Received the card?

Great that you’re visiting this page! This probably means that you have received the discrimination card.

We all categorize people. It is a mechanism in us that served us for a long time. But the perception that we have on these categories are learned. Discriminatory perceptions are learned. This card is an invitation to challenge perceptions and spark conversations.

On this page, you can read stories about people’s experiences with discrimination, sources on cultures, history, and traditions.

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Personal experiences

Throughout October, we will add more personal stories.

Hitesh Yadav (he/him)

“I pull the card when I’m being yelled at using xenophobic slurs because of my appearance.”

Axelle Ahanhanzo (she/her)

“I pull the card when the psychological safety of employees is not upheld by an organization and I’m perceived as an angry Black woman for trying to change it”

Mark Cusack (he/they)

“I pull the card when people feel it is their right to know what my sexuality is.”

Selma Lemsaadi (she/her)

“I pull the card when the world tells me my struggle is personal, but I know it’s systemic.”

Karim El Oteify (he/him)

“I pull the card every day. “

Arnout Nederpelt (he/him)

“I pull the card when people make assumptions about me as a neurodivergent person.”

Quintus Kropholler (he/him)

“I pulled the card when I got singled out in the workplace for speaking up against discriminatory jokes.”

Moham Mohamed (he/him)

“I pull the card when I’m being judged for my age.”

Julie Hemels-Hoff

“I pull the card when people belittle me because I am queer, young, practically educated, woman”

What is your story?

LISTEn TO Podcasts

ARTICLES to read

Tool: Recognizing Microaggressions and the Messages They Send

The History of Pride

Systemic And Structural Racism: Definitions, Examples, Health Damages, And Approaches To Dismantling

Neurodiversity in the Workplace: A strengths-based approach

The Simple Truth About the Gender Pay Gap

Why Understanding Intersectionality Is Key To Stamping Out Workplace Inequality

videos to watch

Books to read

Click on the book cover to visit a website to read an introduction and order.

MOVIES & SERIES to watch

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Initiator

Blueyse is a leading agency driving positive societal change. We believe that organizations have a crucial role in realizing this change. We empower organizations to become truly inclusive.

Through our innovative education programs, innovative internal communications strategies, and impactful marketing campaigns, we help organizations to thrive and achieve long-term growth, sustainably.

Disclaimer: The sources shared on this page are not owned by Blueyse.

“I pull the card when I’m being yelled at using xenophobic slurs because of my appearance.”

“The only discrimination I’ve faced in the Netherlands has been due to the differences in what the locals see of me. In my general routine, I wake up, get to work, and afterward, I go to the supermarket. When I leave the supermarket I face discrimination. Oftentimes, there are groups of people outside shouting something offensive. I usually ignore it to a certain level, but it’s something that just sticks with you.

There was a time, for one week straight, I was not able to work. I was just thinking about the things they yelled at me almost 24/7 and it affected my mental health. However, these worries always subsided when I talk to respectful and well-spoken people. It makes me realize that there are different kinds of people I’ll be dealing with in life and the positive encounters can balance out the bad.

One of the scariest experiences I have ever had was when me and a friend were once on our bicycles and multiple people started chasing us on bicycles. They just kept shouting and playing loud music along the way and followed us to the area we lived in. After going inside, they were still outside shouting. My friend would then have to go out and talk with them about what’s wrong. And they just told us that they were just having fun.

After such an experience, I just went numb. I was pretty much scared to go outside of the usual area we live around. It kept playing in my mind. At that point after that incident, we were making a lot of progress work-wise. And because of that, my work ethic and productivity suffered.

I must say that I’ve gotten used to it now. If you know Alex Hermosi, he says that’s how you learn to deal with things. He says if you keep getting punched in your face and you don’t move, you haven’t learned anything. If you dodge it, you learn. The second time it happens is like when you just get punched in your face, you have to start to dodge at some point. You learn how to solve it to make life easier for yourself.

I believe those kinds of people should understand that people can come from different parts of the world. That’s why they talk differently and look differently, but after that said, we are essentially the same. The good people make a difference. Two out of the ten times there is a random person who comes by in those moments and stands by and supports me. It helps a lot. You start to see the two sides of how things are, one side of the road with a group of people shouting slurs, and the other side with a group of people on your side supporting you. I only wish those people knew more about me and others like me.”

– Hitesh Yadav

(He/Him)

“I pull the card when the psychological safety of employees is not upheld by an organization and I’m perceived as an angry Black woman for trying to change it”

“Since the start of my career, I’ve been mindful of the privileges I’ve had—growing up middle-class, with access to higher education, and being well-traveled. Compared to my peers from certain demographic groups, I was able to land good jobs at prominent organizations. I feel like sometimes people were a bit surprised that I would have the profile of someone who speaks six languages. And over time, my differences would become a problem in the workplace. From being called the “new jewel” to “she’s too vocal” and “she’s too opinionated”. You can quickly start becoming the problem because you’re asking why things are not working out and why we can’t do things differently.

