Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

I spent 6 months resident in Amsterdam and I have mixed feelings about Dutch attitudes to other races. On the whole it's a very low key, mind-your-own business culture but it has a small but vocal cohort of ultra-nationalists who are vocally opposed to Islamic faith symbols, people of colour, you-name-it.

I routinely heard Dutch neighbours discuss the concerns the non Dutch native working in childcare centres would mean their kids "didn't learn Dutch properly" or "didn't fit in" -dutch people can be very welcoming of visitors but they also form strong bonds early in childhood and hold on for life. Admitting foreigners into the inner circle, the more private space, isn't that common. (This may be an Amsterdam thing but I'm told over in Maastricht people are even more insular, yet Maastricht had a very gay tolerant local administration for years)

Some of this is just "speak Dutch and fit in" and If I lived in a state with so many expatriates who refuse to learn Dutch and rely on the states mandatory 65% pass mark in English to graduate highschool I too might carry resentment.

Some of this reflects the huge numbers of immigrants from former Dutch colonies in Indonesia and Surinam and a very odd mix of views about them, half pride, half embarrassment (at what was perpetrated on their culture) and all dutch: "at least they mostly speak Dutch even if I am racist about them"

Some of this is the general Dutch "fuck you" which goes on at all levels: try to use a 50 euro note.. fuck you. Try to order in a Cafe 45min before closing time.. fuck you. Try to call up to change your residency registration.. fuck you. It's OK, it's normal, they'd do it to each other too. You just ring back later, try next door, move on.

A lot of this is a reaction to a liberal refugee resettlement policy which caused some ghettoisation and drug gang problems (there was a shooting two doors down from my flat at a shisha lounge reflecting this and people list suburbs they think are "not dutch" or "not safe").

It's not new. The Dutch had nazi sympathisers as well as war resistors.

What's admirable is that the government appears to accept the fine. My own country (australia) has similar problems and is more likely to deny this kind of finding or refuse to pay it.

> On the whole it's a very low key, mind-your-own business culture but it has a small but vocal cohort of ultra-nationalists who are vocally opposed to Islamic faith symbols, people of colour, you-name-it.

If the shoe was on the other foot—and it was African or south Asian refugees moving to the Muslim countries these immigrants came from—it wouldn’t be a “small but vocal minority” of nationalists. The government would be moving them to a remote island, like Bangladesh is doing to the Rohingya: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/25/bangladesh-resumes.... They wouldn’t be allowed to teach kids—they’d be relegated to manual labor. In Saudi, for example, 90% of teachers in girl’s schools must be citizens, and it’s virtually impossible for non-Saudis to get citizenship.

The Dutch are just acting like normal people. It’s a small minority of people—mostly white Europeans—that actually seem to enjoy foreigners coming in and creating economic and cultural conflict and challenges.

Yeah, from a historical perspective, it’s a miracle that the modern west is not more racist.

“We have primitive instincts, medieval institutions, and God-like technology.” — EO Wilson

Indeed. On a related note, I find the criticism of US leadership (often much older folks as leader usually are) being “too white” a bit odd when the US was almost 90% white up until the 1970’s.[1]. Which actually surprised me as I thought it was much lower.

So just assuming most leaders are 50+, just by probability you’d assume 80%+ would be white if they were educated in the 1980’s.

Obviously there is work to do in term of women leaders as well as African Americans who have been underrepresented, but it’s odd to expect the people running the country and businesses who were educated in 1980’s to reflect 2020 demographics.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic...

Whilst not denying it, this is a very Dutch argument: yea, we're a bit shitty, but not as shitty as the other guy!

I loved my time in the Netherlands. I'd love to go back. But I think it's good to be eyes-wide-open about things. What I read about Denmark is not dissimilar: hugely tolerant as long as you put your dustbin out with the handle the right way round on the right day, at the right time. Otherwise, you're in for a fight.

Oliebollen forever!

For me it comes from Asian anti-utopianism. “No point getting so worked up about the way humans just are.”

I didn't want to chime in because Dutch colonialism etc. but still....

There has to be a place in the global stage for whites/caucasians/etc. just as much as any other grouping. And it's OK for them to have their own culture and place. They are not the global majority in any way, either by culture or otherwise. Demanding that they assimilate to a foreign ideal is not going to work.

