Blackface

Peter Breedveld

I am as fond of Sinterklaas’ black sidekick Zwarte Piet as the next guy, but the violent and humiliating arrest of protester Quinsy Gario at the reception of Sinterklaas doesn’t sit well with me. I am ashamed to be a citizen of a state that acts so harshly against someone who does nothing more than exercise his right to free speech.

I can fully understand the Curaçao minister Sheldry Osepa’s anger about the mistreatment of Gario, who was arrested for wearing a T-shirt saying that the tradition of Zwarte Piet is racist. Osepa called it a ‘smack in the unpainted face of our black artists’. The clenched and predictable reactions of some of our media and columnists, on the other hand, which are completely devoid of any empathy, give me feelings of vicarious shame. Of course one can angrily discard any argument of those considering the tradition of Zwarte Piet racist, fact is that a great deal of people (i.e the rest of the world) see it as a racist custom. And not entirely without good reason.

Watch this footage in which we see an American reporter dropping her jaw at the sight of a procession of Zwarte Pieten, which she calls a “Million Men March, but in a bad way”. The whole thing reminds her of ‘blackface’, an old American form of entertainment involving a white actor painting his face black and playing the happy little nigger. “You wanna come do that in America?” the reporter asks one of the Zwarte Pieten.

Another American wonders ‘why blackface pickaninny coons still exist in Holland’ on this Internet forum. She fails to understand what is so appealing about a tradition of a ‘pickaninny muslim devil’ scaring the bejesus out of naughty little children.

She is met with the incomprehension of the Dutch forum members, who behave like provincial autistics, so typical of many of my fellow countrymen. Their main concern is the American addressing the issue of Zwarte Piet in summer. Stupid, senseless American, who should have known mentioning anything concerning Sinterklaas, out of season!, is a big fat taboo in Holland!

And of course the Ultimate Argument is brought in, The Argument To End All Arguments, namely that Zwarte Piet is not racist and that is the end of it.

But Zwarte Piet ís racist. The argument that he is black because he crawls through chimneys to bring the children their presents, is an insult to anyone’s intelligence. Soot does not give you kinky hair or big fat nigger lips. Any representation of Zwarte Piet looks like a typical caricature of a black man: thick lips, kinky hair and big, white eyes. When I was a child, there was no beating about the bush either: it was explained to me that Zwarte Piet stood for the Moors who for many centuries formed a threat to Spain, supposedly the home land of Sinterklaas.

That Zwarte Piet’s predecessor was a devil (and in the alpine region Sinterklaas’ helper still is a mix between the devil and the Scandinavian Julbocken, called Krampus) doesn’t really help either. Besides, The Netherlands is rapidly establishing a reputation as a racist country, which is not strange, considering our government openly targets non-western immigrants and has declared as one of its goals to ‘give our beautiful Holland back to the Dutch.’

And it’s not just our government. Racism is firmly embedded in our national spirit. The first reaction of Marck Burema, the chief editor of the highly influential rightwing website GeenStijl, on the arrest of Gario was an article in which Burema called Gario a Zwarte Piet. And when Dutch (and black) singer Giovanca had the incredible courage to tell the press she could understand the resistance against Zwarte Piet, many commenters on the Internet told her to ‘fuck off out of our country’.

Black people who don’t appreciate the Dutch version of the blackface pickaninny coon, are called Zwarte Pieten themselves and are told to fuck off out of our country – but hey! There is nothing racist about Zwarte Piet. Honest Injun.

The Dutch were the last in the world to abolish the slave trade and we are the only ones still enjoying ourselves with blackface. There is a highly popular television programme on Dutch national TV, paid for by tax money, in which the star reporter regularly goes out on the street to make fun of black people. Politicians are in earnest proposing a law which forbids immigrant women wearing headscarves to travel by bus or enter a government building. They are seriously talking about deporting immigrants who want to retain their culture and religion.

Especially in this time of globalization this is outrageous. We are making an international embarrassment of ourselves, as citizens of a backward, racist country. High time Holland pulled its head out of its own ass.

Peter Breedveld is a Dutch journalist who is on top of several black lists of so-called traitors of the Dutch race and culture.