Dutch Foreign Ministry apologises for ‘institutional racism’: “A number of employees have said that people have been referred to as ‘monkeys’, ‘bokitos’, ‘negroes’ and ‘Black Pete’ because of their skin colour,” the report said.

11 comments

1. >The Netherlands has long promoted its image as a liberal and multicultural society, but the country has in recent years been reckoning with its history as a colonial and slave-trading power.

   They decreed themselves to be liberal and multicultural and they seem to be paying attention to the right problems in order to become more so. They are doing all right in my book.

2. Why does every European nations needs to be multicultural and liberal ?

3. Monthly ritual humiliation of an european country over exaggerated racism claims by woke activists.

4. These articles are good, not only that these hypocrites are being exposed, but that we can also see who these social media apologists and enablers are when they come crawling out from under their stones bemoaning that their unicellular muggy view of otherness is being attacked once again.

5. Bokitos? Is there any link with the famous caraïbean bokit sandwich?

6. Taking a break from hating on Romanians lol

7. I am not suprised that they found these racial slurs in chatrooms. People, especially above 45yo, tend to use a lot of racial slurs. Even if they know plenty of people of that racial background that they do like. They just don’t seem to see the harm in it, despite how many times you point it out or how many times you visually cringe when they do.

   Ironicaly a lot of Dutch and Flemish people claim that Black Pete isn’t related to racism and just a fun figure for kids. Yet it is clear that racist people love using it as an insult towards black people.

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   Context:

   Historically Black Pete was a slave that was liberated by Saint Nicholas. Past century has made it so that the new narative is that he’s black from the soot in the chimney. Which ofcourse does not make sense as his clothes are clean and his lips are red and he wear earrings… just like the 19th to mid-20th century caricatures of Africans… he also wears the uniform of a moorish page.

   Ofcourse breaking with tradition is hard, so rather than removing the figure completely, it was made so that he is now just a regular person with black soot smudges over his clothes and body.

   People of various political branches hated this change, but thede days it is mostly right-winger that hate it. Or at least in Flanders. It was also a bigger outrage in the Netherlands, or at least it seemed to be on social media.

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   Insitutional racism is however a lot of steps further. Actively discriminating people on race, especially at a government institution, should be a firable offense.

   In Belgium it would lead to a massive lawsuit by Unia, if they get proof.

8. About time

9. But that is not institutional racism? It’s straight up open regular racism.

10. I seriously don’t get it, why apologize for something another generation has done in the past?

11. The Dutch being racist wow who could have known.