Atlanta Draws Focus in Dutch Push to Boost Black Business After Slavery Apology

As the Netherlands tries to turn its official remorse over its historical role in slavery into action, Atlanta is in a prime position to capitalize on the country’s efforts to help Black-owned firms go global.

When Dutch Ambassador Birgitta Tazelaar visited the African American history museum in Washington upon taking up her posting last year, she was confronted by a display noting that 6 percent of enslaved persons who crossed the Atlantic were transported on Dutch ships.

“It was painful to see,” she said during a Black Business Breakfast organized by the Consulate General of the Netherlands in Atlanta.

Of course, the sea-faring, trade-loving nation’s role in the slave trade has long been acknowledged by scholars. What’s changed is that the government and the monarchy have taken responsibility. King Willem-Alexander in early 2023 followed the prime minister in apologizing for slavery and pledging to continually address its legacy. In a speech, the king pointed to the tragic irony that slavery was banned in Amsterdam, but that Dutch ships moved 600,000 people as property, 75,000 of whom are estimated to have died in transit.

“If we want to share a future, we have to share our past, and we have to reckon as the Netherlands what our role was in the past,” Ms. Tazelaar said in a fireside chat at the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs. “An apology is one thing, but what’s next? What’s next, as we have mentioned, is sitting here with you and trying to see how we can work together, not only to reckon with the past but also because there is opportunity here. We can together build a better world.”

During the discussion with Atlanta Global Shaper and voting rights advocate Evan Malbrough of Our Turn, the ambassador said the Dutch government took a hard look in the mirror after George Floyd’s murder shook the U.S. in 2020.

The foreign ministry, in particular, commissioned an independent investigation in 2022 that ultimately uncovered patterns of discriminatory behavior.

“There were too many examples, so the research had to conclude that there was systematic, institutionalized racism. It was a very, very difficult conclusion, and people were extremely unhappy with it, because nobody sees himself or herself as racist,” she said, giving an example of where she also failed in a conversation with a colleague.

The ministry’s determination to turn those findings into corrective action has influenced the way consulates have reached out to their communities. Based in a city known as the “Black Mecca,” the Atlanta consulate has infused social justice and racial reckoning into many aspects of its outreach.

Following the ambassador’s remarks, a panel discussion at the business breakfast waded into the details of how internationalizing one’s business, through the Netherlands or beyond, could help grow sales and close the yawning wealth gap that plagues Atlanta despite its reputation for Black business success and cultural creation.

A tech consultant who previously ran a global portfolio as a vice president for Coca-Cola Co., Monica McCoy said both customers and capital can be found outside the U.S. if companies are courageous enough to look.

“As much as I love this city, I think that one of the things that really is challenging is first the mindset — the mindset that is possible to do global expansion,” Ms. McCoy said.

Her company, Monica Motivates, has an outpost in London, and she has at times been able to find capital outside the U.S. more readily than at home. As in the Netherlands, government initiatives in many countries are geared toward helping minority-owned businesses, and big corporations in the U.S. will sometimes bring forward-thinking partners into their jurisdictions abroad, she said.

“There’s a lot of momentum going for Black-owned businesses, but you wouldn’t know that if you only pay attention to the headlines here in the United States,” Ms. McCoy said.

Carl Hanna of Evva Health agreed, saying that some of the biggest investors into his AI-powered app for families managing loved ones’ memory care journeys have come from Europe, where he has been invited to pitch at industry conferences.

In November, Mr. Hanna traveled with the Georgia Department of Economic Development to the Medica conference in Düsseldorf, Germany. Once again, he said, his ideas were evaluated on their merit, and he wasn’t limited by someone else’s conception of race.

“You know, here in the U.S., I’m an African American, a Black American,” said Mr. Hanna, a “proud Caribbean” of Haitian descent who has lived in Atlanta for 25 years since graduating from Georgia Tech. “But in Europe, I’m an American.”

Europeans, he said, see working with and investing in Evva as an opportunity to work with a U.S. company — not simply a minority-owned business. The funding conversations are often easier than in the U.S., where nine out of 10 accredited investors are white men.

Finding such partners is crucial to sustaining one’s momentum as a business owner, said Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative CEO Janelle Williams.

“We’re conditioned to run a sprint, but it truly is a marathon, so we get exhausted when the second leg just started,” she said.

Ms. Williams moderated the discussion, which also included input from Monica Calhoun, “people and business partner” at Dutch-based IT firm Xebia, which just held a grand opening of its new Atlanta offices.

Dutch Consul General Jaap Veerman said the Netherlands is keen to be a reliable partner for Atlanta’s Black business community, with ambitions to lead a delegation of Black-owned companies to the country later this year.

Black-owned businesses will be a part of a group joining Atlanta Sustainable Fashion Week on a trip to the Netherlands in May to learn about how the country is solving environmental challenges in the fashion and apparel landscape.

Asked by a crowd member whether the Netherlands would instruct its sovereign wealth fund to invest in Black-owned companies, Ms. Tazelaar, the ambassador, suggested that “translating an apology into funding” might be a bridge too far given the complexity of an issue spanning centuries of history and a vast colonial empire.

“I think we have to find — and this is a personal view — a different way of giving content to that apology,” she said.

Mr. Veerman, the consul general, interjected that the Dutch pension funds are more deeply considering environmental and social goals in their investments, and that areas like affordable housing in the city of Atlanta — framed as a social justice issue — could be construed as attractive targets.

Ms. Williams, however, said her initiative views enhanced access to capital as an acceptable “form of reparations that is necessary, legitimate and has been done before.”

With members of the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency team in the crowd, the ambassador pitched the country of 16 million people as the gateway to Europe, cracking jokes at the expense of some of its competitors.

“We’re not as snobbish as the Brits, not as arrogant as the French, and compared to the Germans we have a sense of humor,” she said, later praising the “European family” of nations as a source of stability and pushing for a firmer U.S. commitment to NATO in the wake of alarming remarks by Republican front-runner and former President Donald Trump.

Other Dutch charms include high levels of English proficiency and standards of living, innovative technologies like chip machinery maker ASML and strong logistical connections to the rest of the continent through the Schiphol Airport and Rotterdam port, she said.

Connect with the Consulate General of the Netherlands here.