The Dutch: Traditional, or Racist?

[MADem]

17. I think an awareness on a national level of the realities of racism is a first step.

We sure as hell have a ways to go, but we do have that "awareness" working.

You're right about those guys "starting it." Heck, they had it down to a science centuries before John Hancock put his, er, John Hancock on the Declaration of Independence!

I find the pushback on this "cultural tradition," though, problematic. It's true that they aren't alone in Europe-there are lots of rightwing groups (France, Italy, e.g.) that pound the racist drum incessantly.

Europe never had to deal with racism in the past because their societies were more homogeneous. People who were of different races and ethnicities were rare, and welcomed, feted, even, precisely because they WERE rare--they had a certain cachet. When people who were "different" started becoming common, particularly in the 2nd half of the 20th Century onward, though, they weren't quite so loved or welcomed--they started to be viewed as competitors for finite resources, and resented. So much for Kumbayah!