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The Dutch are slowly recognizing that their tradition of Zwarte Piet is racist

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NeoRausch

Member
HStallion said:
Your lips get all bruised and cut up from the rough brick interior of the chimney stack and of course all that heat and steam cause people's hair to curl. Duh
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nrucy.jpg
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Dangerously high. Story makes sense. Sealed.
 
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Air

Banned
"The Dutch are slowly realizing that water is in fact wet; however, the debate still ravages on with a small fraction of people trying to understand exact what wetness and water really mean".
 
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SkeptiMism

Member
Theorry said:
I am Dutch and i am black. And i never thought Zwarte Piet was a racist thing. Still dont.
Alot of my black friends dont either. It all started when suddenly a small group found it racist and went very vocal about 2 years ago. When i was young i never had the feeling they were a "lblack help" Zwarte Piet was cool, they were doing great stunts and all i knew was that they were black because they went through the chimney to deliver the presents. Me and my friends black and white dressed up like them and went door to door. I even put make up on to look like that i went through the chimney. Because that is what the make up is for not make up to look like a black person.
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If it was people clearly painting it more like they were a chimney worker (dunno the word) then I could really entertain the idea that there's nothing racist about it.

But come on, surely you can see how common it is there to do the caricature black face? Do you think that's completely fine? If you still think that, can you see why people don't like the caricature black face? Do you understand the history behind it?

Milly Osworth said:
I hope the ones feeling all high and mighty in this thread aren't from the country close to electing Donald Trump.
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Who is acting high and mighty?

If you mean simply being against this, you do realize that one can also be against Trump while living in the US?

Not trying to be snarky here, but serious questions. Can you provide more insight?
 
spons

spons

Gold Member
GasProblem said:
My personal opinion is that it's easy to change, kids don't care, and a part of our society feels discriminated because of it, so why not change it?

Went to a local shop (Action) and it already had Sinterklaas decorations out, like garlands and napkins etc. To my surpise the Petes where white or very light brown, no black Petes anymore. So it is changing.
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I agree, and the change can be done, if gradual. The problem here is that some just don't want to feel responsible. "It's not my problem" is the exact problem here.

The Albatross said:
For instance, there are 43,000,000 results in Google from the WAshington Post that begin with "Americans..." and then represent a general cultural opinion.

The BBC has a great article called "Why are Americans so obsessed with guns?" As an American, I'm not obsessed with guns, but there are many Americans who are. Am I part of the problem with "America's" gun obsession? Maybe, but probably not. I don't see this as a direct criticism of me, I see it as an article generally written about Americans which is probably generally true.

I dunno, I don't think the title is a personal criticism of individual Dutch people. But that "many Dutch are realizing Black Pete is racist."
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I never understood the repercussions of generalizing until I suddenly became "part of the problem". Same goes for your American gun "obsession" example. It's just blatant falsehood presented as some kind of fact. I'm sure the article goes in-depth, but clickbait titles like that and the one in this thread just struck a nerve. It's really nothing more than that.
 
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Pusherman

Member
Milly Osworth said:
I hope the ones feeling all high and mighty in this thread aren't from the country close to electing Donald Trump.
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Well, we've got our own version of Trump who's arguably even worse and we have a national holiday prominently featuring blackface. Let's just take this L dude.
 
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Albino_Samurai

Member
Sinterklaas, Santa Clause.....

Whatever, they're lying to children.

I dont even need the Zwarte Piet discussion to figure out that both inventions are bad for society.

Look where all those other fairytales got us so far....
 
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TatteredHat

Member
geomon said:
A comment from the defenders on here? There were some last time this topic came up.
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I've defended it in the past and have been banned for doing so.

It is a tradition I have fond memories of as a child, but I have zero objections to it being modernized. I'm quite a fan of the alternative soot-covered look that has been going around, myself.

edit: I'll add that it's not likely to disappear soon so don't hold your hopes up for that, it'll gradually change with each successive year.
 
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lord quas

Member
People who defend Zwarte Piet are just absolutely pathetic... it's a fucking holiday, get over it. It obviously offends people so you might as well just change his colour. Like any of the kids give a shit, they just want presents.
 
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spekkeh

Banned
I wish I could share the newspaper's optimism. I think it's on the way out, but it's going to take a loooong time. The Dutch are staunchly anti-authoritarian. You tell them something shouldn't be done because it's not moral, they reflexively dig in and do the opposite. Most of the times this leads to nice things like gay marriage, euthanasia, drugs liberalisation, but sometimes they reflexively get really defensive over awful things like the right to dress up in racial caricatures as well. And that's not even counting the actual racists, of which there seem to be more and more as well. However I'm happy the head zwarte piet stopped taking on the role this year because he was not happy with the speed of the change. He's a well liked comedian/actor and I think that is going to slowly resonate with the population at large.
 
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Always-honest

Banned
They know. And it will change. It will take some time though.
Unfortunately there are some really thickheaded people who think some immigrants (most who have been living there for generations) are ruining and dictating our traditions. But it's nonsense and it's racist as fuck imo. Changing the blackface to all colours of the rainbow or just some smudges will change nothing about the tradition.
 
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Llyrwenne

Unconfirmed Member
Good. I expect it to take a few more years for it to fade out though.

