The aim of this paper is to put research on social distance towards ethnic minorities in The Netherlands in the context of theory on social representations. Two aspects of social distance are distinguished: one is the amount of social distance towards ethnic minorities, and the other is an ethnic hierarchy of minorities in social distance. In two surveys of 291 and 304 university and secondary school students, it was found that the respondents' social distance reactions towards ethnic groups formed hierarchical cumulative scales indicating a consensual ethnic hierarchy. In these hierarchies, European groups were placed on top, followed by colonial and then Islamic groups at the bottom. The ethnic distinctions contained in this hierarchy, however, varied across respondents, contexts of application and type of representatives of the out‐groups. It is concluded that the ethnic hierarchy found is a social representation with strong dynamic overtones, a finding that is consistent with recent revisions of social representation theor