Hallo, hoe gaat het? Ik heb de laatste tijd gesprekken gehad met kennissen over racisme in Nederland, maar ik krijg ze er niet van overtuigd dat het nog bestaat. Zij “zien geen kleur, dus er is geen racisme”. Waar kan ik bronnen vinden waar zwart op wit staat dat er racisme in Nederland is? Het liefst van 3e-generatie of langer, want anders komen ze met het commentaar dat die mensen terug naar hun eigen land moeten. (Zij zien niet in dat dit ook racistisch is)
You come to this blog which, if you’ve read at least the front page, you would see it’s written exclusively in English and you ask a question in Dutch. I grant you, perhaps you are not comfortable writing in English but then, in that case, you would say something along the lines of “I hope it’s OK for you if I write this in Dutch”. But no, you, a white Dutch man, come to me and won’t even respect the space I have created for myself in a language of my choice. This is exactly the white Dutch colonial mentality that I resist through the creation of this blog and actually through everything I write, publish and say in social media on a daily basis.
How presumptuous must one be to not respect the boundaries set by a woman who writes in English for years? And more to the point, how presumptuous and aggressive must one be to use the exact same methodology deployed by the State to discipline this woman on a daily basis (you are, I expect, aware of the threats of deportation for immigrants who do not pass the “integration course” and show proficiency in the Dutch language). And yet, you come here with exact the same mentality that made me start this blog in the first place: the expectation that I not only speak the language but that I am comfortable and happy with the demands that I use it at all times.
NO. There are no answers to this or any other question from white dutch folks that come to my territory forcing upon me the same mentality I am forced to resist every day. NO. There are no answers for colonizers.
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