{"id":21850,"date":"2013-12-06T01:07:48","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T06:07:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=21850"},"modified":"2013-12-06T01:54:57","modified_gmt":"2013-12-06T06:54:57","slug":"culture-and-racism-some-reflections-on-zwarte-piet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2013\/12\/culture-and-racism-some-reflections-on-zwarte-piet\/","title":{"rendered":"Culture and Racism: Some Reflections on “Zwarte Piet”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pietitie\"<\/a>I don\u2019t think I will ever forget the look on my roommate\u2019s face when I offered her some pepernoten<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It must have been late October or early November. I was an exchange student in New York and my parents had mailed some much-missed Dutch goodies, including pepernoten<\/em>, the\u00a0tiny spicy cookies associated with the Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas<\/em>) celebration. Saint Nicholas\u2014not to be confused with Santa Claus even though both are white men with long beards who dress in red robes\u2014is the patron saint of children. Historically he was a Greek bishop from Myra in present-day Turkey, but for unknown reasons Dutch children are told he hails from Spain. The Saint\u2019s grand arrival in the Netherlands by steamboat is followed by a few weeks of fun and excitement, which culminate in a big celebration on the evening of December 5.<\/p>\n

All of this sounds innocent enough. But here is the problem: Saint Nicholas is accompanied by several helpers, referred to as black Petes (zwarte Pieten<\/em>). The\u00a0actors who take on the\u00a0black Pete roles\u00a0are often\u00a0white men, and sometimes women, whose faces are painted\u00a0black. They wear colorful, minstrel-type costumes and carry large burlap bags filled with pepernoten<\/em> and presents. The Petes\u00a0are also holding bundles of twigs, which they swing around in a vaguely threatening fashion. The reason for the blackness of the Petes is a subject of speculation. Some insist that the faces of the Petes get covered with soot as a result of their habit to enter houses through chimneys in order to fill children\u2019s shoes with chocolate frogs and little Saint Nicholas-shaped meringues. Another theory holds that the black Petes are Moorish servants.<\/p>\n

Over the last few months, the long-simmering debate about whether black Pete is racist has grown into a full-blown controversy that<\/a> has<\/a> attracted<\/a> the<\/a> attention<\/a> of<\/a> the<\/a> international<\/a> press<\/a>. In January of this year, four representatives of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights sent a letter<\/a> to the Dutch government attacking black Pete as potentially \u201cperpetuat[ing] negative stereotypes\u201d about African people and people of African descent, and soliciting the Dutch government\u2019s views. The Dutch government\u2019s response<\/a> was an exercise in evasion: the government essentially said it is aware of disagreement about black Pete but views Saint Nicholas as an event for children, and that the it is \u201chighly committed to combating discrimination on all grounds[.]\u201d Professor Verene Shepherd, the lead author of the UN letter, added fuel to the fire by saying in a televised interview<\/a> that she didn\u2019t understand why one Santa Claus wasn\u2019t enough for the Dutch. A black Pete fan-page<\/a> on Facebook attracted more than two million \u201clikes\u201d in a week. In an essay<\/a> published in yesterday\u2019s New York Times, Dutch author Arnon Grunberg argues that the strong emotional support of black Pete is a symptom of \u201cthinly disguised xenophobia\u201d driven by \u201cthe fear of losing identity[.]\u201d<\/p>\n

In my own life, a micro-level version of these events played out in the pepernoten<\/em> incident. The bag I handed to my roommate featured several Saint Nicholas illustrations, including some depictions of black Pete that looked a lot like the picture at the top of this blog post (which, incidentally, is the profile picture of the Facebook fan site). Needless to say, these images struck my American friend as deeply offensive. She calmly explained to me that between the big eyes, round face, exaggeratedly red lips, and large ear hoops, it would be hard to come up with a more racist caricature of a black person. Yet I saw something very different: a beloved character from my childhood. Besides, I was one of the least racist persons I knew and my country was a shining beacon of tolerance and multiculturalism, so how could black Pete possibly be racist?<\/p>\n

Perhaps it is unfair to judge the attachment of the Dutch to black Pete through the lens of American sensitivities about blackface. And the Dutch could argue, with some reason, that any offense caused by the black Petes pales in comparison with the irreparable harms that\u00a0result from structural\u00a0racism in the administration of the\u00a0death<\/a> penalty<\/a> in the United States. But it is too easy to explain away my perspective at the time\u2014which appears to be shared by many Dutch today\u2014as merely an aspect of Dutch culture that is hard to explain to outsiders, similar to jokes that tend to\u00a0get lost in translation. Asked for associations with \u201cblack Pete,\u201d a group of 19,000 Dutch persons (I have no information about the composition of this group) overwhelmingly responded with words like tradition, friend of children, children\u2019s party, and the inevitable gezelligheid<\/em><\/a>. A second group consisting of 220 persons of Surinam or Antillean descent, however, came up with associations such as\u00a0racism, servant, slave, and oppression. Tellingly, 76% of the first group said they could not imagine that black Pete could come across as racist. (The poll results are discussed in this television report<\/a>, in Dutch, starting at 6:40.) White Dutch people like myself can no more know what black Pete looks like when seen through the eyes of a Dutch person of color than my American roommate could understand what I saw\u2014or failed to see\u2014when looking at a bag of pepernoten<\/em>. But the least we can do is listen.<\/p>\n

Where does that take us? With all due respect to Professor Shepherd, the Dutch don\u2019t need Santa Claus any more than they need Halloween or Thanksgiving. The Saint Nicholas event includes such traditions as writing personalized rhymes for one another and crafting elaborate gift boxes known as surprises<\/em><\/a> (pronounced in faux-French). While celebrations tend to involve the exchange of presents, Saint Nicholas is ultimately about laughter, family, friendship, and the creation of magical experiences for children that are unique to the Dutch culture. And I’d hate to see the Petes go, as\u00a0Saint Nicholas would be a rather boring affair without them. But to fulfill their role of adding a counterweight to Saint Nicholas\u2019s seriousness, the Petes need not\u00a0be black\u00a0or wear minstrel clothes. And the picture of a white man surrounded by black servants conjures up images of racial hierarchy to a significant segment of Dutch persons of color, even if many white Dutch are genuinely oblivious to the issue. So I side with those who have argued for taking the black out of black Pete. The Petes could either retain their own skin color, or\u2014if\u00a0this would make the actors too recognizable to children who are still believers\u2014they could be painted in all kinds of \u201crainbow\u201d colors, a practice some places have already adopted. Either way,\u00a0the reinvention of the Petes, who after all are\u00a0nothing more than a product\u00a0of our\u00a0collective imagination, is overdue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t think I will ever forget the look on my roommate\u2019s face when I offered her some pepernoten. It must have been late October or early November. I was an exchange student in New York and my parents had mailed some much-missed Dutch goodies, including pepernoten, the\u00a0tiny spicy cookies associated with the Saint Nicholas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[122,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-public","category-race-and-the-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}