Marlboro Red

In the 2000s, it struck me that nearly all the empty cigarette packages littering the streets were Marlboro Reds. There were one or two Camels and a few others, but for some reason almost all were Marlboro Red. Marlboro Red is the most popular brand in the Netherlands with a market share of nearly 30%. The second-largest brand has a market share of under 10%. Yet if I had to guess from discarded empty packages, I would have thought Marlboro Red had a 95% market share. We didn’t make tallies, but it was like that. We made jokes about it. So, if you’re looking for a jerk, check who’s smoking Marlboro Reds. That would greatly increase your chance of success. And the finding led me to have prejudices about Marlboro Red smokers being jerks.

Littering isn’t that bad compared to warfare, chemical dumping, abuses in the meat and dairy industries, and the cutting down of rainforests. Still, disrespect begins with littering. It is a matter of upbringing, hence culture. Some countries are clean, while others are a mess because people dispose of their garbage wherever they see fit. Those who litter don’t care about the world they live in. They disrespect the Creator. They shit on God’s work. There are worse offences, but it starts with littering. Next comes graffiti, which only those who make it consider art. Art is personal expression, so do it inside your home where no one else can see it. Then comes destroying property. If you want to cause even more harm, you might consider buying the latest fashion or going on holiday by aeroplane.

If 30% of the people dump 95% of the garbage, the remaining 70% is responsible for only 5% of the mess. You can calculate that Marlboro Red smokers were 44 times as likely to dump their trash on the street as other smokers ((95/30) / (5/70) = 44), a striking finding. The sample was large enough to make the finding statistically significant. The sample may have issues, but these issues can’t fully explain the difference. Today, there are still cigarette packages on the street. Still, it is hard to identify the brand name among the scary pictures of cancers and other horrible diseases you get from smoking. Marlboro Red smokers differ from other cigarette smokers. You can call it culture. Culture explains the deviant behaviour of groups of people who share characteristics.

The Marlboro Man embodies careless living in a consumerist society. Our brand choices reveal a great deal about our personalities, so marketers have done their jobs very well indeed. A politically correct person would say I am stigmatising Marlboro Red users. There could be something wrong with my sample. I live near a train station where young people gather, but I have also noticed this elsewhere. It can’t merely be an error in the sample. But even if the sample correctly reflects reality, perhaps only 0.1% of smokers discard their cigarette packages on the street, so only a tiny minority of 4.4% of Marlboro Red smokers might do so. Perhaps that is correct, or perhaps not, but 44 times as much is an eye-popping difference. It points to a rule, which is:

It is usually one of them doing it. Yet, most of them aren’t like that. The culture within their group makes the conduct more likely.

Jerks may smoke Camel, but they are more likely to smoke Marlboro Red, or there is a Camel culture of not littering that prevents Camel-smoking jerks from littering. In any case, it is an issue within the Marlboro Red smoker community. It is of crucial importance, for culture is so ubiquitous, that so far nearly everyone vastly underestimates that importance. We are a programmable species. Our bodies and brains are the hardware, and our cultures are the software. Different software can make computers behave entirely differently, albeit within the limits of the hardware.

We could solve 95% of the littering problem by locking up all those who smoke Marlboro Red. Yet, 95% of the Marlboro Red smokers might not be part of that problem, so 95% of the people you would round up and imprison would be innocent. The latter is similar to what some fascists propose to do with immigrants to solve the problem of higher crime levels among immigrants. And to solve the problem of criminal immigrants, fascists propose to let fascist criminals run the government and deport the immigrants. The experiments with this idea in the United States have been enlightening.

Patterns give rise to prejudices. Yet, reality regularly surprises me. Individuals often don’t conform to my prejudices about the groups they belong to. Groups consist of individuals. Although these groups differ on aggregate, everyone is different. Behaviours such as littering occur more often in certain groups than in others. Our prejudices about groups tend to have a basis in reality, but they aren’t reality. When there are only Marlboro Red packages on the ground, you might assume that all Marlboro Red smokers are littering jerks, but it could be a small minority. Still, Marlboro Red smokers, on average, litter more often than smokers of other brands. If this littering is a cultural problem. Cultures are usually the product of circumstances and how a group responded to them.

