Sinterklaas
Late autumn. It means that we are slowly approaching the date marked red in some calendars — 17 November. If you live outside the Netherlands, you wouldn’t guess what this date is about. But in the Netherlands, everyone knows this day as the arrival of the Sinterklass, the Dutch Santa Claus. However, he does not come alone, neither accompanied by a gang of elk. Who appears by Sinter’s side is his little helper — Black Pete or Zwarte Piet, in Dutch. Some might not be convinced but he does represent a black man, not exactly a regular black man but more a spoof of some sort. As described by Gloria Wekker in White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race — “a figure of a blackened man — a white man, but also often a white woman with a blackened face; the blacker the better — with thick red lips, golden earrings, an Afro wig, clad in a colorful Moor’s costume, and, until recently, wielding a quite deplorable grammar ‘dumb-speak’ “ (Wekker, 139).
When I first arrived in the Netherlands, it did shock me to see the blackface figure in a colourful outfit jumping up and down the buildings in Amsterdam. I didn’t know who exactly is this figure next to the big white Santa and to be honest, the juxtaposition of a powerful figure of a white priest on a white horse with a little jiggly man next to him who “sings, dances, and cracks jokes all day long and whose greatest joy it is to please white folks and their children” (Hall 1997, Morrison 1992a) felt very wrong. Shocked and curious, I went after some research about Piet and found out of several discussions on the topic and the proof of how the character has been changing throughout the years affected by this debate. In 2019, for instance, people that wear Black Pete costumes try to detach from the idea of Zwarte Piet being a caricature of a black person and often smudge colour on their faces rather than wearing full blackface, with this, showing that Santa’s helper comes down through the chimney.
Despite these changes, opinions of whether this figure should exist or not are dividing the country. In the cities of the Dutch Bible Belt, where all conservative orthodox Calvinist Protestants live, of course, the discussion is off the table. But I do confess I met quite some people in the big cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam that would attack everyone who would advocate the Sinterklaas’ assistant with some especially prepared for this occasion arguments. Usually, the arguments are based on the fact that if people of other origins can celebrate Ramadan, Hanuka or Holi, why than Dutch people cannot celebrate the arrival of their traditional character Black Pete?
Unfortunately, this argument is very weak, and everyone who studied at least a tiny bit of geography at school knows that along the world’s history some countries were perpetrators, or how they would call themselves, the conquerors, and the others, had no choice but to accept being the conquered territories, or simply victims. The Netherlands, despite its size, was a country that induced forced labour and was one of the leading states in the area of human trafficking: 600,000 African people were enslaved by the Dutch during the 18th century (African Studies Centre, Leiden). Torn away from their homes and families, these people were sent to serve the privileged in the Dutch Caribbean and the West Indies. Also, the Netherlands was one of the last countries to abolish slavery in 1863. A good example of a perpetrator with a heavy legacy of racism behind its back.
Therefore, saying let’s celebrate the arrival of a black buffoon whom we can force “to dance on the decks of slave ships” (Wekker 165) or nowadays, in the public square, means to be convinced that black people are naturally “funny, carefree, frolicking, without a worry in the world, having no objections to their status and only a limited capacity for suffering, wonderfully suited to their roles of the enslaved” (Wekker 165) and accept the idea that slavery is a tradition like any other that should be remembered and maintained.
Another argument is the old chestnut — “evil is in the eye of the beholder” that states that it’s all angry black people’s fault. They see race and racism everywhere and it doesn’t make things easy for the kind and colourblind white people that only wish for peace and tranquility. The thing is, considering the past events and the fact that the whole rich Western world can be described with the term “white privilege” (meaning that your skin colour determines your life experiences), we cannot ignore the race and simply pretend that everyone is born into equal opportunities. Because, as stated by Reni Eddo-Lodge, the author of Why I Am No Longer Talking to White People About Race — “Not seeing race does little to deconstruct racist structures or materially improve the conditions which people of colour are subject to daily. In order to dismantle unjust, racist structures, we must see race. We must see who benefits from their race, who is disproportionately impacted by negative stereotypes about their race, and to who power and privilege is bestowed upon — earned or not — because of their race, their class, and their gender. Seeing race is essential to changing the system” (Eddo-Lodge 84). Happy Sinterklaas, everyone!
Sources:
African Studies Centre, Leiden: https://www.ascleiden.nl/content/webdossiers/dutch-involvement-transatlantic-slave-trade-and-abolition
Eddo-Lodge, Reni, Why I Am No Longer Talking to White People About Race, 2018
Hall 1997; Morrison 1992a cited in Wekker, Gloria, White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race, 2016, p. 141
Wekker, Gloria, White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race, 2016
