A Congresswoman\'s Call for Freedom From the Dutch

September 5, 2012, 4:12 pm

By SAM ROBERTS

Long before television, much less Comedy Central, Karl Marx opined that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, the second time as farce. Which about sums up Representative Yvette D. Clarke's appearance on “The Colbert Report” on Tuesday night.

Recalling the “great mistake” that joined Brooklyn with Manhattan, Stephen Colbert asked Ms. Clarke, a three-term Brooklyn Democratic congresswoman, what message she would send her fellow Brooklynites if she could time-travel back to 1898, when Brooklyn was still a separate city.

“I would say to them, ‘Set me free,'” she replied.

“From?” Mr. Colbert inquired.

“Slavery,” said Ms. Clarke, who is black. < /span>

The usually unflappable Mr. Colbert seemed somewhat flapped. “Slavery. Really,” he said. He gave Ms. Clarke a chance to reconsider her remark. “I didn't realize there was slavery in Brooklyn in 1898.”

The congresswoman stuck to her guns.

“Well, I'm pretty sure there was,” she said.

“Sounds like a horrible part of the United States, that kept slavery going until 1898,” Mr. Colbert said.

“Uhhh…” Ms. Clarke said.

“Who would be enslaving you in 1898 in New York?” Mr. Colbert asked.

“The Dutch.”

“The Dutch!” Mr. Colbert said, labeling them sneaks and calling their parentage into question.

“Exactly,” Ms. Clarke said, nodding.

As Marx (Karl, not Groucho) would probably have known, slavery was legally abolished in New York State in 1827. Moreover, while Brooklyn was named for a Dutch town and was indeed heavily populated by the Dutch in the 17th century, their power to enslave a nyone there pretty much vanished after 1664, when the English seized the Dutch West India Company's settlement in New Amsterdam.

By 1898, about 1 percent of Brooklyn's population was black. The last mayor of Brooklyn, Frederick W. Wurstur, was the son of German, not Dutch, immigrants and opposed consolidation.

“The Dutch certainly did not have control over anything by then,” said Ron Schweiger, the borough historian.

A spokeswoman for Ms. Clarke insisted she was just joshing.

“We were brave enough to go on and it didn't quite work out so well,” said the spokeswoman, Kristia Beaubrun. “It's supposed to be a comedy show, full of humor, and her comments were not meant to be taken seriously. She was just kidding. It's not a question about whether she knows her history.”