Amaterdam: Faced with an increasingly segregated education system, Dutch immigrant children have taken to the streets of their ethnically mixed Amsterdam neighbourhood seeking “white” pupils to attend their schools and help their integration. Around 100 schoolchildren Arabs, Turks, Africans, Moroccans accompanied by their parents and teachers, wore provocative dazzling white T-shirts emblazoned with “Is this white enough for you?”.
Dutch native Annelies, 10, and immigrants’ daughter Aminata, 11, have been friends since kindergarten and are also wearing the shirts, which have “All children have the right to integrate” written on the back.They “want more white children in the school to learn about each other's cultures,” said Aminata, her smiling face framed by dangling African braids during Friday's protest.
“It’s important for later,” said the blonde-haired Annelies. “When we’re grown up we will have to deal with different cultures, we should already start learning to live together.”” At the moment there's only one boy in our class who is 100 per cent Dutch, although we live in a mixed neighbourhood, it's ridiculous,” she said.
The pupils' two schools De Avonturijn and Catharina school are considered “black” in this ethnically mixed Amsterdam neighbourhood, as more than 90 percent of their pupils are from immigrant backgrounds.
