Greenland, Denmark, and the US

[Travis B.]

I saw an article in the NYT today about someone of Greenlandic origins (who was adopted by Danish parents and has lived in Denmark most of her life even though she was born in Greenland) who was subjected to the Forældrekompetenceundersøgelse and had her baby taken away from her. (She was 18 and had had a history of being a victim of sexual abuse.) While it was decided earlier this year that Greenlandic parents would not be subjected to this test as it had shown a very clear pattern of being discriminatory against Greenlanders, she was told that she was not "Greenlandic enough".

From reading deeper, there also has been the Spiralkampagn, where very many Greenlandic girls and women (roughly half the fertile population at the time) were forcibly subjected to birth control*, in many cases without their knowledge, ostensibly in the 1960's and 1970's -- but there are no records of it having ever ended, and there are many much more recent incidents of Greelanders being forcibly subjected to birth control more recently than that. And these sorts of things seem to only be a small portion of the mistreatment of the Greenlanders by Denmark.

* And I don't mean being told to take the pill either -- I mean things like secret implantation of IUD's in people who in many cases had never had a child and were unsuitable for IUD's, often resulting in very significant pain and lasting injuries. In many cases people went long periods of time unable to conceive a child and not knowing why, to only discover later that they had had an IUD inserted years before.

So it is no wonder that many Greenlanders want independence from Denmark. If I were a Greenlander I would want independence too myself. However, the problem is that Trump will likely try to annex Greenland if it becomes independent from Denmark, and I think that it is naive to think that switching from being a territory of Denmark to being a territory of the US (it is unlikely that Trump and the Republicans would allow Greenland to become a state) would be much of an improvement with the US's history of its treatment of Native Americans to how it treats them to this very day. This results in a devil-you-know kind of situation. Also, the US government is currently controlled by fascists, while the Danish government, for all its very, very many faults is at least controlled by Social Democrats at the present. It should be noted that roughly 85% of Greenlanders polled do not want to become part of the US.

So what are your thoughts on this?

Edit: It was decided today that Ivana Brønlund would be reunited with her baby -- but the fact that this had to happen in the first place says something.

[Travis B.]

And... on the Internet I see Danes defending the local Danish government which had originally decided to take Ivana Brønlund's baby away, on the basis that they saw her as being rightly regarded as an "unfit" mother due to her history of mental health problems resulting from her past sexual abuse -- even though she was not originally given the chance to prove whether she was a fit mother in the first place (and a standardized test scarcely counts) -- and they seemed to see it as being the responsibility of the government to defend children from "unfit" mothers like her.

They also generally saw the fact that Greenlanders were much more likely than ethnic Danes to fail said standardized test as simply reflecting how Greenlanders were much more likely to be unfit parents, and some of them even defended forced contraception on the basis of that too many Greenlanders were getting pregnant due to sexual abuse and hence something Had To Be Done to keep the population of Greenland from getting too large...

Yeah.

[Flau]

Short answer: I pretty much agree with you.

Since I'm Danish though living abroad, I'll write a long answer as well. You point out the colonial and racist aspects of these two cases, which is of course part of it. Another aspect, which may be of interest to some of the discussions on here, is that this is one flip side of the Social Democratic welfare state as implemented in Denmark. Danish people in general do indeed see it as a government responsibility to protect children from unfit parents (they may not put it quite so explicitly. Also I'm not aware to what extent this is the case in other countries as well - maybe someone else can weigh in on this?). The current prime minister had more forcible adoptions as a stated goal during the last election cycle. Many of the people you saw online likely consider themselves staunch Social Democrats. (Whether a Social Democratic government will help us much in weathering the current right wing populist wave is a discussion for another post).

Now, I am sure that in many cases where children are removed from parents, there actually is a good reason, and the people advocating the former government's policies have only good intentions. However, since mistakes happen and discrimination is always a risk, this is also a system you do not want to find yourself on the receiving end of. I guess the moral of the tale is that even the most well-intentioned government shares an uncanny resemblance to the proverbial Leviathan.

