Dutch not more intolerant post-Fortuyn, but media less correct

Dutch Not More Intolerant Post-Fortuyn, But Media Less Correct

NIJMEGEN, 19/12/06 - The Netherlands was much less tolerant than was generally assumed in elitist circles well before 2002. Political maverick Pim Fortuyn, who emerged and was murdered in that year, only brought the discontent to the surface, three sociologists at the Radboud University in Nijmegen conclude.

According to the researchers, the Netherlands is somewhere in the middle group in Europe as far as tolerance is concerned. More than half the Dutch experience an ‘ethnic threat’ or that their own position is insecure as a result of the advent of ethnic minorities, the three state in an article in the annually issued book Mens en Maatschappij (People and Society), which appears today.

The sociologists wanted to know whether the claim that the Netherlands became intolerant after Fortuyn was true. This proved not to be the case: research data from the 1990s proves that ethnic discrimination in the Netherlands was no less than it is now, for example in areas such as work and housing.

The researchers claim that xenophobia was less conspicuous in the years preceding Fortuyn, because the media and politicians drew a different picture. “The positive image that almost all the Dutch had the same tolerant attitude to minorities as the ‘well-thinking’ section of the nation” (as the political and media elite are often described) “was kept alive for a long time” the sociologists maintain.

In reality, the Netherlands has not changed much in the past 25 years, whether at a national or a European level. Those with a lower educational level still have a more negative attitude to ethnic minorities than the better-educated. About 17 percent of the Dutch do not want to work for an ethnic superior or marry a partner from a different culture.

The sociologists from Nijmegen found one new piece of information, though. Better-educated parents are less prepared to send their children to a ‘black’ school than Dutch parents with a lower educational level.

Source: NIS News, ANP, 19 December 2006