Can I trust my dentist?

How do cultures emerge and develop? Circumstances and how a group respond go a long way in explaining that. I trust my general practitioner but not my dentist. It is the result of my own experiences and those of others. General practitioners and dentists are similar medical professions. In the Netherlands, a general practitioner doesn’t benefit from the advised treatments, while a dentist does. You have to trust medical professionals because your health depends on them, but you can’t trust them in a ‘free’ market. A market is never fully free because some people have more information or leverage than others. In healthcare, that is particularly damaging, as your health is most precious and you depend on expert assessment. Scammers prey on desperate people and sell treatments for which there is no scientific proof. If people buy it, they sell it.

Dental care is an area where dubious practices proliferate. To prevent dental professionals from taking advantage of me too much, I see the dentist once a year rather than twice. So what made me so distrustful? As a child, I had the same dentist for over fifteen years, an old-fashioned one for peasants like me. He didn’t propose treatments unless they were necessary. He once told me that I could wear braces, but added that it wasn’t necessary for my teeth’s health. Not caring about looking perfect, I still live with the consequences that have never bothered me.

After leaving my parental home and moving to Groningen, I selected a new dentist. The first thing he did was take X-ray pictures. Then he said that a cavity was developing underneath one of the fillings. Well, what a coincidence. The other dentist had never seen it. He showed me the picture and pointed at a dark spot. There was another filling with a dark area beneath it, and I said, ‘You can see a similar blot here.’ He replied, ‘That is something different.’ I am unqualified to evaluate these X-rays, but both areas were similar, so the dentist lied. Had he not shown me the photograph, I would have believed him. It made me suspicious and very critical of what dentists were doing.

Before he could treat my tooth for the supposed cavity, I came up with a lame excuse and selected another dentist. Several years later, I had a colleague who had married a dentist. She had previously lived in the same neighbourhood. Her husband was in training at the time, so she had been seeing another dentist, who happened to be that one. She told me she had had a row with him. I wasn’t the only one who had smelled a rat there. Her husband was a dentist-in-training, so she likely had valid reasons for quarrelling.

That was a noteworthy coincidence indeed. What are the odds that she had the same dentist, that they had an altercation over malpractice, and that her husband was a dentist-in-training, which would provide me with evidence to support my suspicions? Thirty years later, the tooth and the filling were still in place. Later, I moved to Sneek and found an old-fashioned dentist. He was like my first dentist, so I trusted him. He often performed dental cleaning. That usually took 10 minutes and cost €21. After ten years, he joined a practice with some other dentists. Shortly after that, he retired.

My next dentist didn’t perform the dental cleaning. Instead, he sent me to a dental hygienist. That treatment lasted 25 minutes and was much more expensive. Instead of €21, I paid €62. Standards do change, but I doubted the sudden need for 150% more cleaning. But if my dentist advises the treatment, who am I to disagree? After all, he is the expert. It is best to accept the assessment of medical professionals unless you have proof they are wrong. Otherwise, you endanger your health.

I have worked harder on brushing and cleaning my teeth, but dental cleaning always took 25 minutes. After eight years, my dentist said my teeth were in good shape and clean. There was only a tiny bit of tartar, negligible even, the dentist said, so he advised me to see the dental hygienist anyway. In hindsight, dental cleaning was probably not required at all. And so, the dental hygienist could have stopped after 10 minutes, but she went on until 25, so she could bill me for that. The treatment was always 25 minutes, regardless of the condition of the teeth. I found it to be a scam and looked for another dentist.

It would only get worse, even though not at the beginning. A new guideline stated that dental hygienists could perform periodic dental check-ups. The following year, the dental hygienist combined the check-up with dental cleaning, making the most of the allotted time financially. I was there for thirty minutes. She billed me for thirty minutes of dental cleaning and also charged me for the check-up. A decent check-up lasts ten minutes, so you might expect a check-up and twenty minutes of dental cleaning if you are there for thirty minutes. I was surprised and wasn’t sure. Had I checked the clock correctly?