That brings us to the colonialism discussion. The Danish behaviour and attitudes here have been less-than-stellar, to say the least. In general, colonialism has never really been seen as a big deal here, and a lot of people still think we were simply nicer than all the other colonial powers. There's also the way too common (and infuriating) attitude that the Greenlanders are ungrateful, for present subsidies or even past colonialist attempts to modernise the country. Not everyone shares these, of course, but too many do. Also, though Greenland is nominally an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, with its own government and Greenlandic as its official language, in practice it is often not treated on an equal footing with mainland Denmark. As one example of this, until recently Greenlandic MPs would have to pay for their own interpreters if they wished to speak Greenlandic in Parliament. Add to that the Spiral scandal that you mentioned and other similar misdeeds and it's understandable that Greenlanders are, as a political scientist might put it, pretty tired of our shit.

Then Trump entered the stage. At first, many Greenlanders (at least the ones appearing in the media) where thrilled - finally someone to make deals with who would treat Greenland as an equal partner. Also a welcome opportunity to tell the Danes to go away. However, then came the propaganda visits, the influence agents, and the general deterioration of the international situation. This upset much of the public, and maybe convinced them that rocking the boat too much right now might be risky. At the same time, the prime minister made various overtures, symbolic and otherwise, towards Greenland, including opening for reparations in the Spiral case. The upshot of this was a landslide election sending the centre-right Democratic party into government in Greenland. In my limited knowledge, the Democrats take a moderate stance on independence, though nominally in favour of it. It should be noted that there was a big urban/rural divide, with village voters largely supporting pro-independence or Inuit nationalist parties.

So where does that leave us? On one hand, it seems real progress is being made towards treating Greenland as an equal constituent of the country, something we've always claimed to do but often not actually done in practice. On the other hand, I would fear that these improvements get quietly shelved as soon as the crisis is past. Finally, despite all the problems of the present arrangement I would say that opening themselves to a US takeover at this time would probably be the worst possible solution, for the Greenlanders and everyone else. For now it appears the Greenlandic voters agree. That said, I am definitely in favour of Greenlandic independence in a reasonable timeframe, not only as a matter of justice but also for cultural reasons (the cultural divide between Denmark and Greenland is vast, much larger than between Denmark and any other Western country).

I have tried to be as fair and well-reasoned as possible, and hope you can use my long rant for anything.

[Travis B.]

I'm currently reading about whether the coil campaign (i.e. spiralkampagnen in Danish) should rightly be regarded as genocide under the Genocide Convention (to which Denmark is a party), even though it does not fit the 'Holocaust standard', being a case of mass forced birth control targeted at a group as opposed to a case of targeted mass murder.

[Travis B.]

More: show

Short answer: I pretty much agree with you.

Since I'm Danish though living abroad, I'll write a long answer as well. You point out the colonial and racist aspects of these two cases, which is of course part of it. Another aspect, which may be of interest to some of the discussions on here, is that this is one flip side of the Social Democratic welfare state as implemented in Denmark. Danish people in general do indeed see it as a government responsibility to protect children from unfit parents (they may not put it quite so explicitly. Also I'm not aware to what extent this is the case in other countries as well - maybe someone else can weigh in on this?). The current prime minister had more forcible adoptions as a stated goal during the last election cycle. Many of the people you saw online likely consider themselves staunch Social Democrats. (Whether a Social Democratic government will help us much in weathering the current right wing populist wave is a discussion for another post).

Now, I am sure that in many cases where children are removed from parents, there actually is a good reason, and the people advocating the former government's policies have only good intentions. However, since mistakes happen and discrimination is always a risk, this is also a system you do not want to find yourself on the receiving end of. I guess the moral of the tale is that even the most well-intentioned government shares an uncanny resemblance to the proverbial Leviathan.

