Answer

Sandra Joine explains that she always felt ‘just like everybody else’, until after she had been elected Miss Belgium. Then she suddenly felt that she didn’t comply with the prototypical ‘Belgian girl’ and so she didn’t get the breakthrough that she had expected. She describes this as discrimination, but not racism.

Tatiana Silva claims never to have suffered discrimination or racism. She explains this by her skin colour and her language skills as she has a very light skin colour and she is nearly perfectly bilingual. That is why she says she never had problems in Brussels, where she grew up.

Sandra Joine says that she hopes the elections of a second ‘foreign’ Miss Belgium will lead to a cultural breakthrough, so Belgian people will accept that Belgium is no longer only a country of white people, but also of people with a different skin colour.

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