The following year, she did it again. Additionally, she charged me for taking X-rays and evaluating them. How can you do all that in thirty minutes if you already spend thirty minutes on dental cleaning? It doesn’t add up. The dentists had decided to take pictures every 3 years instead of every 5, which means even more money for them. And she was double-charging me. Dental cleaning was €160 per hour at the time (yet their prices keep rising faster than wages), which was nearly what I brought home after a day of work and paying taxes. Many people work longer for that money. To charge that per hour wasn’t enough for her. That made it particularly nefarious.

After returning home, I emailed her to request clarification. She didn’t respond, so I filed a complaint with the Dutch Association of Dentists and looked for another dentist. In the complaint letter, I protested the double-charging and noted that questionable ethics have become the norm in dental care. A few decades ago, there were no dental hygienists. My wife once said, ‘The dental hygienist is a new profession created out of thin air.’ She had left a dentist because he required her to see the dental hygienist before he would examine her teeth to determine whether that was necessary. She went to another, who also began maximising profits at the expense of clients, so she left again. I have heard several stories from others of dentists overcharging or doing unnecessary treatments.

My next dentist also advised dental cleaning. And this time, I was with the dental hygienist for 40 minutes, and she billed me €119. Over the past fifteen years, the time spent on dental cleaning has increased by 300%, and the cost has risen by 467%. I take much better care of my teeth than I did twenty years ago, and I began using toothpicks, but it doesn’t show up in the cost of the dental cleaning. It can’t be that all these dentists and dental hygienists are lying. My teeth accumulate tartar no matter how well I clean them, so cleaning is necessary, but the extent of it remains questionable, to say the least.

I suspect that 10 minutes would suffice. Think of the 80/20 rule. Generally, 80% of the outcome requires 20% of the time. Polishing and other add-ons only increase the bill. I put up the ante once again by brushing my teeth three times a day, and it finally showed in a somewhat reduced dental-cleaning time in the years that followed. The parabolic rise in dentist costs is partly due to changing standards. Dental cleaning improves dental health. At some point, the benefits of increased cleaning and more photographs become minimal while the costs escalate. The precise border between higher and scamming will always be elusive, and you can’t prove it from individual cases like mine.

Still, we have, without any doubt, entered scamming territory, but no one puts a halt to it. In 2026, a Tubantia newspaper headline said, ‘Eight minutes in the chair, pay 200 euros: more and more patients feel like cash cows at the dentist.’ And the article goes on to say, ‘Three minutes of polishing for €480 per hour. Half-cent cotton rolls billed for €10. A €1,600 treatment plan that disappears after a second opinion. Hundreds of readers contact us after reading articles about dental care fraud. And research by Zilveren Kruis shows that in six out of ten cases investigated, there was indeed overbilling.¹ Many people take out insurance and don’t care, allowing dentists to exploit the situation.

Again, I have to be politically correct and say that the number of complaints about treatments is less than 1% of all treatments. People only complain if they think something is wrong, so that 60% of complaints being justified doesn’t mean that 60% of dentists are overbilling. Still, much goes unnoticed. My wife has switched twice after being scammed, and never filed a complaint. I switched three times and complained only once. Two of those switches were due to scams, and the third to dubious practices. And so the percentage of fraudulent dentists is higher than 1%, but it could be a minority. And there is a grey area between changing standards and overtreatment. Still, more and more people can’t afford dental care, and their dental health suffers. So, as the number of treatments increases, the quality of dental healthcare in the Netherlands declines, which seems to be a systemic problem in for-profit healthcare. General practitioners don’t benefit from the treatments they recommend, leading to better care at lower cost.