I’ve realized and experienced the value of psychological safety in organizations. Yet many companies don’t have it. We speak of psychological safety as the ability to take risks, make mistakes, bring your full self to work, and make sure that your ideas and solutions are valued in your team. Psychological safety is the soil from which the tree of inclusion grows.

Oftentimes, when I speak up, I end up being perceived as an angry Black woman. And it wears you. I experienced the heaviness of being perceived as an ‘angry Black woman’ in probably every role I had in my career before becoming an entrepreneur. Later on in my career in 2022, I discovered that I am neurodivergent. Being an autistic ADHDer, also means that I was more likely to respond to injustices that me and my colleagues at the time were experiencing. I know that from a cultural standpoint, Black women often tend to be the champions of change in that sense, but we then get the biggest slaps.

Change takes time

It just frustrates me so much that people are suffering in companies. A lot of people are suffering and staying in their roles because they have rent to pay, because they have families, or because they feel like they don’t have any other choice. One thing I learned the hard way is that change takes time. People are not comfortable with change.

My dream is to develop educational tech resources to help people go into the challenges that they face in the workplace with ease. I want to use the media to tell stories about experiences because ultimately stories can change the world. If you’re able to tell your stories in a safe manner that will reach people you don’t know who’s going to be touched by that. People are threatened by change and the way you deliver the message will have an impact. The micro impact with every person I speak to, every talk I give, every time I tell my story, it’s a micro impact that I hope will contribute to this long-term change.

After the pandemic and the influx of Gen Z coming into the workforce, people are becoming more vocal and will leave if conditions aren’t met, which can lead to a loss of money. What that is creating, is that now companies are shifting from this efficiency mindset towards a people-focused mindset. The companies that don’t change towards that people-focused mindset will become the dinosaurs of the next decades.”

– Axelle Ahanhanzo

(She/her)

LAUDACE

“I pull the card when people feel it is their right to know what my sexuality is.”

“I’m a queer person, I don’t have a set label. Although I do use the terms ‘bisexual’, ‘asexual’, and ‘non-binary’. People have a hard time understanding me because we live in a world with these set categories and people feel like it’s their right to know about a person’s sexuality. They want to know whether you’re straight or gay – and if you’re lucky, some would understand what being bisexual is. Being a fluid and neurodivergent person, I’ve never truly understood what those categories mean. I’ve never really fit into any of them.

When I try to explain that I don’t have a set category I identify with, people just don’t understand. They start asking you loads of probing questions about your personal life and even your sex life. It’s really disconcerting. I don’t want to talk about my personal life with everyone. I don’t think it’s relevant to anyone, unless we’re dating or close friends. There’s also this false expectation that I’m supposed to understand my own sexuality and gender, it’s something that a lot of people in the queer community get, particularly at the moment.

Connected to that is dating and relationships, it can be monumentally difficult to date or find a partner because very few people want to be with somebody who doesn’t have one of those set identities. You get straight women and also gay men saying, ‘I would never date a bi guy’, for example. People try to probe me by asking all kinds of questions. You find a load of assumptions thinking that we are unfaithful, thinking that we can’t be monogamous, thinking that we are promiscuous, and all of these stereotypes. There’s this ignorance in society that fuels discrimination from various parts of life that other people might just take for granted.

Convincing vs. influencing

As a coach, I like to work with people on the difference between ‘convincing’ and ‘influencing’. ‘Convincing’ is when someone asks me these probing questions and I respond by trying to justify why I am the way I am and convince them of my validity. ‘Influencing’ is when you just live your life as an unbothered, unapologetic person who happens to be queer or whatever you are. It is about actually taking away your energy from that conversation and accepting that you don’t need them to understand. You don’t need them to get it or accept it. You don’t need anything from them.

This can be difficult, especially when those people are close to you. You really want them to understand, but it’s about taking back that energy and just accepting yourself. The power in that is truly amazing. What you find is that people will sense that confident energy from you and that will actually impact and influence them a lot more than you trying to justify yourself.

People tend to respond to what society allows and I feel if those of us from minority backgrounds respond to probing or inappropriate questions, it doesn’t necessarily solve their ignorance – it just enables people to cross that boundary again. On the other hand, when we step back and say “No, I don’t want to discuss this right now” people learn that this is perhaps not an area it’s suitable to ask about.

Everyone has the right to feel what is right for them and what they feel comfortable talking about but I think it’s helpful to remember that we have a choice.

– Mark Cusack

(he/they)

NotDefining

“I pull the card every day. “

“I’d like to talk about being someone young, someone who is disabled, someone who is a foreigner living in the Netherlands.