Western culture has taken over the world. People from all corners of the globe wear western clothes, listen to western music, watch western TV, talk about western current events, speak western languages and practice western religions. Not all, of course, but western culture is more dominant than any other. The place for white Europeans to practice their culture is called Earth.

Well Dutch care about their culture, not American Hollywood, mcdonald's, English language and American values that have taken over the world. And that goes for every European country small or big.

One might even argue that it is a bit racist to assume all white people have the same culture.

> Western culture has taken over the world. People from all corners of the globe wear western clothes, listen to western music, watch western TV, talk about western current events, speak western languages and practice western religions. Not all, of course, but western culture is more dominant than any other. The place for white Europeans to practice their culture is called Earth.

Couldn't agree more.

I see this appeal to the early common roots of western culture as a point of union and positivity.

Sadly I think the mentality of division and protagonism, as opposed to the western value of individualism, has poisoned the well of our culture and people are much more susceptible to react taking offence that their micro-tribe isn't represented in full HD.

There is value in seeing the world painted in a broad spectrum of strokes and observing the patterns that emerge from different perspectives, but this requires tolerance and curiosity.

Isn't that mostly American culture rather than Western one? "Western culture" is a huge generalization, like "Asian culture" would (what would that even mean? Japan, China, India, Israel? All of them are Asian countries).

You won't find many traces of Finnish or Austrian culture on an Indian TV channel.

Most European cultures are fairly regionally limited and, in some cases, threatened with extinction (see: Lusatian Sorbs [0]). Indeed there is some resentment in Europe against American commercial culture squeezing out and killing off old local traditions.

For a bit of a fun, last Christmas the Czech Army produced a video of shooting down intruding Santa, as we have a different traditional figure bearing gifts to children. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbs

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0TgUsUfaVE

I think you underestimate the diversity of the Old Continent. Small places like The Isle of Man, Basque Country, Flanders or Malta have their own unique culture that cannot be simply classified as a generic "white European" thing.

This isn't even a category we tend to think in, this is a very American take on things. We consider ourselves Czechs, Poles, Kashubians, Danes, Lithuanians ... not "white Europeans".

There are parts of the world that speak Dutch, that are very far away from the Netherlands. Not many, the Dutch were a bit too cruel and after independence former colonies were eager to do away with the Dutch language. Nevertheless you can find aspects of Dutch culture dotted around the planet. Be it Dutch language in Suriname, Afrikaans in South Africa, Dutch architecture in Indonesia or people who converted to Christianity because of the Dutch.

If you are Dutch, French, British, Spanish, Portuguese, Belgian, German or yes American, I don't think you can complain too much that your culture is being lost given that these countries have spread their culture all around the planet more than most. If you are Swiss or Polish then you may have more of a point.

This is a very crude division. There are way more Poles than, say, Galicians (a small and fairly unique community of Spain). As for Britain, how many people do still speak Scottish Gaelic? Etc.

At the end of the day, loss of any culture in the world is tragic and previous colonialism isn't a good reason to wish punishment of cultural obliteration on contemporary inhabitants of the same countries, who are several generations distant from the perpetrators.

Superficially. But deeper cultural beliefs and orientations different dramatically. See Lee Kuan Yew’s reflections on American culture through the perspective of an East Asian: https://paulbacon.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/zakaria_lee.pd.... Yew was pretty westernized, wore a suit, spent much time in America. Yet he recoils at American individualism and it’s consequences.

Even inside America cultural differences abound. As a south Asian immigrant raised in the American south, I’ve come to realize I just don’t get along in the Pacific Northwest. I thought my Oregonian wife was just rude and blunt, but after spending some time in the state I realized most people there just don’t have the same notions about e.g. saving face or dancing around upsetting facts that I do.

Having lived in Portland, at least you and I agree on something. I ran screaming out of there as fast as I could.

Christianity is a Western religion now? What’s next, Jesus was white?

>moving them to a remote island

You might want to look up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marichjhapi_massacre, although there are thoughts that it was because a lot of them voted for the [non-CPI(M)] RSP that was part of the Left Front in WB at the time but not the ruling party

Yup. Also, one of my earliest memories is visiting my uncle, an officer in the Bangladeshi Army, on a military base. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure it was in connection with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chittagong_Hill_Tracts_conflic...

