Then why are their clothes clean?
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Parents explain this by saying, for instance, that âyes, Piet does wash himself, but he has climbed through the chimneys so often that the soot wonât come off anymoreâ (as is done in Jacques Vriens, âDag, Sinterklaasjeâ (2012), a childrenâs book).
But a protestor was also arrested for wearing a shirt saying that Zwarte Piet is racist.
Really? Because earlier you said:[quote=âRikus, post:143, topic:14760â]
If you are able to read Dutch, you can see at Organisatie - Sint in Amsterdam that the celebration is organized by a private-sector entity called âStichting Sinterklaas Intocht Amsterdamâ with the help of around 1200 volunteers and a large number of sponsors. The municipality of Amsterdam is merely one of these sponsors.
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Oh, so itâs a big coincidence that they are black, have curly black hair, and wear hoop earrings that Barbary (i.e., North-African Berber) pirates wear? And I suppose itâs also a pure coincidence that he is also variously described as Moorish or Turkish? Nothing racial at all, Iâm sure. heck, even other defenders of the black-face makeup have conceded that there are traditional interpretations of black-faced Piet as black and not merely sooty⊠and there are plenty of pictures showing sooty Piets illustrating that black-face isnât essential to conveying the idea of Piet as sooty.
1: Barbary pirates - Wikipedia[quote=âRikus, post:162, topic:14760â]
As far as I know, no pressure was applied by the Mayor in order to have the earrings removed. In his letter of 30 October he stated that the celebration itself in its present form cannot be considered racist and rather promotes social cohesion, pointing out that it is attended by 300,000 to 400,000 people (B/W) each year in Amsterdam. Any changes that have been introduced have resulted from an open debate between the Mayor, Gario and the parties involved in the celebration.
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Something may have been lost in the translation, but this is not the impression I got from this article.
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Edit to respond to a comment below:
For the same reason his face is clean, presumably: no part of him gets dirty. Now if part of him got dirty and part didnât then you might have a legitimate question.
And if Pietâs face is sooty from the chimney, why are his lips so red?
If you tell your kids that the Piets are imaginary, why is maintaining his colour so important? Does it make a difference if heâs a white imaginary person or a black one? Havenât you already spoiled this childrenâs festival by revealing that heâs imaginary?
According to another Dutch poster here, whom I quoted above, municipalities sponsor the festivals.
A couple of people wearing a T-shirt in a public space is a public protest with security implications?
And you have watched historical footage and surveyed the historical record, and arrived at a comprehensively researched conclusion on this? A number of people have pointed to historical documents that agree that Piet was portrayed as a bumbling fool. A number of Dutch commentators have confirmed these descriptions.
83% of the Dutch population lives in cities. Even if the entire Dutch rural population is white, we would still expect the average city to be 24% minority, and only 18% of city dwellers to be from outside the EU. That you live in an area that is 48% minority suggests something beyond simple urbanization is at play. Perhaps itâs simply a reflection of disparate costs of living in different areas of town, but minority concentration at that level is somewhat surprising given the fairly low number of immigrants in Holland as well as the countryâs fairly low income inequality.
1: Netherlands Demographics Profile[quote=âForkboy, post:172, topic:14760â]
Now those images are clearly racist. Also worth noting that TinTin in Africa dates from the 1930âs, is no longer distributed and nobody has any problems with calling it racist. Zwarte Piet however does not go around carrying Sinterklaas on his back and calling him âbwana.â
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Look at the other images on the page he links to; some of them are quite recent and involve similar depictions. Most people other than you agree that in the 1930s Zwarte Piet was a black servant whose depiction largely adhered to racist tropes of the day.
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Really? Because earlier you said:
OK, thatâs a misunderstanding. I was speaking of the protestersâ cause the second time.
Oh, so itâs a big coincidenceâŠ
No, I am not saying that I myself think itâs a coincidence that they have these characteristics. I was merely reporting a âderacializedâ story that has been told to children by their parents for decades now (and which seems in turn to have been based on an older opinion of folklorists concerning the characterâs ultimate, i.e., pre-19th-century, origins). The fact that this story is passed on from generation to generation helps to explain why so many people in the Netherlands genuinely do not see Zwarte Piet as a Black African.