That brings us to the colonialism discussion. The Danish behaviour and attitudes here have been less-than-stellar, to say the least. In general, colonialism has never really been seen as a big deal here, and a lot of people still think we were simply nicer than all the other colonial powers. There's also the way too common (and infuriating) attitude that the Greenlanders are ungrateful, for present subsidies or even past colonialist attempts to modernise the country. Not everyone shares these, of course, but too many do. Also, though Greenland is nominally an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, with its own government and Greenlandic as its official language, in practice it is often not treated on an equal footing with mainland Denmark. As one example of this, until recently Greenlandic MPs would have to pay for their own interpreters if they wished to speak Greenlandic in Parliament. Add to that the Spiral scandal that you mentioned and other similar misdeeds and it's understandable that Greenlanders are, as a political scientist might put it, pretty tired of our shit.

Then Trump entered the stage. At first, many Greenlanders (at least the ones appearing in the media) where thrilled - finally someone to make deals with who would treat Greenland as an equal partner. Also a welcome opportunity to tell the Danes to go away. However, then came the propaganda visits, the influence agents, and the general deterioration of the international situation. This upset much of the public, and maybe convinced them that rocking the boat too much right now might be risky. At the same time, the prime minister made various overtures, symbolic and otherwise, towards Greenland, including opening for reparations in the Spiral case. The upshot of this was a landslide election sending the centre-right Democratic party into government in Greenland. In my limited knowledge, the Democrats take a moderate stance on independence, though nominally in favour of it. It should be noted that there was a big urban/rural divide, with village voters largely supporting pro-independence or Inuit nationalist parties.

So where does that leave us? On one hand, it seems real progress is being made towards treating Greenland as an equal constituent of the country, something we've always claimed to do but often not actually done in practice. On the other hand, I would fear that these improvements get quietly shelved as soon as the crisis is past. Finally, despite all the problems of the present arrangement I would say that opening themselves to a US takeover at this time would probably be the worst possible solution, for the Greenlanders and everyone else. For now it appears the Greenlandic voters agree. That said, I am definitely in favour of Greenlandic independence in a reasonable timeframe, not only as a matter of justice but also for cultural reasons (the cultural divide between Denmark and Greenland is vast, much larger than between Denmark and any other Western country).

I have tried to be as fair and well-reasoned as possible, and hope you can use my long rant for anything.

The thing is that the combination of lingering colonialism and the welfare state is the perfect recipe for paternalism, which is very evident in the apparent Danish attitudes towards Greenland. It is so easy to justify to yourself being a colonialist when you have convinced yourself that your colonialism is for their good, and when they object to it they are being ungrateful for your 'civilizing mission'.

Such logic has been used to justify colonialism the world over (cf. 'White Man's Burden'), so the idea that Danish colonialism towards Greenland is somehow 'more benign' than others' colonialism is really a lie that Danes tell themselves.

If anything, this is worse in a way than more consciously malign colonialism (cf. apartheid), in that the latter is easier to object to because it is easier to convince people of how it is wrong, and even those responsible for it at some level know what they have been doing is wrong. Only the most right-wing Afrikaners today openly defend apartheid (even if singing Die Stem is popular in some circles), whereas in this case we have Danes openly defending forced contraception convinced that it was the Right Thing to do and that the Greenlanders should have been grateful for it.

[Flau]

The thing is that the combination of lingering colonialism and the welfare state is the perfect recipe for paternalism, which is very evident in the apparent Danish attitudes towards Greenland. It is so easy to justify to yourself being a colonialist when you have convinced yourself that your colonialism is for their good, and when they object to it they are being ungrateful for your 'civilizing mission'.

Such logic has been used to justify colonialism the world over (cf. 'White Man's Burden'), so the idea that Danish colonialism towards Greenland is somehow 'more benign' than others' colonialism is really a lie that Danes tell themselves.

If anything, this is worse in a way than more consciously malign colonialism (cf. apartheid), in that the latter is easier to object to because it is easier to convince people of how it is wrong, and even those responsible for it at some level know what they have been doing is wrong.

This is pretty spot on, I think.

Only the most right-wing Afrikaners today openly defend apartheid (even if singing Die Stem is popular in some circles), whereas in this case we have Danes openly defending forced contraception convinced that it was the Right Thing to do and that the Greenlanders should have been grateful for it.