But you ask virtually any Bangladeshi about it and they shrug. “What else are you supposed to do with hill people?”

I feel like a country that was knee-deep in the trans-Atlantic slave trade like the Dutch doesn’t get to go isolationist once it becomes convenient.

Your feelings are really not relevant here, because any country will do whatever they can get away with. See China, the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia for examples.

So if the Dutch want to "go isolationist" and their laws and European laws allow that, then they do get to do it.

Thank you! I don't understand why we're supposed to live in a democracy, except when it comes to mass immigration, on that topic you are not allowed to have an opinion because it makes you a straight up nazi. I live in Brussels and I can see first hand what mass immigration does to a city. Specifically immigration from outside of Europe, bringing in droves of people from a culture and religion which is simply incompatible with western values. The proof is that even 3rd or 4th generation immigrations still haven't integrated, let alone assimilated, most often living in ghettos with massive unemployment, high crime, drug dealing, where ideas and culture run rampant which can best be described as medieval (with respect to homosexuality, work ethics, religion, women, behavior in public, ...).

My own country has a VERY generous social security system, which combined with mass immigration for decades, and little to no effort spent on integration & assimilation, leads to destruction of society, total lack of support for politics and a general pessimistic view on the future.

Yeah, but there are two completely different circumstances. Europe dosent have to deal with the absolute cluster fuck mess colonialism was. They just took money and resources and moved on.

"Hey broken country do want another million people?"

If the shoe was on the other foot? Gtfo your talking about highly corrupt administations propt up by western interests, that only providing aide for un-repayable loans. Look up what the IMF or World Bank has done and its failures.

Why do you think these people are refuguees?

They are usually running from their own country, they are running from situations from Muslim countries. How can you possibly extrapolate how billions of people would react?

You say muslims, most muslims are in Indonesia, Saudi is hardly representative of most Muslims.

Islam is far less organized or a pancea that you see it as. Muslim countries dont follow the spirit of any Islamic law, except when it suits their needs, Saudi is famous for this.

Its just too easy to paint broad strokes. You mischaracterize the situation to fit your own narrative.

Can we finally state as a fact that Europe is only democratic and fair for its own citizens?

Makes sense people in this world are selfish, and self concerned. I get your prespective but your Dutch way of life isnt even close to being threatened.

Next time you hear in the news about how progressive and equal your country maybe you ahould add that aestrix, then maybe less people will come.

> Europe dosent have to deal with the absolute cluster fuck mess colonialism was.

England is the product of many waves of colonization. Spain was colonized by the Muslims.

Why were the Europeans able to colonize these places in the first place anyway?

> Gtfo your talking about highly corrupt administations propt up by western interests, that only providing aide for un-repayable loans. Look up what the IMF or World Bank has done and its failures.

LOL! I’m from Bangladesh. The World Bank is the best thing that ever happened to the country. It basically teaches developing nations to get rich the same way European countries got rich. It’s native and organic cultural dysfunction that stands in the way.

Blaming Europeans for the dysfunction of the developing world is a false kindness. Ordinarily, you get better by copying the people who succeeded. People study how Steve Jobs built Apple. Blaming colonialism makes it easy for developing countries to falsely imagine that if they could only overcome colonialism, they would have been prosperous too.

At the risk of setting off pyrotechnics I’m going to point you to this op-ed (I am assuming you can read Bengali)

http://archive.prothom-alo.com/detail/news/67517

e: hmm it seems to be down but one of the things it states was how much money Pakistan federal government spent on upgrading education system in erstwhile East Pakistan holding it to high standards

> Why were the Europeans able to colonize these places in the first place anyway?

But why was she assaulted? What was she doing? What was she wearing?

> Blaming colonialism makes it easy for developing countries to falsely imagine that if they could only overcome colonialism, they would have been prosperous too.

anthropomorphization much?

Amsterdam is not reflective of Netherlands, that is saying like NYC or Las Vegas is reflective of the US.

"Non Dutch native working in childcare centres would mean their kids didn't learn Dutch properly". If those non-natives don't speak proper Dutch or with a heavy accent I could understand these parents, kids pick this up and it will influence their learning and future prospects negatively.

I am sorry you felt treated badly but that is not racist, a Dutch person would also get "fuck you" (rot op) if you ordered just for closing, especially because cafes close at 2am in Amsterdam.

