On December 5, the people, especially the children, of the Netherlands will be jumping for joy as they unwrap their presents. Presents brought not by Santa Claus but his cousin or forbear (depending on your point of view), Sinterklaas, Saint Nicholas in English, who comes from Spain, not the North Pole. But this year, it has attracted protests, four people have been arrested, including Quinsy Gario, a dramatist who recently won an award here, for wearing a T shirt.
Newspaper commentators have joined the fray and the Prime Minister of the tiny Caribbean nation, St Maarten, has announced that she “won't get involved”, prompting heated rebuttals from her constituents. The fuss isn't about the old bishop himself, it's about his assistants, the Zwarte Piets, Black Petes. Not elves or other mythical creatures but — and at this point many pinch themselves in surprise — by blacked-up white people with wigs of curly hair and thick red lips.
Indisputably, unmistakably the same as those characters that were, in the 1970s in most of the world, consigned to dustheap with other derogatory images and words. But in the Netherlands, they remained, thrived, embedded themselves deeper into the culture. In fact, as several commentators have remarked, if you want to annoy most Dutch people, all you need to do is criticise Zwarte Piet. “It's not racist!” they'll cry, “You are oversensitive.” Ask them, though, as Shantie Jagmohansingh did in Trouw , a Dutch newspaper that I contribute to too (including recently on the persistence of the “N-word” in Dutch), if they think they could present that to Obama or Mandela and they'll mutter about it being a “Dutch tradition” and nothing to do with the rest of the world.
Where does it come from? Well, like most myths and images, the image and story are an amalgamation of several stories and a sackload of history. To begin with, there's Black Peter himself. There are those that argue that he is descended from pre-Christian Germanic traditions, from representations of the devil. Which he might well be, but it's also absolutely certain that form of the current character appeared in a Dutch children's book in 1845, where there was just one Black Pete.
Black Pete
Definitely a slave, portrayed and decked out like all the caricature Africans of the time, one, big curly hair, black face, starry white eyes and thick red lips.
The story caught on and generations of children quaked in their boots at the thought of being castigated by Black Pete — if you were good, the old white man gave you a present, if not his black slave gave you a thrashing.That was the 19th century. Over time, slavery became unacceptable and Piet got upgraded to servant and, more recently, he became a “helper”.
But extraordinarily, as many countries shelved the minstrel acts and “coon” shows, the Netherlands held on to Zwarte Piet. It's about identity, they will tell you, and they are right. Zwarte Piet is symbolic. While in many ways, the Netherlands is a society with a high level of social equality, there are boundaries. The concept of the “native” and the “foreigner” are essential.
For many, “non-white” people aren't part of being Dutch, and words have even been coined to distinguish categories of “native/non-native”: “Autochtone” for those of “pure native” descent and “allochtone” for those with one parent born “abroad”, a euphemism for “non-white” — or, as some say these days “non-Western”. Zwarte Piet is at home.
As Jose Lake Jr, author and activist argued in St Maarten's Today newspaper that: “This tradition that is celebrated by the Dutch only creates an inferiority complex especially amongst black people and particularly the black children. This is not a harmless exercise but a deep seated racist exercise where every black child sees a Zwarte Piet feels inferior, downgraded, frustrated and feels in every way inferior.”
The imagery combines with the idea that the Dutch can do, have done, no wrong. Slavery, colonialism? Not here, nothing to do with this country. In spite of the fact that at independence, Indonesia had such an enfeebled education system that the Dutch language died out almost immediately.
In spite of it being common record that the post-WWII Dutch state brutally opposed independence with a ferocity that the Germans would have approved of. In spite of the evidence being here for all to see that Amsterdam was built not just on “trade” but on the profits of the slave trade. And so on.
Unofficial segregation
Even though the effects of such blindness are there for all of us to see, schools are often unofficially segregated, described as “black” or “white”, a recent study showed that over three quarters of Dutch employment bureaus are willing to actively participate in racial discrimination and football legend Johann Cruyff dismissed another footballing legend Davids as being on the board of Amsterdam's football team only because “you are black” (he was equally scathing about a woman on the board too, on the basis of her gender).
And as people defend Zwarte Piet and black sheep in posters in Switzerland, the political parties of xenophobia slip into the corridors of power, until recently holding sway in Denmark, now holding the balance of power in Finland, always just outside the centre in France. Here in the Netherlands too, unsurprisingly perhaps, a weak-kneed, morally equivocal minority government depends helplessly on the anti-Islamic “Freedom Party” — “freedom” for the “dominant” group only, it aims to ban the Koran and headscarves.
But perhaps there is hope, four people were arrested the other day. At least there are people protesting. And protests sometimes get heard. Not often enough perhaps, but every little counts.
Amal Chatterjee lives in Amsterdam. His novel,Across the Lakes, set in Kolkata, where he grew up, was shortlisted for the 1998 Crossword Prize.