Something may have been lost in the translationâŠ
Apparently. The source of that article, most probably DPG Media Privacy Gate (almost a word-for-word translation), uses the term âorganisation of the entryâ (âde organisatie van de intochtâ), not âlicencing committeeâ.
Well, at least four distinct historical layers can be observed in the Zwarte Piet story:
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The âUr-Zwarte Pietâ may have been a dark spirit who was believed to enter houses via the chimney in pre-Christian times (=first layer, a reconstruction based on comparative methods).
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It is possible, even likely if he was reintroduced from Central Europe, that Zwarte Piet has a more immediate predecessor in a black-faced, chained devil. In the Central European tradition Saint Nicholas is still accompanied by one or more demons (=second layer, another historical reconstruction based on comparative methods).
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The transformation into a Moorish (âBlackâ) servant âfrom Spainâ probably took place sometime in the early 1800s (adding a third layer, which is directly observable).
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In the course of the 20th century many parents started to tell their children that Zwarte Piet was a Spanish (non-Black, or not necessarily Black) person whose black appearance was caused by the soot from the chimneys (fourth layer, a directly observable development).
Yes, the lengths people will go to explain away racism are often quite astounding.
Maybe, but this explanation fits in quite well with older forms of the tradition, which probably featured a black figure of some kind - perhaps a Krampus-style devil - who was restyled as a Moor / Black African (more child-friendly than a devil!) in the 1800s. Sinterklaas himself is not infrequently described as a âBlack Manâ in older sources.
Come on! Here, this from your Belgian neighbors (who also celebrate ZP):
How can you brazenly pretend that those big red lips werenât a stereotype of black Africans? Here, another archetype that was widespread across Europe in the late 19th century:
(Indeed, itâs very interesting to note how those red lips get bigger and bigger on the images of (clearly black and African) Zwarte Piets as the Golliwog iconography spreads in Europe: Evolution of (Zwarte) Piet ::: St. Nicholas Center)
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OK, you misunderstood what I meant to say because I wrote it in an ambiguous way. I meant to say that the actorsâ lips are in fact not artificially enlarged; they are just painted red. If they were big, and if the figure was wearing a loincloth, for instance, or even an ordinary suit instead of a Renaissance costume, the connection between the human actor dressed as Zwarte Piet and the Tintin caricatures would perhaps be more obvious. As it is, many children, and even adults, fail to see such a connection and do not recognize Zwarte Piet, in his enacted form, as an impersonation of a real-life Black person.
Why is Santaâs coat clean if he goes down the chimney ?
Of course heâs imaginary. This is also how I explain it to my children, itâs a sort of game.
Neither does Sinterklaas. Maybe some communities put on a show as a means to draw crowds into shopping centres though I think that those are privately funded and organised.
Free speech is not limited, public protests, which can impact safety, generally need to be registered beforehand.
Iâm tired of this argument. You get this information second hand and pass it off as fact. You have not watched a single tv show with these characters, donât know the songs and have not read the stories so please stop telling people who have what this character is like. Your definition of the character is incorrect.
Yes like everywhere else in the world, including North America, immigrants live mainly in the cities. Thatâs not segregation, thatâs where the low skill jobs are.
Now those images are clearly racist. Also worth noting that TinTin in Africa dates from the 1930âs, is no longer distributed and nobody has any problems with calling it racist. Zwarte Piet however does not go around carrying Sinterklaas on his back and calling him âbwana.â
Note that there is no Golliwogg article on the Dutch Wikipedia. I doubt if the figure has ever been popular in the Netherlands. I myself had never heard of it before this yearâs discussion.
Even so, as a child, I was familiar with Tintin and similar cartoons. Hence, the first time I saw a depiction of Zwarte Piet as a stereotypical Black person, of the type you refer to, I probably thought: âO, thatâs funny. They made him look just like one of the African people from Tintin (or AstĂ©rix) in this drawing.â Seriously. I realize that it is hard to explain.
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