You have to adapt to local culture, most people use debit cards and don't pay cash, especially not small items with large bills, if someone tries that, the bill is most likely a fake.

Calling to try to change resident registration?? If you could do that, anyone could easily commit fraud.

Some ghettoisation??? Yes, there are no-go areas, I lived there, try to get a taxi or uber at night going to the K buurt.

An enormous amount (like the average number of people living in a Dutch city) of non-western, low educated immigrants (>80% young men) are coming to Netherlands each year, there is no housing so the government is putting them into camps. This causes a lot of stress and criminality on the surrounding villages. Busses need to drive with police protection.

I don't feel particularly badly treated. Things like the fuck-you are peculiarly Dutch. The 50 euro note incident is comical because there are hundreds of ways to handle large notes, it's a problem the whole world has. It's not unique to the Dutch shop to find it annoying. The Dutch shop response is a bit more unique.

The restaurant thing I should have been clearer. It was a repeated experience I and others shared. Not 45min before closing time: 45min before kitchen closing time. If the staff just ignore you, until the kitchen closes they can close up faster.

The premis/registration things you also misunderstand me. The problem is that Dutch officialdom is incredibly complex. Many other expats told us of the experience I relate here, you ring to ask a question and get a bad answer, if you ring back 20 minutes later you get a good one. It's a notorious problem many expatriates get: there's one form, it's actually all 26 different forms stapled together and you have to find the one page which applies to you, in the set. The funny thing is that the south Amsterdam registration office even gives you a booklet whose opening phrases are "yes, we do paperwork very differently here. Expect to get a lot of this"

All cultures have their quirks. My Dutch friends and longterm resident non Dutch shrug, and accept these things.

The childcare thing is worrying. It has huge assumptions, like the premise they will learn bad Dutch. Really? So the Dutch grandma who lived in Jakarta All those years ago being raised by Indonesians... she learned bad Dutch? And, there's a reason immigrants work in childcare which needs to be seen too: if you want echte-dutch language and culture in childcare you have to pay better)

Australia is far from perfect. I'm not saying we do it better or the French do it better or anything. I'm just saying the Dutch have their quirks and institutional racism of a kind, is one of them. Along with a very new yorker fuck-you attitude. But maybe you're right, it's an Amsterdam thing. I'm told the south (maastricht) is very different and they certainly dress differently from what I saw. Somebody said it's like catholic protestant a bit too: old Dutch catholic money down south, old Dutch protestant money up north.

> If those non-natives don't speak proper Dutch or with a heavy accent I could understand these parents, kids pick this up and it will influence their learning and future prospects negatively.

It's more complex. Learning in your native language has a strong effect in your ability to learn. For very intelligent kids this is no problem and may be actually good, but the aggregate effect is that non native kids will lag behind. Also immigrant parents tend to have lower education and worse jobs, with more demanding schedules and less time and energy to monitor closely their children and this also has a strong effect. A few inmigrant children is no problem at all but if there is a huge percentage then the academic level will drop. This will transform into just another force pushing segregation that will feed back the whole cycle.

Outwardly, Europeans are very tolerant. However, their society is pretty homogeneous, especially outside of large metropolitan areas. In my opinion, a lot of their tolerance is lip service because its not really a problem they need to confront on a daily basis.

This is just an anecdote, but I was walking with a friend in Berlin and we went to get on the subway. A group of guys came up to us, pushed us out of the car and said "No Asians allowed." No one else on the car really cared.

The most racially diverse international organization in Europe is NATO.

But does it really need to be anything more than lip service? Who wants to give away their own stuff or sacrifice their own children's chance at life so that some random person can live? Is it fair to expect everyone to be the Biblical Jesus?

It may not immediately look like those things are happening in your life or the lives of people you know, but when you look at e.g. the US, you see people advocating for programs that given housing, education, and other financial aid ti immigrants but do nothing for the poor we already have here. It is difficult to accept, but it's likely best we leave those people to starve out of sight somewhere our conscience can bear it. There's lots of places in the world that begin starving at the slightest economic downturn -- this is probably an indication that that land can't support the number of people on it.

> Who wants to give away their own stuff or sacrifice their own children's chance at life so that some random person can live?

