show transcript
chirasul posted:
my only advice is to BE CAREFUL posting about holiday traditions around europeans. you’ll post something casual like “anyone else watch the old Grinch movie every year? what a classic” and a european will appear as if summoned and say some shit like “funny how USAmericans always CONVENIENTLY forget that Not Everyone On Earth is from The USA……… no of COURSE we dont watch ‘the grunch’ or whatever the fuck that is…. our tradition is to attend a community showing of Glummdorf the Racial Stereotype”
themainspoon replies with screenshots of several tumblr tags and comments:
riseupriseupandcomealong:
my mom’s (american) class tried doing a language exchange thing w a sister school in spain and they decided to send each other boxes of gifts for christmas. the spanish class made remarks about oh christmas in the usa is so commercialized we have ~real traditions~ here and then my mom opened a box full of blackface dolls and blackface doll ornaments and blackface clothespins in front of her students
raygender:
Did once have a Dutch woman
vehemently defend the Festive Christmas Blackface by repeating "it’s different in Europe” with increasing desperation until she was crying. Literally all anybody else present did was just like, calmly say they were uncomfortable with the practice and not change her mind when she wailed about it.
monkey-mulch:
you bring up rudolph the red nosed reindeer and they bring out Skimbo the filthy redskin and im barely even joking about that they actually had this thing called indian plays in both soviet countries and germany
themainspoon:
European children waiting patiently on Hatemas Eve for Racism Claus to slur down the chimney and segregate all of their presents by colour.
It’s on December 5th.
As a Dutch person who grew up with this tradition, the tradition doesn’t have all the same racist connotations that historical blackface does. “Zwarte Piet” isn’t put in a bad light but as an approachable friend who brings children gifts. I personally never experienced him as a negative stereotype in any way. There’s been plenty of attempts to tie his origins to slavery or denigrating racist stereotypes, but historians just don’t really find conclusive evidence for that. The reason seems to be more like “just cause” rather than some racist reasoning. He just sort of “popped up”, people liked the character so he stuck around.
Nonetheless, some people are uncomfortable with it. And I don’t think changing the colour of his skin should matter all that much. The story told to kids was that he’s only black due to all the chimney soot (which he climbs through to deliver presents), but a couple years the national broadcaster had a story (there’s a sort of “Sinterklaas News” programme for kids with a new exciting story each year for why this time maybe you won’t get presents but at the last moment everything works out anyway) where the boat that Sinterklaas and the Pieten take from Spain to the Netherlands sailed through a rainbow, so now all the Pieten have all kinds of different rainbow colours instead of black. They ditched some of the other stereotypical stuff (like the bright red lips and earrings) quietly because kids don’t notice nor care about that.
I don’t agree that celebrating with Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) makes someone a racist. It’s an old tradition people were born into, it’s just normal to them and people certainly don’t typically celebrate with Zwarte Piet in order to be negative towards people of colour in any way. Hell, the Netherlands is fairly well known for being tolerant.
I do however agree that if someone asks to change it because it’s uncomfortable, that getting angry about it and deliberately not changing it because of “muh traditions” certainly does seem quite racist. Piet being black is just a detail, it’s not part of the core of the tradition. Like, are these people in the pocket of “big black makeup” or something? Just make them all kinds of colours, looks a lot more cheerful too imo. Thankfully the country is moving away from him being black so hopefully in the future the debate can be laid to rest.