The same trend is visible in veterinary practices. Douwe, our late cat, suffered from kidney failure. We had spent hundreds of euros on tests, but the vets found nothing. And we had seen several vets, because we suspected that the other vet was scamming us, but they all did it. We spent hundreds of euros more on special diets sold by these vets, but Douwe’s condition only deteriorated. We finally visited an old-fashioned vet. He examined Douwe by feeling with his hand. He found the kidney failure and euthanised Douwe. That cost us only €30. Modern veterinarians often don’t physically inspect the animals but perform tests, charging over 1000% more. Physical examinations are bad for business.

My father has spent over €5,000 on surgery for the leg of his dog. An old-fashioned vet would have amputated the leg, as the animal could still walk on three legs. But that is, of course, much cheaper and generates far fewer profits. The surgery failed, so the poor animal had to undergo a second surgery. After that, the ailment returned, so a third surgery followed. And if the treatment fails, you don’t get the next one for free. Not even a discount, unless you are, like my father, insistent on a discount and act somewhat unpleasantly. The dog didn’t recover. My father had his dog euthanised because it was in pain.

The market works such that unnecessary treatments proliferate because the rich desire them. They would rather spend €10,000 on unnecessary treatments for their dogs than spend €1,000 on feeding children in Africa. We are all like that. I don’t give all my money to charities either, so it is a most serious issue that we can only fix with unthinkably brutal measures like taxing the rich. These treatments have become the norm, so the vets sell them to the poor as well, telling them every pet deserves these treatments, even when their owners can’t afford them.

You can’t blame only the vets and dentists for the cost explosion. We view our pets as family members and want the best for them, just as we do for our children. Modern veterinary outfits look like hospitals and make investments that need to bring in a return. And we want perfect teeth, not just healthy ones. Not everyone can afford them, and healthy teeth are more important than perfect teeth. Vets make tons of money. They now retire early, purchase luxury mansions and travel around the world. It has become so lucrative that vulture capitalists are buying up veterinary practices, and scams will proliferate like cancer until the entire sector has become a scam.

Group culture is a problem. Most veterinary and dental care professionals think they are doing a good job, even though they have become a bunch of scammers. Dutch politicians are catching up and proposing a law to ban profit maximisation at the expense of pet owners, but, as usual, nothing will change. It reflects the societal mood, where we see greed as good, so dental care professionals and vets may be unaware of the damage their culture and values cause. That is precisely the problem with many cultures, whether they are professional or ethnic. So, there we are, at the greatest obstacle to the peaceful unification of humankind.

The politically incorrect

It is okay to say that something is wrong with dentists and vets, but once you do the same with an ethnic group, you’ve long stepped into a minefield. Today, you can say anything, but there was once a time of political correctness. Let’s begin with kicking in an open door. White Europeans have caused the most trouble by spreading a suicidal money-worshipping culture that is the greatest cultural problem of all. And in the elite of that culture, which places money above moral values, you find Jews more often than their share of the population would suggest. There is no point in denying that, but we should move on and fix these issues before the savages burn down civilisation. Blaming people for having grown up in a particular culture won’t solve anything. It is better to focus on what the future requires of us. And so, we have to address the harm caused by cultural differences. That is going to be harsh on everyone, as is the required change.

Stereotypes are often rooted in reality. The man on a scooter with tan skin has become a household name in the Netherlands, and the Dutch associate him with street crimes like mugging and improper behaviour towards women. If you see one, you may think of the stereotype, even when he is delivering a pizza. When a black youngster on a fatbike nearly ran me over in a park near my home, that confirmed existing prejudices. But then he excused himself like a gentleman. Not all youngsters would do that. The level of variation is usually larger than the difference between the averages.

It is hard to avoid having prejudices and acting on them because there are often underlying patterns. We are wired to fear the unknown and to react to perceived patterns. That is why we discriminate. Discrimination is undesirable, but you also can’t force people to befriend people they don’t like. If you think that Marlboro Red smokers are no good, you probably would ignore signs to the contrary, unless you know a few people belonging to the group. If you look on the street, you may see only Marlboro Red casings and fail to notice others, so you may think it is always Marlboro Red smokers doing this, even though they may be a small minority in that group.

