On July 3, 2025, the Dutch College voor de Rechten van de Mens delivered a historic ruling: for the first time, it judged that the Dutch Tax Authority’s Benefits Department (Dienst Toeslagen) had made direct distinctions based on race and origin in handling childcare benefits.
Not indirect, not unintended, but deliberate: direct ethnic profiling, directly targeting people for their descent.
This is more than an administrative scandal. It is the unmasking of a system of racialized control deeply rooted in the colonial DNA of the Netherlands—a system that continues to judge, punish, and impoverish people because of who they are.
The colonial logic still thrives
For hundreds of years, people from Curaçao and other Caribbean islands lived under the yoke of Dutch rule that profited from the labor and suffering of their ancestors. That same colonial apparatus invented the idea that Black and brown people were suspicious, inferior, needing surveillance.
Today, these old hierarchies resurface under the polite language of “risk selection” and “fraud control.” What is shocking is that the state didn’t just happen to catch more people of Caribbean descent by coincidence—it actively used their origin as a reason to target them.
This is the brutal core of institutional racism: the state itself becomes the instrument that continues to divide and dehumanize. It reproduces the same patterns of colonial domination, where people of non-European descent are always assumed to be guilty, dishonest, or needing discipline.
The human impact: Curaçaoan families in ruin
For many Curaçaoan families living in the Netherlands, this is not an abstract policy failure. It is lived trauma. They were singled out, had their benefits stopped overnight, faced debts of tens of thousands of euros, lost their homes, their cars, their mental health. Some even lost their children to foster care.
Imagine working hard to build a life, only to see it destroyed because a system decided your place of birth or color of skin made you suspect.
The Dutch state’s own investigations have admitted how Caribbean and other non-white parents were disproportionately hunted down. This direct discrimination ruling now strips away all excuses. It wasn’t just a flawed algorithm. It was a racist state practice—a direct colonial echo.
A broader abuse of power
This ruling exposes more than just ethnic profiling. It shines light on the persistent abuse of power by Western institutions: governments, tax offices, immigration systems, police forces, all built on logics that once justified slavery and colonial exploitation.
When people from Curaçao, Suriname, or Indonesia came to the Netherlands under the promise of being part of the Kingdom, they were told they were equals. But the reality is that the very same state that once branded their ancestors as property continues to mark their descendants as “risk cases.”
Where is the real justice?
Dutch politicians have apologized, but their reluctance to pay full reparations—whether for slavery or the Toeslagenaffaire—shows they are still not ready to dismantle the structures of economic and racial domination they benefit from.
Recognition is important, but it means nothing without structural change, financial redress, and deep reforms in how institutions think about race, class, and power. Otherwise, it’s just another performance that allows colonial patterns to continue under new names.
Final thought
This latest ruling gives the parents an answer to the painful question they’ve been asking for years:
“Why me?”
Because in the eyes of a colonial system reborn as a modern bureaucracy, your very existence was the risk.
It is time to turn this moment into a catalyst—not just for compensation, but for a real reckoning with the racism, colonial attitudes, and abuse of power that still define the Kingdom’s treatment of its Caribbean children.
