Black Pete
Even the name of this posting sickens me. If there is anyone Dutch reading this, is there any way you can justify the Zwarte Piet situation? For those of you yet to experience it, in early December, Dutch people consider it entertaining to decorate their homes and businesses with golliwogs. They like to 'black up', wear afros, and dress like buffoons. There is a parade of hundreds of these 'Black Petes' throughout the centre of Amsterdam and, no doubt, other Dutch hamlets. It beggars belief, and is truly sickening.
Other countries could invoke their anti-discrimination legislation to prevent this carry on. Not that they'd need to. Society just would not countenance or tolerate it. Can you imagine a parade of black and white minstrels going down Fifth Avenue in New York or Shaftesbury Avenue in London? There would be justifiable uproar.
What is wrong with these people? It's bad enough that ethnic minorities are so marginalised and ghettoised in this country without having to endure the festooning of homes and offices with racist caricatures, and a parade through the town. What's next? Klansmen?
And spare me the whiny claptrap about it being 'traditional'. It was traditional for women not to be allowed to vote. It was traditional to live in caves and to have doctors tie a spider and walnut around your neck to cure cancer. (Okay, maybe that last one is still traditional).
6 comments:
Last Christmas I took home blokker sales paper, my family nearly died. I love getting into the blackpete discussion with Dutchies. They refuse to believe it is racist. Strange people.
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I'm Dutch, and I can wholly understand why the blackpete situation would seem strange (to say the least) to foreigners. Blackpete isn't really meant to be a African person, it's just a person who goes down chimneys to deliver presents, getting covered with soot in the process. Through the years, I guess commercialism got a bit carried away with the depiction of balckpete though...
But still, being Dutch and having grown up with this, I'm also inclined to say that it IS a local tradition, and surely not intended to hurt people. (I know that's an easy thing to say, but hey, that's how I feel.)
By the way, did you know that Santa Claus is derived from our Sinterklaas? (With many early American immigrants being Dutch.) Coca Cola actually invented Santa Claus, as a sort of add for the holidays.
has anyone ever considered that a whole site dedicated to dutch bashing is racist? twats!
I'll believe that Zwarte Piet is a depiction of a man covered in soot when I see one with straight hair.
BTW...my son, only here from Canada for two weeks, found your observations accurate enough to add the catchphrase "It's not POSHIBULLLL!!" to his vocabulary! lol...
Covered in soot? Awesome...can I have some clothes made from the same material, as they will be perfect when I work on my oily sooty car...spotless!
I have got used to Black Pete actually...when i say 'used to' I mean I dont jump ten feet, scream like a little girl and expectantly await a rendition of 'oooohhh swannnnyyy'.
Nah, the only part of the lovely Sinterklaas tradition that still confuses me is the throwing of cookies onto the road, gutter and pavement for toddlers and kids to pick up and greedily devour! This in a country where it cannot be denied that dog poo is placed regularly and strategically by the poo fairies.
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