[brnt]

> but I can say from personal experience that in some cases the praised Dutch directness turned to racism

It always was a thin line. What has changed is that victims are now speaking up, and a silent majority realizing that brutish-directness always was a subgenre that somehow kept being taken as representative of directness.

One can be direct and courteous (and not racist), but the Netherlands (as in Holland) isn't the best place to find that.