Welfare, worklessness and white guilt: How Amsterdam differs from New York

John Mollenkopf asks pertinent and interesting questions. His analysis is, however, overly influenced by U.S. assumptions about the purposes of welfar e provision. In Europe, until very recently, the underlying assumptions of the welfare state had little to do with steering its clients into employmen t. White guilt over colonialism and racism, together with the traditional D utch enthusiasm for separate co-existence, are additional reasons for a lac k of alarm over welfare dependence. From the point of view of urban sociolo gy, the really interesting questions arise from the divergent trajectories of differ ent ethnic communities. Muslim communities in Amsterdam, for exam ple, are more excluded from work than others, which may say more about the underlying principles on which Dutch racism is based than the operation of the welfare state.