zlacker

I'm a white British guy living in the Netherlands. I'll never forget shortly after moving here, I was sat in the garden with our Dutch neighbours and my Dutch girlfriend, and the man started complaining about "immigrants" and all the problems they brought to the Netherlands. My girlfriend said "you know Dave is an immigrant?" and he just waved it away, "Not you, you're not like them". Obviously he wasn't talking about well behaved white guys like me with his sweeping generalization, he meant the brown skinned guys.

White privilege is very much a thing in the Netherlands. Even if someone knows you're not Dutch, as long as you look northern European it's fine. If you look like Zwarte Piet though, well, many Dutchies would much rather you went back to where you came from. Except when it's time to bring presents to the white Dutch kids. Then we love those adorable blackfaces!

Actually things are changing in the Netherlands, some of it for the better, but there's still a significant, stubbornly racist population here. Much more than you'd think when hearing about "tolerant Netherlands" from outside.

>>davedx+(OP)
It does look like it's improving at a rate of knots though. Hell, even Rutte got on the bandwagon recently which is not something I thought I'd see.

A friend of mine was talking about it recently (her family are from Egypt, but she's born and raised Dutch) and she said she probably notices more issues from being a woman than looking "Arabic." This is Amsterdam though, and it's hard to generalise from here to the rest of the country.

>>davedx+(OP)
If you're from Britain you should know it is about stereotypes, not race. The Asians make your food, the Polish fix your pipes and the Romanians build your houses.

>>spoopy+hi
And everybody knows the English just complain about everything ;-)