A minority can nonetheless be quite large or cause serious trouble. Ethnic minorities may distrust the police and not rat each other out. Still, the image you get from the evidence you see is not reality itself. Yet, seemingly small differences can have a significant impact on society. If the percentage of criminals in the population rises from 2% to 4% due to the arrival of poorly adapted immigrants, you have twice as many crimes and need twice as many police, courts and prisons. As a result, a group can be a problem to society, even when a small minority within it causes the problem.

Why do mass shootings occur more often in the United States than elsewhere? The gun lobby would argue that only a tiny fraction of Americans go on a shooting spree. The image you get is not reality itself. If there are mass shootings in the United States nearly every day, you might think that Americans are gun-obsessed nutters. Only a negligible percentage of Americans go on a murder spree. Nevertheless, the number of mass shootings sets the United States apart from other countries. Conservatives don’t see it as a problem. Liberals think that stricter gun laws will solve the issue. However, the underlying causes may be gun culture, American views on the use of lethal violence, and the dog-eat-dog nature of American society, not gun ownership itself. Finland and Sweden also have widespread gun ownership without that many mass shootings.

Groups that share characteristics often share cultures. We picture Americans, Chinese, Germans, Jews and Arabs like we picture lawyers, students and construction workers. Our prejudices may identify characteristics that distinguish the group, but they will often fail us in individual cases. We may base our prejudices on experience and facts, but the facts do not base themselves on our prejudices. And the biggest problem may not be conduct, but loyalty and belief systems. We are loyal to family, friends, tribe, and nation, so if your loyalties differ, we head towards conflict. Culture is a major issue, even though it can be hard to measure. All existing cultures are problematic because different behaviours and expectations are a source of trouble. A resolution requires, on the behavioural side, ending harmful conduct and aligning behaviour where differences cause harm, and, on the expectation side, greater tolerance for differences that do not cause harm.

Is the trend your friend?

In multicultural societies, people from particular ethnic groups face greater difficulties and, as a result, cause more trouble than others. If you follow social media feeds in the Netherlands in 2026, you will remain informed about violent incidents caused by asylum seekers and particular ethnic groups, giving you the impression that they generate a massive violent crime wave that is overwhelming the Netherlands. Yet, in the statistics, you don’t see that, and violent crime numbers have gone down in recent decades. Murders are at an all-time low. Statistics can be manipulated for political or bureaucratic ends, but surveys show that the Dutch feel safer than 25 years ago and trust the police more.² And murder statistics are hard to meddle with. Yet, drug deals and frauds don’t contribute to feelings of unsafety, nor do they show up in the statistics if no one reports them. And some criminals have switched to fraud as it’s easy money with little risk.

Also, in fraud cases, particular ethnic groups are overrepresented. The relationship between ethnicity and crime is a reason why fascism is on the rise. Policymakers have long hoped that maintaining a friendly atmosphere and supporting disadvantaged groups will reduce these problems over time. That is indeed the case, but with new immigrants arriving, new troubles arise. And differences in crime levels can have a profound impact on society. Within some groups, the sentiment is that society is not theirs. Blacks may think they live in a white man’s world. Muslims have trouble accepting the values of liberal Western societies. Whatever the reasons, and often they are just excuses because criminals don’t like to toil and prefer easy money, we are running out of excuses.

Criminals are a minority in every group, but the differences between groups are significant. People of Antillian, Moroccan, Surinamese and Turkish descent are, on average, four times more likely (2.5%) to be crime suspects than native Dutch (0.6%). The same is true for several other groups. About 70% of the prison population in the Netherlands consists of people of non-Dutch descent, while they make up 28% of the population. The relationship between ethnicity and crime can be misleading, as crime also relates to income. People from minority groups often have low incomes. A good question is why that is so. Circumstances play a role here, like growing up in a particular neighbourhood, and also culture. Culture, despite being hard to measure, is a factor with great explanatory power. The great thing is about culture is that it is programming, so it can change.