I'm sick and tired of reading the same old 'it's tradition' / 'war on Sinterklaas' / 'It's totally not racist people' posts on my Facebook every year from people I otherwise respect ( and some I don't ). I'm especially tired of all the grown-ups that send death-threats to people critical of Zwarte Piet because they somehow think that Zwarte Piet's look / skin color / racist caricature aesthetic is vitally important to Sinterklaas purely because that's what they were raised with. The kids ( the target audience of Sinterklaas ) would not care either way and will enjoy Sinterklaas just as much without a racist caricature. But I guess some particularly stubborn 'adult' people are of the mindset that their children need to experience everything the same way they did.
 
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Rocket Scientist

Member
They did a survey last week and 70% still wants him to stay black. Fucked up high percentage I was shocked. After the last few years I would have thought it would be closer to 50 by now.
 
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PSqueak

Banned
Every time i heard about Black Pete, i cannot help but think of that one movie that claimed it was a latino tradition rather than dutch.

I was like "what he fuck, that's not true you piece of shit".

The scene stuck to me, but i don't even remember what the movie was.
 
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dr3upmushroom

Banned
spons said:
I don't want to be sensitive about this but I feel attacked by this statement. We're not some glob of people all with the exact same opinions and views. A professional outlet should know better.

A lot of people are against racism here and many of them are against the stereotypes portrayed in the character of Black Pete, but you should really not marginalize a country of almost 17 million people as "the Dutch".
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So we can't call any group as "Americans", "Christians", "Muslims", "British" etc. anymore?
 
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FloatingDivider

Member
I've been saying this for close to a decade at this point. As a (half)black man born and raised in Belgium I've been saying this was some racist shit since I was old enough to put 2+2 together. People have treated me as if I was crazy for making said statement though.

It's an uphill battle though, people legitimately refuse to acknowledge the blatant racist caricaturing tied to this holiday and the excuses are so mindfuckingly dumb that it's baffling to me that this shit is still going on.
 
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Rumblebones

Banned
About time.

I'm black and grew up in Holland. The meaning of the holiday can be celebrated and maintained without the racist imagery.
 
woopWOOP

woopWOOP

Member
Some of my close relatives were still pretty pissed about 'complaining foreigners not getting it' a year ago, but they seemed to have cooled on the idea of using regular non-painted Pieten. Last year the annual TV show and advertisements stopped using blackface and the clothing gave the impression of 'Piet' just fine.

It'll be a generation or two before it completely goes away tho.
 
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spekkeh

Banned
moai said:
why are santa claus helpers black in this tradition?
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1) Santa Claus is a bastardisation of Sinterklaas, not the other way around
2) Nobody really knows. Sinterklaas seems to be an amalgamation of a number of different folk tales and got form somewhere between 1750 and 1800. He sometimes was a black colored Boogeyman or had a Harlequin as a helper. At some point a more 'decent' version was introduced where he was an upper class man with a friendly black helper, then it got mixed with the Boogeyman and the Harlequin again, then they thought this was not nice for children and tried to make him friendly again. It was always just one helper though, until the Canadian army liberated the Netherlands and wanted to join in on some classical Dutch festivities to celebrate. They all, erm, blackfaced and that was the birth of the merry troop of black Peters as we know it today.
 
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spekkeh

Banned
woopWOOP said:
Last year the annual TV show and advertisements stopped using blackface and the clothing gave the impression of 'Piet' just fine.
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That was two years ago iirc. Last year they went back to blackface, to the disappointment of many..well dozens of us :/.. and apparently luckily also the head Piet.
 
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methane47

Member
neorej said:
Nice of them to note that most schools did so out of fear of violence by anti Piet radicals, and they did not want the celebration to be tainted by violence.
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The Fk is this opinion?

spons said:
I don't want to be sensitive about this but I feel attacked by this statement. We're not some glob of people all with the exact same opinions and views. A professional outlet should know better.

A lot of people are against racism here and many of them are against the stereotypes portrayed in the character of Black Pete, but you should really not marginalize a country of almost 17 million people as "the Dutch".
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What the heck is this opinion? this is a story about the dutch government making policies to change Zwarte piet... and your comment is [dont generalize as the Dutch]

What? is it french people? Germans? Is it Australians in holland that are making this policy change? This is the wierdest thing to be sensitive about.

Dutch People and Dutch Government are looking into making policy changes... but we shouldn't call them... the Dutch?
 
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norinrad

Member
It will go away or be adjusted with time. What most people fail to see is that there are all kinds of people in the Netherlands. You have a typical Dutch family all white, then you have a typical Dutch family that is not only white, but black, Asian etc all in the same family. Let's pretend they are not there and continue With the usual it's all innocent and just for kids.
 
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Nollemaster

Member
The Zwarte Piet discussion has been great for exposing all the casual racism currently present in Dutch society. I still don't see it going away anytime soon because many people, young and old, can't even comprehend how it's offensive.
 
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Deleted member 1235

Unconfirmed Member
Blue Ninja said:
It's a dying tradition, but it's gonna take years for it to disappear entirely. I have to work on a Sinterklaas event with some people who still cling firmly to the old stereotype, it's something that won't go away overnight. But even people like that realize it's going to happen sooner rather than later. We're still going to be seeing threads about this for years to come.

I'm a big fan of the portrayal they used in the film last year. Not black but smudged with soot.
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Yeah sooty or rainbow Piet is the way to go here, no fucks will be given by kids
 
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roytheone

Member
Ah, yes, this time of the year again? Man, I really hope this year this discussion can be had on a civilized way, with no death threats or protesters disrupting a children celebration!

Not going to happen :(
 
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DEAD RABBIT

Member
At least we never lynched Zwarte Pieten, firebombed their living spaces, assassinated their civil rights leaders, outright killed them on the street for jaywalking or systematically jail them for minor offenses.
 
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