Haluk Yasan is a student of Computer Science from Turkey. He started off by asking what he and other foreign students come up against in the Netherlands. Do they feel left out, or different? Yasan: “Whenever I’m with a group of foreign students and staff and we join Dutch people at a table, I sometimes get the idea it makes them feel awkward. People also frequently tell me I don’t look Turkish. When I ask them why not, they often don’t know.”

“But should that really be thought of as negative? Aren’t they simply interested?” Berna Celebi, a student of Innovation Sciences who’s also from Turkey, can answer that question: “It’s not necessarily a bad thing they don’t think you look Turkish, but it can be uncomfortable when it’s meant as a compliment.”

According to Shobhendra Srivastava, an SAP employee from India, it often depends on people’s perception: “Minorities in a foreign country often assume remarks are meant discriminatory, even though that’s usually not the case. One time, some of my Indian colleagues and I had an Indian lunch in the meeting room at work. Afterwards, we were asked not to do that again, because the smell lingered and after all, we had a cafeteria to have lunch in. One of my friends was insulted: “If they’re allowed to eat their sandwiches at their desks instead of the cafeteria, why shouldn’t we be allowed to have lunch someplace else?” What he failed to realize, was that it wasn’t about the place, but about the scent. Sandwiches just don’t have a very strong scent.”

One of the difficult questions to tackle during the discussion: where do you draw the line between a classification and racism? The group agrees discrimination has to do with superiority, power and fear. Still, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly. (HB)