Ethnic profiling

Ethnic profiling is controversial. It has undesirable consequences, as the following example demonstrates. Suppose a country consists of two ethnic groups: Group A (2/3 of the population) and Group B (1/3). Assume further that people in Groups A and B are each responsible for 50% of Fraud X. Hence, people in Group B are twice as likely to commit Fraud X as people in Group A. To combat fraud effectively, you can only check on individuals from Group B to achieve the maximum result. You could apprehend twice as many fraudsters with the same effort. But now comes the catch. You don’t check on people from Group A, so only people from Group B end up in prison. While responsible for 50% of the fraud, Group B receives 100% of the punishment. That is the problem with ethnic profiling in a nutshell. But then again, people in Group B are doing it more often, so there is also a reason to engage in ethnic profiling.

Some call it racist, but the reason for ethnic profiling can be a risk assessment related to cultural characteristics, not ethnicity. In this hypothetical case, it is the likelihood of committing Fraud X. Also, in that case, ethnic profiling can be racist. People from Group A might dislike those from Group B and elect a leader who allows authorities to investigate Group B’s crimes while disregarding Group A’s. You can end up with a situation where the authorities prosecute Fraud X and only check on people in Group B, supposedly because they commit it more frequently, while doing nothing about Fraud Y, which members of Group A commit twice as often as those in Group B.

If your job is combating Fraud X, and you dedicate only 50% of your resources to Group B, that seems reasonable because people from Group B are responsible for 50% of Fraud X. In that case, people from Group B are still twice as likely to get punished because Group B is half the size of Group A, but receives the same amount of checking. And because people in Group B are twice as likely to commit Fraud X, people from Group B end up in prison four times as likely as those from Group A. While responsible for 50% of the fraud, Group B accounts for 67% of the prison population. So, if people from Group B claim that the authorities discriminate against them and punish them more, they are right.

People from ethnic minorities often get harsher punishment for the same crimes. A Dutch study showed that people from other ethnic groups are up to 30% more likely to receive a prison sentence for the same crime than native Dutch. The cause is likely not willful discrimination, but cultural differences, the investigators concluded. If you share the judge’s culture, you know what to say to sway the judge’s opinion. And showing remorse greatly helps your case. People from some ethnic groups have difficulty showing remorse, which might make a judge think the person is a jerk. Repenting is a Christian concept that affects Western culture, where pride is a sin, so Muslims and some other groups may show no remorse, perhaps out of pride, or they keep denying despite the evidence against them, leading to a longer prison sentence.

Unequal treatment in similar situations is undesirable, so ethnic profiling should be used with great care. The problem must be serious, and the profiling should be based on evidence. In that case, you could build a predictive model based on the available data, keep checking the predictions and bias, and keep the model grounded in reality. In the case of fraud detection, one could randomly check people. If it turns out that fraudsters often share characteristics, it is legitimate to use these characteristics to check people from certain groups more often. If you intend to administer a multicultural society, you must take cultural differences and their consequences into account. Otherwise, it is hard to get a grip on culture-related issues that cause trouble in society.

Officially, there is no ethnic profiling in the Netherlands, but it happens nonetheless. The Dutch government conducts an offensive against ‘undermining crime’ in selected poor neighbourhoods. In Zaandam East, it led to the surveillance of suspicious individuals, sometimes based on hunches rather than evidence. The area is known for the window-cleaning gangs that divide up territories and use violence against the competition. It has been hard to crack down on these gangs, and Dutch authorities fear that they are undermining society. Zaandam East is one of the twenty areas targeted by the National Programme for Liveability and Safety, an approach to ‘clean up’ city districts. The window-cleaning ‘gangsters’ are often Bulgarians and Turks.¹ Critics ask whether frauds and crimes committed by native Dutch receive similar scrutiny.

Diversity politics

If we allow ethnic profiling, which is negative discrimination, we should also allow diversity policies, which are positive discrimination. These policies can benefit not only the group itself but also society. For businesses, it can help to have a workforce that represents the surrounding community. It can attract more customers, and if the money flows back into the community, the business will benefit from the increased purchasing power of local residents. Yet, diversity shouldn’t come at the expense of quality. Still, in situations where multiple candidates qualify, it can be good to aim for diversity in hiring. And perhaps, we shouldn’t overstate the quality issues. In the United States, white men are still dropping out of the workforce, despite the end of diversity politics.

