'Halfbloedje?'

I knew it was time to delete Tinder when Tijmen (20) hit me up with “halfbloedje?”. And they say romance is dead. 

Knee deep in block 3 exam season, I downloaded Tinder on a whim. As I haphazardly threw together a profile for some cheap entertainment during study breaks, I added the Dutch and Filipino flags to my bio without a second thought – the same way they appear in my Instagram bio and CV. It’s a habit I initially adopted out of pride, but it has slowly morphed into something else: a disclaimer, proof I feel compelled to offer to delineate my identity. 

Now, unfortunately, I don’t have the word count to unpack Tijmen’s intentions in sending that poetic pick-up line. But to me, it reflects a hard truth: the more I participate in Dutch society, the harder it becomes to hold onto my hybrid identity. 

Don’t get me wrong: I love my Dutch side for its trademark pragmatism, unapologetic honesty, and laissez-faire tolerance. Yet, Dutch tolerance is a far cry from unconditional acceptance, clashing with the deeply rooted cultural reverence of the binary: black or white, ja of nee, Dutch or not Dutch. 

This obsession with binary creates external pressure; a Dutch mixed identity must be constantly re-established and reaffirmed to avoid being swallowed by assimilation or dubbed an outsider. Yes, it is acknowledged that you can be “half/half”, but this also falls in line with the clear-cut binary. There’s little room for the in-between, and when your identity is made up of in-betweens, it’s hard to know where to stand. 

Yet even with so little room, hybridity asserts itself with imperceptible resilience. At university, I’ve met more people like me: hyphenated and perpetually explaining. For my friend Felipe, growing up in a Dutch environment left little space for his Puerto Rican identity. He tells me, “Multiple people have said, ‘What do you mean you’re Puerto Rican, you’re the whitest person I know!’” But since taking a Spanish minor to brush up on his language skills, he feels more confident in his “Puerto Rican-ness.” Knowing the language, he says, lets him feel the humor and emotions of the culture, helping him move beyond the strict Dutch–Puerto Rican binary. This freedom is essential for weaving those cultural threads into something genuinely his. 

Stories like Felipe’s show how Dutch mixed identities take shape in small acts of adaptation and assertion that define our balance in language, food, and culture. Dutch culture enforces a binary, but mixed identity is a paradox: the struggle to exist between categories makes hybridity constantly negotiated, yet that very difficulty also strengthens it. While the Dutch binary might never fully make space for in-betweens, hybridity persists precisely because of the work it takes to maintain it. 

So I’m keeping the flags in my bio. Not as proof or an explanation for others, but as a reminder that my identity doesn’t need to be intelligible to everyone - and certainly not men on Tinder - to be real.