Dear Parool Editor,

On Feb 22, 2023, I posted about the increased thefts at self checkout. Thanks for telling me this, because now I can enjoy racial profiling store employees more as an honest brown shopper. My shopping day can’t go wrong anymore.

But then you add a picture of a young woman wearing a headscarf to the message who appears to be writing something on the accompanying screen at the exit of the self-examination, smiling. very framing.

The text continues below the Twitter message.

What do you want to communicate this to a large group of readers with shifting minds and stored prejudices? Did you know that 70% of the sensory cells are in their eyes? This is why the frame is created quickly and with such visual effect you are actually saying: Dear reader, Muslims are wrong again.

During the entire corona pandemic, almost every day news was filled with reports of the virus, outbreak numbers, hospital fluctuations, and wabby serials. I read almost nothing about Muslims or exaggerated reports of color offenders. Corona seems to have healed Muslims or non-whites during the lockdown. And now they’re on a rampage again or something? At first they were on so-called western values ​​and now those kilos of Elstars and discounted halal hamburgers are the new victims? According to many media outlets, being a Muslim is wrong, unless there is an epidemic.

In a discussion with white people about the newspaper report, they all immediately begin to identify the journalist who is supposedly male and white. The journalist may not have been aware of his unconscious racism and was immediately purged of racist intentions because he may have chosen this photo because of some kind of blind spot. How much irony do you want?

We all have a blind spot, unfortunately. But they are not present in the brain capable of making conscious choices, for example, which images have a framing effect or not. The blind spot itself is not making any choices at all, because it is located in the retina, where the optic nerve exits the eye. I suppose there is also a final editor. also blind?

Later in the discussion, a white speaker started to rationalize that he once took a product without paying because the service took too long. You know, when a product refuses to be checked and presses the emergency button three times doesn’t result in help from a sluggish employee who has other things to do. So this white man had a personal and legitimate reason for stealing, he thought. and others? Are they going to steal because their headscarf says so or something?

Justifications based on the “innocence of whites” prove once again that it is a natural phenomenon in the Netherlands that the right to “be one’s own” with one’s own personal choices in certain circumstances is the privilege of white people only. Muslims, for example, are prejudged negatively by such messages, made suspicious, even stripped of their individuality, stereotyped and dehumanised.

Dear Het Parool editors, do a self survey. Then you will measure your commission of theft through this type of reporting. You are robbing many people of the right, who identify themselves with Islam, for example, to be seen in society as individuals and not as a member of a thieves’ club. Plus, you’re encouraging store employees to chase these shoppers further. People confuse news with science. You also ensure that there are more thefts due to the white kleptomaniacs who not only make up the majority but are now out of sight of the store employees who are mainly looking for color and veils.

You strip Muslims of their human dignity and respect and corrupt the reflective capacity of your white readers. They are now visually rewarded with ready-made frozen frames that you thawed post-coronavirus to fill your news feed. You are also guilty of the progressive social and political impact of such reporting that can lead to violence against Muslims. So in my eyes (actually in my mind) you are already responsible.