Many Dutch advertisements feature people from ethnic minorities. Ethnic minorities also buy products, so they are a part of the market, which is a valid reason to feature minority groups in advertisements. These diversity politics have crept into other issues as well. If you wish to get your story published in the subsidised artistic sector, be sure to add someone wearing a headscarf. It can also be helpful for police forces. If the police patrol a neighbourhood, it helps when they understand the people living there, so being a member of a particular minority group can make you better suited to the job. Yet, police officers of ethnic minorities often face discrimination. Another issue is that police officers from ethnic minorities are more often found to be corrupt.

Discrimination everywhere

Municipal officials from ethnic minorities say they experience discrimination by colleagues, a 2023 survey in the Netherlands revealed. Civil servants participating in the survey reported experiencing discrimination, such as criticism when another member of their ethnic group misbehaved. Those who spoke out faced bullying and exclusion. Municipal officials from ethnic minorities left their jobs due to these issues, and because they had fewer chances of promotion, the report further said. Discrimination is not a trivial issue, but there are two sides to the issue. Some might have displayed deviant behaviour or taken offence at issues a Dutch person wouldn’t. Whether the complainers are overly sensitive or discriminated against isn’t always clear. Bullying and exclusion can cause long-lasting trauma, and in the most extreme cases, psychosis after nearly two decades. Whatever the problem is, it is serious but not straightforward.

It has to do with how humans behave in groups. You either fit in, or you don’t. That is where it all boils down to. In several workplaces, a pecking order exists, with leaders, followers, and outcasts. Humans desire to establish social hierarchies. Some want to be the boss. To be a leader, you must demonstrate strength and confidence. A low-risk approach is attacking the weak or those who are different. There is a group culture that defines not precisely how you should behave, but the norms of acceptable conduct. Causing problems for the group and not fitting in are reasons for bullying and exclusion. These issues may relate to skin colour, sexual preference, or political views, and often involve divergent behaviour. Vexed responses demonstrate your weakness, and reporting incidents makes you a rat.

Workplaces should be safe, but that is not always the case. In a properly functioning group, everyone contributes to its success, members respect each other, don’t exploit each other’s weaknesses, and resolve their differences. Yet people can’t always get along, and external factors, such as overly ambitious targets or failing management, can also cause conflicts. When things go wrong, we seek scapegoats. Even if the work environment is safe, job performance can still cause trouble within teams. I have worked in a Java team for over a decade. Given the nature of our operations, failures could have devastating consequences, so we couldn’t afford to have underperforming team members. Over the course of that decade, three people had to leave. These were unpleasant situations.

That makes it difficult to pinpoint why people encounter difficulties at work. Humans make up stories, and in these stories they are never to blame. They may call it discrimination, or white men may blame diversity politics, but the underlying cause may be something else. It can be poor performance or deviant conduct. What makes you different is the attack point of bullies. If you are from a minority, they use it against you. Cultural differences cause misunderstanding, and as a result, conflicts. It is a vastly underestimated issue. It is why employers seek to select individuals who fit in with the team. They are in business to make money, not to settle disputes. In critical situations, you depend on each other, so everyone must be on the same page, and understanding reduces the need for rules.

We all discriminate, either on purpose or unconsciously. The reason why there has been a focus on white discrimination is because of a power structure in which whites held the power. This power structure still exists, but as societies grow increasingly multicultural, discrimination by others becomes increasingly problematic. As the West has long been dominant, there has been ample room for introspection, since self-criticism has long not endangered its leading position. As that changes, the call to cast away doubt and focus on pride grows stronger. It is a fatal mistake leading to hilarious clown shows like MAGA, which speed up the collapse of Western civilisation.

