Dutch government to pay million Euro fine over racist data discrimination

Re:Dutch government to pay million Euro fine over racist dat... by inglor_cz on Saturday January 08, 2022 @05:38AM (#29850377)

Isn't that mostly American culture rather than Western one? "Western culture" is a huge generalization, like "Asian culture" would (what would that even mean? Japan, China, India, Israel? All of them are Asian countries).

You won't find many traces of Finnish or Austrian culture on an Indian TV channel.

Most European cultures are fairly regionally limited and, in some cases, threatened with extinction (see: Lusatian Sorbs [0]). Indeed there is some resentment in Europe against American commercial culture squeezing out and killing off old local traditions.

For a bit of a fun, last Christmas the Czech Army produced a video of shooting down intruding Santa, as we have a different traditional figure bearing gifts to children. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbs

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0TgUsUfaVE

I think you underestimate the diversity of the Old Continent. Small places like The Isle of Man, Basque Country, Flanders or Malta have their own unique culture that cannot be simply classified as a generic "white European" thing.

This isn't even a category we tend to think in, this is a very American take on things. We consider ourselves Czechs, Poles, Kashubians, Danes, Lithuanians ... not "white Europeans".

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Re:Dutch government to pay million Euro fine over racist dat... by zarzavat on Saturday January 08, 2022 @08:06AM (#29851284)

There are parts of the world that speak Dutch, that are very far away from the Netherlands. Not many, the Dutch were a bit too cruel and after independence former colonies were eager to do away with the Dutch language. Nevertheless you can find aspects of Dutch culture dotted around the planet. Be it Dutch language in Suriname, Afrikaans in South Africa, Dutch architecture in Indonesia or people who converted to Christianity because of the Dutch.

If you are Dutch, French, British, Spanish, Portuguese, Belgian, German or yes American, I don't think you can complain too much that your culture is being lost given that these countries have spread their culture all around the planet more than most. If you are Swiss or Polish then you may have more of a point.

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Re:Dutch government to pay million Euro fine over racist dat... by inglor_cz on Saturday January 08, 2022 @09:05AM (#29851775)

This is a very crude division. There are way more Poles than, say, Galicians (a small and fairly unique community of Spain). As for Britain, how many people do still speak Scottish Gaelic? Etc.

At the end of the day, loss of any culture in the world is tragic and previous colonialism isn't a good reason to wish punishment of cultural obliteration on contemporary inhabitants of the same countries, who are several generations distant from the perpetrators.

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