To be fair, I haven’t seen people outright defending that (maybe if you go on Reddit?). What’s more common is defences of the former policy of closing down villages and moving the inhabitants to big concrete blocks, or the subtly discriminatory practices of the Child Protective Services that you mentioned. Not that those are justifiable either.

Edit: On rereading, I just noticed you’d seen people doing exactly that…Well, in that case things are worse than I thought.

[Ares Land]

Thank you, Flau, for your answers. I think we're learning a lot here.

Danish people in general do indeed see it as a government responsibility to protect children from unfit parents (they may not put it quite so explicitly. Also I'm not aware to what extent this is the case in other countries as well - maybe someone else can weigh in on this?).

In terms of expectations, here in France this is true as well but very likely to a lesser extent. (This is compensated by the attitude that not too much taxpayer money should be spent on it, which causes horrible situations in different ways.)
I think Denmark is not an exception in this; similar abuses have occured or might be still occuring in French overseas départements and territories. There was a pretty nasty case involving Réunion in the 60s. It's quite possible abuses are occuring in, for instance, New Caledonia or Guyane, we're just not aware of it.

(Whether a Social Democratic government will help us much in weathering the current right wing populist wave is a discussion for another post).

I'd be glad to hear your views on this!
Our right-wingers are pretty enamored of Denmark.
They feel that Denmark will successfully avert right-wing populism because (in their view) the Danish Social Democrats are tough on crime, and more importantly tough on immigration.
The view is more generally is that Social Democracy works in Denmark but cannot possibly work in France, because the Danes are strict on immigration whereas we are dangerously lax.

[Flau]

Thank you, Flau, for your answers. I think we're learning a lot here.

No problem, I'm glad they made sense! I responded to your other question in the elections thread.

Danish people in general do indeed see it as a government responsibility to protect children from unfit parents (they may not put it quite so explicitly. Also I'm not aware to what extent this is the case in other countries as well - maybe someone else can weigh in on this?).

In terms of expectations, here in France this is true as well but very likely to a lesser extent. (This is compensated by the attitude that not too much taxpayer money should be spent on it, which causes horrible situations in different ways.)
I think Denmark is not an exception in this; similar abuses have occured or might be still occuring in French overseas départements and territories. There was a pretty nasty case involving Réunion in the 60s. It's quite possible abuses are occuring in, for instance, New Caledonia or Guyane, we're just not aware of it.

Thanks for your perspective - I must admit I know very little of the still existing French overseas territories.

In recent developments on this topic, the Danish prime minister has formally apologised to the victims of forced contraception today. According to the linked article (unfortunately in Danish and behind paywall), she was expected to be met with a silent protest. The apology is of course mainly symbolic, but the admission of responsibility probably opens new legal avenues for the victims currently suing the government.

[Travis B.]

Danish people in general do indeed see it as a government responsibility to protect children from unfit parents (they may not put it quite so explicitly. Also I'm not aware to what extent this is the case in other countries as well - maybe someone else can weigh in on this?).

In terms of expectations, here in France this is true as well but very likely to a lesser extent. (This is compensated by the attitude that not too much taxpayer money should be spent on it, which causes horrible situations in different ways.)
I think Denmark is not an exception in this; similar abuses have occured or might be still occuring in French overseas départements and territories. There was a pretty nasty case involving Réunion in the 60s. It's quite possible abuses are occuring in, for instance, New Caledonia or Guyane, we're just not aware of it.

Thanks for your perspective - I must admit I know very little of the still existing French overseas territories.

I myself have read that there have been abuses in the French overseas départements and territories (e.g. nuclear testing in French Polynesia), but I am not familiar with the details myself.

In recent developments on this topic, the Danish prime minister has formally apologised to the victims of forced contraception today. According to the linked article (unfortunately in Danish and behind paywall), she was expected to be met with a silent protest. The apology is of course mainly symbolic, but the admission of responsibility probably opens new legal avenues for the victims currently suing the government.

It is mostly symbolic, yes, but it is still a step in the right direction. In many cases like these, the government of the state responsible will not even issue an actual apology, symbolic or not.