Does everyone understand the same thing by institutional racism?
In the eight-page letter to parliament in which State Secretary Marnix van Rij acknowledged on Monday that the Tax and Customs Administration is guilty of institutional racism, he discussed the definition in detail. He follows the definition used by the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights: institutional racism is ‘the phenomenon in which processes, policies and (un)written rules of institutions lead to structural discrimination on the basis of race’. There does not have to be any malicious intent or intent.
There are also other social-scientific definitions of institutional racism. For example, the Knowledge Platform for Inclusive Society already speaks of institutional racism if the outcome is ‘structural inequality’.
The Institute deliberately defines institutional racism more precisely as ‘discrimination’, says spokesman Nacha Rakraki. “That is, unequal treatment for which there is no justification.” According to Rakraki, this demarcation is necessary, because unequal treatment can sometimes be justified. ‘Otherwise, a teaching hospital that selects test subjects on the basis of ethnicity because of the existence of a certain disease or gene in that group would also fall under ‘institutional racism’. That would be nonsensical.’
Is institutional racism the same as ethnic profiling?
No, says anthropologist Sinan Çankaya, who researched ethnic profiling by the Dutch police. “But it is a good example of institutional racism.” According to Çankaya, ethnic profiling can arise from prejudices that officers have acquired during the work itself, such as through police statistics and police information. These prejudices are then perpetuated within the informal corporate culture, partly through the stories that colleagues tell each other. “Officers are socialized that way to distrust populations.”
‘There is reason to believe that something similar has happened at the tax authorities’, says Çankaya. According to the anthropologist, the e-mail exchange in which officials at the Tax Authorities spoke of ‘a nest of Antilleans’ and ‘blacks’ says something about the internal culture in which such terms were apparently normal. ‘And just like the police, the Tax and Customs Administration also used risk profiles.’
Is government recognition an important step?
Jaïr Schalkwijk has his reservations. The project leader at Control Alt Delete, a human rights organization that denounces ethnic profiling and police brutality, is annoyed by the way the recognition has been expressed. ‘Van Rij wrote a complicated and confusing letter to parliament about the definition of institutional racism, while he could easily have matched the standard definition used by the Knowledge Platform Inclusive Society. This really undermines the recognition that the government wants to give to victims of the allowance affair. What can you do with this as a citizen?’
The Netherlands Institute for Human Rights calls it ‘profit’ that the government with this recognition ‘admits that there is a serious human rights problem’ at the tax authorities. ‘But whether this is real recognition’, says the spokesperson, ‘and whether this is sufficient for victims, is not for the Institute to assess.’
Recognition of the cabinet is a cautious step in the right direction, says Sinan Çankaya. ‘It has never happened before that at this level, from the political top, it has been admitted that institutional racism occurs in government organizations. In that sense you can see this recognition as an important tipping point.’ But it is not enough, says Çankaya.
So what can the government do against institutional racism?
‘To start with, the cabinet can stop pretending that institutional racism is elusive,’ says Jaïr Schalkwijk. ‘It is actually very tangible. And you can combat it by stopping all government services linking risk profiles to skin colour, religion and origin.’
According to the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights, the government should not wait for discrimination complaints to come in, but should actively check whether its own policy does not disproportionately affect certain groups. Another measure that the Institute mentions is ‘awareness of unconscious prejudices’.
But pointing to an awareness process is no longer credible, says Sinan Çankaya. ‘The allowance affair is a clear cut case: the fraud hunt was encouraged by the official top and data analysts have deliberately created algorithms for risk profiles. Now it is the government’s turn to show leadership and formulate concrete policies to combat institutional racism.’