If people from an ethnic minority discriminate, it may seem less damaging than when the majority does it, as minorities usually have fewer favours to dispense. The Jews are an exception. They have amassed so much wealth and power that their favouring of fellow Jews has become a dire threat to global economic and political stability. Discrimination by minorities undermines society as much as discrimination by the majority. When I was on holiday in the United States, I once attempted to book a hotel room in a black neighbourhood in Miami. The lady behind the reception was kind enough to talk me out of it. Yet if there is no guest room available for a white man in a black neighbourhood, how can blacks expect whites to stop discriminating against them? Ideally, everyone should stop discriminating. But how do you achieve that?

What is the matter with me?

Once, I asked myself the following question. Suppose I had a room to let, and two men applied, one a white man from Bulgaria and the other a black man from Suriname. Both had similar jobs, and both gave a favourable impression. Who would get the room? Probably, I would choose the man from Suriname. Suriname has been a Dutch colony, and most people from Suriname living in the Netherlands are nearly as Dutch as the Dutch themselves. I have a prejudice that Surinamese are relaxed people who seldom cause trouble. About Bulgarians, I know far less, and I have never spoken to one. Yet, if it had been an option, I would have chosen a Dutchman if he had made a similar impression.

So, where did I get the idea from that Surinamese are okay? The people I have met? Television? It is unclear. Knowing I am biased, I would still choose the man from Suriname. Surinamese are culturally closer to the Dutch than Bulgarians, and I know more about them. And here we arrive at the heart of the matter, something overlooked in debates about racism and discrimination. I know very little about Bulgarians. And Bulgarians differ more from native Dutch speakers than Surinamese do. I don’t want trouble. Judging native Dutch is hard enough already, let alone people from other cultures.

Like most people, I discriminate and have prejudices. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have opinions about liberals, conservatives, Muslims, Chinese, Germans, dentists and Marlboro Red smokers. I may not always be aware of my biases, but I am not a racist. Otherwise, I would have selected the white guy in the hypothetical case. The diagnosis is xenophobia. I know more about Suriname and Surinamese. That is not to say there is no racism or that it is not widespread, but the underlying issues are often unfamiliarity and cultural differences. Identifying the issue as racism only scratches the surface. If you intend to solve the problem, that kind of simplicity doesn’t get you very far.

People who are different face exclusion and violence. I know what it means when others pick you out for special treatment for no reason other than being different. It makes you doubt yourself and ask, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ By the time I had become a student, I was an emotional wreck, mired in self-doubt. It is how groups of humans deal with deviant behaviour and press for conformity. Even people who think they are open-minded and cherish diversity don’t tolerate those who disagree. That is what Woke people do by cancelling people with deviant opinions. Cooperating in groups requires conformism. Cultural differences and unfamiliarity cause trouble and uncertainty, and lead to the failure of the cooperation.

It begins with basic things, such as appointments. Keeping agreements is critical in doing business. It made the Surinamese employer not hire his fellow Surinamese. I had a friend who was always late. He didn’t do that at work, but in private appointments, he was never on time. He married a lady from Africa. Their shared relaxed view of schedules helped make their marriage work. It wouldn’t have worked with me. It might seem like a minor issue, but maintaining schedules is a foundation of modern civilisation. Europe had that same relaxed view on schedules in the Middle Ages. It changed with the Industrial Revolution, the start of the rat race to our destruction, for which Africans are not to blame. Let’s go back in history to Martin Luther King, who once said,

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

The problem is that, through culture, the colour of your skin says something about the content of your character. How you are brought up, the circumstances you have lived in, the people you have met, and how others have treated you greatly affect who you become, which is why the world is still not a wonderful, multicultural society where life is good. But think of the great future that lies ahead if that becomes reality.

Latest revision: 10 October 2026

1. Acht minuten in de stoel, 200 euro afrekenen: steeds meer patiënten voelen zich ‘melkkoe’ bij tandarts. Peter Ullenbroeck (2026). Tubantia.nl.
2. Factcheck: de vier dubieuze claims waarmee de politie telkens honderden miljoenen lospeutert. Tim Verlaan (2026) FTM.nl.

Featured image: Black-and-white sheep. Jesús Solana (2008). Wikimedia Commons.