There was no racism in the Allowances affair. That's what PVV MP Edgar Mulder said during the committee meeting which discussed the Blind voor Mens en Recht report.

Racism is discrimination because of “race.” The word “race”, found in article 1 of the Constitution, is a legal term that includes the concepts of ethnicity, origin, and skin color. The tax authorities worked with risk profiles that include selection criteria such as: “immigrant (non-Western compatriots)”, “foreign origin”, “entrepreneurs of immigrant origin” and “taxpayers whose last name ends in... IC”. The tax authorities also selected people because of their non-western appearance. These are examples of selection decisions that are partly based on “race”. Legally speaking, there was therefore racism in the benefits affair.

Nevertheless, the PVV MP Mulder has politics seen right when he states that there was no racism. There are two parliamentary facts that support him.

The first fact is the report Unprecedented Injustice. This was the report of the first parliamentary inquiry into the Allowances affair. The report, in which MP Pieter Omtzigt participated, led to the fall of the Rutte III cabinet in 2021, which focused on the unprecedentedly harsh and disproportionate fraud hunt, but not racism as a component of it. Research into racism in the Allowance Affair was not even part of the research questions. For example, racism remained out of the picture in the House of Representatives's first study.

The second parliamentary fact is the report Blind to People and Law, which was released in 2024. This was the report of the second parliamentary survey into the Allowance Affair. This time, however, the committee of inquiry had the explicit task of investigating discriminatory risk profiles. Once again, attention was paid to the fraud hunt and the failure of supervisors. However, the examples of selection decisions that PwC presented were not included in the report. The committee found that there was unequal treatment for people with a non-Dutch person nationality, but once again, racism remained off the books.

The Allowance affair involved unequal treatment due to 'race', because the tax authorities worked with risk profiles that included ethnicity, skin color and origin. The PVV is wrong in that regard. Nevertheless, the PVV has politics seen right. The reason for this is that both parliamentary surveys do not investigate, identify or acknowledge racism.

70% of all victims have a migration background, according to a first investigation that the CBS did to the victims. That number is high, but easy to understand as a result of the risk profiles that include “race”. By keeping “race” discrimination at bay, ethnic profiling and institutional racism, key aspects of the Allowance scandal, remain underexposed. The absence of recognition also carries the risk of repetition: if politicians do not recognize that this is racism, racism can repeat itself with impunity.

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