interesting... but is venlo considered north of the netherlands?   it always depends on the context. both of my grandfathers grew up at a time when it was perfectly normal to refer to black people as neger or "mohr". i can tell for certain, they had no ulterior motives for using these words and did not see black people as being of lesser quality. even my father used "neger" often and so did i as a kid. i'm only not using those words anymore, because they *could* be used in a derogatory way, but i still don't think there's anything inherently bad with those words.  
Germany