Connect2Us makes prejudice negotiable. When it comes to encounters between people of different cultural backgrounds, in many cases it is crucial to consider the influence of institutional racism. This system causes white people, regardless of whether they are consciously and explicitly racist or not, to internalize all kinds of prejudices toward people of color from a very young age. It is incumbent on white people to work hard throughout their lives to dismantle these prejudices, only then can we ultimately ensure that people of color are no longer systemically oppressed, not in the job market, not in school, not in the media, not in stores and not on the streets. An important step in that is to recognize that we, in Dutch society, have all adopted certain racist mindsets. This does not mean that we are all mean racists, but simply that we have grown up in a racist society.
Thus, in an encounter between a woman who has just immigrated from Suriname and a white man born and raised in the Netherlands, not only do the different dimensions of Dutch and Surinamese culture come into play. Inevitably, the centuries-long history of anti-black racism also affects their interaction in some way. When the white man calls the Surinamese woman loud and pushy, for example, he is not only saying something about the perceived nature of the Surinamese but also recalling a dangerous stereotype about black women that has been reproduced for centuries and dehumanizes black women.
These are not prejudices in general. You cannot simply compare internalized racism with, say, the prejudices that affect the interaction between a white Polish man and a white German woman. Not even if the white German woman says, “All Poles are lazy and that’s why you won’t get this job. To understand why interactions between white people and people of color in this sense are not comparable to interactions between only white people, it is helpful to look at the difference between prejudice, discrimination and racism.
A prejudice is a judgment we make about someone based on the social group to which that person belongs. A prejudice can include feelings, thoughts, citing stereotypes and generalizations. Every human being has prejudices. Discrimination is action based on these prejudices. Think of ignoring someone, excluding them, threatening them, ridiculing them and doing violence to them. If we feel hatred because of a prejudice, we may express it with discriminatory behavior. Discrimination can be very obvious, or subtle. We all discriminate, consciously or unconsciously, at times, as a result of the (conscious and unconscious) prejudices we have about other people. When a group’s prejudices are supported by legal authority and institutional control, it becomes racism: a system that functions independently of the intentions of individuals and maintains itself automatically. Racism shows a structure, not a single event. This is why “reverse racism,” i.e. racism from people of color toward white people, does not exist. Separate moments of discrimination against white people can certainly occur, but this discrimination is not part of a larger system that oppresses white people and causes them, for example, to be less likely to be hired for a job and to be consistently underrated in school. The impact of discrimination against white people is temporary and contextual and not tied to social and institutional power.