Netherlands' "War on Xmas" is "War on 'Black Pete'"

http://religiondispatches.org/netherlands-war-on-xmas-is-war-on-black-pete/

BY JOSEPH LAYCOCK DECEMBER 1, 2014


Sinterklass and two "Black Petes."

In November, while governor Jay Nixon declared the controversy in Ferguson to be a state of emergency, another racially charged protest was under way in the Netherlands. On November 15 the town of Gouda (famous for its cheese) held an annual festival celebrating the arrival of Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas) and his sidekick, a Spanish Moor named Zwarte Piet or “Black Pete.”

For decades, people in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Sweden have celebrated the start of the holiday season by dressing as Black Pete—complete with black face paint, red lipstick, and frizzy wigs—to distribute candy and serve the same function that Christmas elves do in America. It’s only since about 2011 that some have protested the practice as racist. This year 60 people were arrested for disruptive protesting—both for and against the tradition of dressing as Black Pete.

While Americans may snicker at this clearly backwards and racist tradition, it seems remarkably similar to our own controversy over the Washington Redskins. The tradition of Black Pete demonstrates that there is more to racism than asserting negative stereotypes or mistreating minorities.

Race is also a mythological category. The anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss theorized that myth serves to take elements that oppose and contradict each other and to somehow “reconcile” them. When human beings create narratives and rituals to order their world, racial difference is one of the elements that must be accounted for and located within a larger pattern of meaning. One reason that racist institutions are so enduring is that they are often a source of meaning to the communities that support them. Black Pete is a source of joy to children just as some Redskins fans are emotionally invested in their offensive team name.

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