Zwarte Piet and modern blackface

While the class treats race in popular culture in the United States, I thought that a modern example of blackface could help our discussion of cultural reminants that should or should not be intentionally forgotten.

In Dutch tradition, Saint Nicholas is not accompanied by elves but instead by a helper called Zwarte Piet. This translates literally to "Black Pete." Every year through the present, Saint Nicholas comes to the Netherlands late in November to start the Christmas season. I happened to be in Amsterdam last year when Saint Nicholas arrived: he comes on a steam boat and is accompanied by a large number of "Zwarte Piet" helpers, who are Dutch people (predominantly white) in blackface wearing clownish costumes and wearing large hoop earrings and curly black wigs. There is large parade through the city of Saint Nicholas and his blackface helpers; this parade is well attended and one may buy Zwarte Piet dolls, cakes, et cetera. More information here.

The Zwarte Piet, while clownish in appearance, were not behaving themselves in any particular manner -- they weren't being clownish or foolish, just handing out candy to Dutch children.

As far as I could tell, the Netherlands never had anything approaching the slave culture that the United States had, though the Netherlands did have a large number of colonies throughout the world.

So here we have an example of modern blackface. While this history of the blackface may be dubious -- it is suggested that the Zwarte Piet characters were originally captured devils -- as far as I could tell the modern Zwarte Piet weren't doing anything especially offensive. On the other hand, there are very few black in the Netherlands, and having the most famous "black" people be wearing goofy costumes may dehumanize blacks to Dutch children.