Victor Vlam is once again looking for a confrontation with his colleague Tina Nijkamp, who has more or less taken his place at Today Inside. “Screaming ‘racism’ doesn’t help at all!”
TV authority Tina Nijkamp is very passionate about everything that concerns discrimination against Asians because of her two Chinese adopted children. She invariably reacts strongly when she thinks she sees signals that point in that direction. And her fellow TV critic Victor Vlam always thinks that is quite exaggerated.
Babi pangang
Victor recently completely destroyed Tina in the row she created about the Chinese skater at the Olympic Games who ruined Joep Wennemars’ medal dream, but now he is annoyed with her again. This time she makes mincemeat of Ruud de Wild and Lauren Verster because of their babi-pangang jokes on the radio.
Tina thinks it’s racist. But Victor thinks that’s nonsense. “So you ask someone who has a Chinese background about babi pangang, but not every generalizing comment is also discriminatory, right? That is something for which we really have a higher bar,” he says in the podcast Victor Indicates TV.
Frugal and stingy
Victor thinks that people like Tina are very quick to shout ‘racism’. “It becomes racism or discrimination when you portray a group as inferior, so as weird, stupid, inferior or whatever. That is something we as a society rightly reject, it is also undesirable. Here these are generalizing comments. I don’t think that is racist.”
He continues: “When Dutch people go abroad, for example to Belgium, generalizing comments are also made. Then people say: ‘You are frugal!’, or stingy. That is generalizing. Not every Dutch person is frugal or stingy. Generalizing comments are also made about gays.”
Mocking
Jokes like himself are often joked about, says Victor. “You don’t have to be angry immediately when a generalizing comment is made. I think it’s also fun if we can make fun of each other and you have to be able to handle that a little bit.”
“The moment you start calling this racism, you have two major disadvantages. The first disadvantage is: if this is already racism, then the concept of racism loses its value. This creates a kind of inflation, with the effect that at a certain point people start thinking: ah, there is another allegation of racism, it probably means nothing.”
Worse position
The second adverse effect? “That is that I think it actually leads to a worse position of, in this case, Asian people,” says Victor. “Je krijgt dat mensen zich niet meer volledig durven te uiten, want: o, straks maak ik een foute grap en word ik direct beschuldigd van racisme naar Chinezen!”
In this way, Tina isolates that group of Dutch people, Victor wants to say. “You become more careful, but you may also have less contact with Chinese. For example, you have less contact with Chinese Dutch people.”
China Journal
Ruud regularly has a China News in his show. “He finds the subject fun and interesting. If you immediately criticize him for a few bad jokes and shout: ‘You are racist! You think these people are inferior!’, the effect will be that Ruud de Wild will do a China News less often.”
“And that he will just stick to Dutch subjects. Would that benefit people with a Chinese background? I honestly don’t think so. I don’t think that is desirable at all. You have to give each other room to make a mistake without immediately shouting ‘racism’. (…) There is simply no racism here.”
