Earlier this week I heard Halleh Ghorashi speak in a lecture “Give Space to Diversity”. She is a Iranian-Dutch woman and has a refreshing approach to integration in the Netherlands.

In an entry in May 2007 I already mentioned the concept of hybrid (connected to progress) shortly. Halleh Ghorashi focuses on this concept in the context of realising that a person is not just a blind carrier of his culture, but makes liaisons between the cultures that he or she encorporates (this reminds me of “Identités Meutrières” of the French-Libanese author Amin Maalouf).
Democracy, she says, means giving space to the minority, giving space to being different, to being a cultural hybrid. We cannot move ahead if we see the other as ‘the absolute other’: this leaves nothing in common and no way to connect. Due to Dutch history Dutch people are still used, onconsiously maybe, to put groups of people in boxes (it’s only 50 years ago that people from protestant and catholic societies would not mix).

In a training on Deep Democracy a while ago I learned about giving voice to the minority and realising that the minority holds a part of the wisdom of the whole group. In the context of Dutch integration it would mean realising that former migrants are as much part of Dutch society as the ‘autochtone Dutch’ are and that they hold a part of the wisdom of our shared society. Weneed to build the present and future together to be able to move ahead in a consructive way.

…more about this soon, I hope!…