This is a standard, right wing, racist trope that has no connection with reality - hinging on zero sum subterfuge. Adding working age immigrants to an economy increases the size of the pie for everyone. If anyone is negatively affecting the economy it is the retired person who is drawing on health services.

It is doubly absurd to make such a statement in the midst of a Brexit driven down spiral of the British economy. Btw, significant percentage of health care workers in western countries are immigrants, as the previous generation has suppressed their own fertility creating an unstable economic situation that can only be solved through immigration. It's the same generation that keeps whinging about immigrants on whom they are totally dependent upon for health care.

The reality is in fact the opposite. The parents want to sacrifice their own children's chance at life so that they can block a random person's immigration to feed their own tribal instincts.

> e.g. the US, you see people advocating for programs that given housing, education, and other financial aid ti immigrants but do nothing for the poor we already have here.

Sure buddy.

Not sure what highly qualified immigrants the US or your country are getting, but in Western/Northern Europe there's a significant influx of uneducated and poorly qualified immigrants which cost national governments tens of billions of EUR to house, feed and take care of and have almost zero hope of producing anything for the local economy during their lifetime, because they will be either stuck in dead-end jobs or live on government support.

And all these countries already have ghettos from the previous generations of immigrants which were not integrated in the host society. Few would complain if doctors, engineers and software developers would be coming in droves, begging to learn the local language and contribute to the economy.

Is this is a cleaned up version of

"They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

UK happily got rid of its uneducated, unwanted east European deplorable immigrants. Funny how that is going.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/rzoidg/f...

Immigrants primarily show up looking for work. It helps the economy of the host country, whether they are blue collar or white collar. If there is no employment to be found, they won't come.

> Few would complain if doctors, engineers and software developers would be coming in droves, begging to learn the local language and contribute to the economy.

They would complain about it too. However, you let your racism mask slip when you use phrases like " begging to learn the local language". You want immigrants to be groveling and begging to seek your approval for being allowed in to a place. You should realize that you don't actually have any power to grant or revoke approvals. You can build fantasy worlds in your head, but don't confuse it with reality.

And I don't have to argue with your fact free and citation free statement that immigrants in "dead end" jobs don't contribute to the economy, because there seems to be a lack of basic understanding of what an economy is and how it works.

I've been thinking a lot about this. It seems to me that because many people in Europe have grown up in such homogeneous societies, there is a tendency to have blind spots when it comes to race. A recent example I can think of is how the Dutch justice minister said that if the Netherlands were a narco-state, then there would be someone with an exotic background in his place. I don't think he intended to be racist, I just think he didn't realise what he was saying had racist undertones.

I lived in Amsterdam for several years. My experience was that they were very open and friendly racists in a way that I just don't see in the US. Racists in the US are generally violent, raging assholes. In Holland people would literally want to talk to me in the grocery store about how it's cool that I managed to grow up into a seemingly reasonable person, despite being black.

Zwarte Piet

Literally named my dog Piet after this. The tradition is crazy to see live. Blackfaces, protestors, anti-protestors, police.... and Sinterklaas trying to pretend everything is fine.

Huh. My experience with US racists are they tend to hold stereotypes of minorities that are no longer politically correct, but otherwise treat people decently.

I see plenty of video of riots in Europe of aryans and skinheads that you don’t see in the US.

In the extreme perhaps, but most people day to day won't run into that. There will always be extremists. I really care about what randomly selected people are like. People I will need to depend on for things.

I don't know which one is better. Being outright violent or a condescending asshole.

Soft bigotry of low expectations is definitely a thing in Americans who aren't violent, raging assholes. I would even argue that it underpins a certain part of the diversity effort - the one that wants racial quotas.

But they don't ask about it. They aren't "openly" racist in that way, only secretly racist.

In Holland it was pretty open (as were most social/societal topics).

it's a typical new world vs old word sort of thing. In Germany its not much different. In terms of general tolerance, safety and so on most European countries are perfectly fine but if you brought a girlfriend or boyfriend to your parents who is black or muslim or 'foreign' in some way you might get weirder looks than in the US, say.

Japan is also like this. As a foreigner it's one of the safest and formally nicest places to be, but you will run into a lot of underhanded double standards.

The opinion: "they get social benefits, but the least they can do is respect our culture" is racist?

What's the problem with learning our native language if you want to live here and become Belgian for example?

Do you think white immigrants from the US/Canada would have similar problems?

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