I probably face it most with my disability. When going to a meeting or social event, people will most likely talk to the person pushing my wheelchair. They assume my physical impairment is also a mental one.

People are often so inspired by me, by the fact that I’m a disabled person, but don’t realize how that is laced with condescension. I don’t think anyone means badly. The fact that no one has ever seen someone like me before, a person of disability who’s studied in a top university. I believe that I was one of the first people with a disability to be a part of my program and that just tells you how far disabled people have been pushed into the margin that you don’t notice them. I often challenge everyone’s perception of what a disabled person is when I dare to be disabled and be an entrepreneur when I dare to be disabled and lead a team, and be young, and creative, and colorful. So, on some level consciously or subconsciously, I inherently make people uncomfortable. That’s exactly why I do what I do. We need to be uncomfortable, to change these narratives, and to create space for these conversations.

Navigating unconscious biases

I am able to navigate through everyone’s unconscious biases because of my eloquence in the way I communicate and my presence on public stages. This meant that people were able to shift their mindset of me from their initial perception. I realized the impact I have when going to spaces where my voice is valued, where I have received so many hugs, smiles, and recognition for the work that I’ve done.

I’ll never know, however, how much it has truly impacted me. I will never know which rooms I wasn’t allowed into. What’s helped me is the supportive community. Allyship across a multitude of positionalities, intersectionalities, and identities is so important. I’m a big believer in proactive allyship, a true allyship that promotes one another to get into different spaces and connect you to others. It’s one thing to say you believe in gender equality and the rights of disabled people, but it’s another thing to create spaces in your organizations and use your resources to uplift someone like me. Performative allyship is just as bad as rainbow or pinkwashing.

You can become a great ally

Everyone at heart has the potential to become a great ally, a lot of us are just misguided or misinformed and don’t know where to start. And that’s all I want to do, to hold as many people’s hands and help them through it. I don’t think many issues can be solved in a generation. However, I want to be part of the generation that helped push the needle so far, that the new generation faces fewer boundaries. I hope that the next disabled person in the future can feel welcome because the work I’ve done has normalized the presence of someone.

Being privileged is not necessarily about the advantages you get. Privilege is about what you don’t have to deal with on a daily basis.”

– Karim El Otiefy (he/him)

The Wheels of Impact

“I pulled the card when I got singled out in the workplace for speaking up against discriminatory jokes.”

“I was excluded just for looking out for the ethical and moral interest of a company: its employees, and by extension its values. Becoming confronted with this, you are put in a spot and forced to choose social acceptance of a toxic environment or risk further isolation and consequential job loss.

I once worked for an organization that prided itself on its “diversity” because it had an even split between men and women. However, beneath the surface, it was a deeply masculine culture. The majority of women were in junior or mid-level roles, and leadership remained overwhelmingly male. At a staff event, I was asked about the sunglasses I was wearing. When I mentioned they were from a women’s collection, someone joked that I must be the company’s representative for LGBTQ+ inclusivity—apparently, my choice in sunglasses was enough to qualify me. The comment was absurd, but it revealed something bigger: the company’s narrow, almost superficial view of diversity. They assumed that a gender balance, or a trivial association with LGBTQ+ representation, equated to being inclusive. Yet the reality was far from it: the organization was entirely white and, despite the gender split, it reinforced patriarchal structures that kept women in subordinate roles.

This experience highlighted for me the gap between the idea of diversity and its actual practice. It’s easy for companies to say they’re diverse by focusing on metrics or surface-level representation, but true diversity—whether in gender, race, culture, or LGBTQ+ inclusion—demands a deeper commitment to equitable representation and involvement in both opportunity and power.

I believe it’s important when someone has said something offensive to someone else, that person should not immediately become isolated for it. I believe it’s important to think about the process of what happens next. It’s better to highlight what was said and then give the person who caused the offence the opportunity to respond with dignity and grow. Ultimately, we need to confront people to think differently by asking questions, besides standing up against such injustice, violence and demeanor.

As a manager, it was my responsibility for the team’s performance and to grow the company’s delivery. This meant that I needed to stand in the way of these behaviours to ensure my team’s performance, starting fundamentally with their well-being within their professional lives. This got me to become known in the company to be against objectifying and derogatory comments in a professional environment. This became a reason for me to be singled out and excluded from many important conversations, and this obstructed my ability to perform. Ironically, besides the moral and ethical responsibilities as humans, consequences of such initially ‘innocent’ bro-ing, leading to discouraging people to make matters of ethics and morals a topic of discussion will be corrosive to the company long term. I think that the question is not just where the line should be drawn, but how leaders make sure all employees are considered to be human beings, and the impact of banter and behaviour damaging a culture, and by extension the company?

Surely such financial incentives must hit home…”