reported seen with Holloway the night she disappeared.
The men reportedly told police they took her to a beach after leaving an Oranjestad nightclub and not long afterward returned her to her hotel, the Holiday Inn.
Two of the men, brothers Satish Kalpoe, 18, and Depak Kalpoe, 21, reportedly described Holloway as stumbling on the way into the hotel, possibly as a result of alcohol, and that a "dark-colored" man in a black T-shirt with a radio helped her, according to police statements.
They said their friend, Joran Van Der Sloot, 17, the son of an Aruban judge, was with them when they dropped her off. Police allowed all three to go after initial questioning.
Jones and John were released Monday. The Kalpoe brothers and Van Der Sloot were arrested last Thursday and remain in custody without charges. Their attorneys maintain the men are innocent.
After his release, John told reporters Depak Kalpoe confided to him while they were in jail together that he had lied to police. John said Kalpoe also apologized for getting him and Jones into "that mess."
"He [Depak] told me that the story about dropping the girl off at the Holiday Inn was all made up," John said.
Not long after they were arrested June 5, the mother of Mickey John told CNN why she thought her son and his co-worker were detained.
"The problem is, and I will say it plain, they have a color question in Aruba." Ann John said.
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