Sinterklaas arrives in the Netherlands next Saturday, which marks the opening of blackface season. I always feel shy on Twitter, and most of my research is about ugly things that I don’t want to spread further, but some brief observations re: anti-black racism (warning) below.
82% of Dutch people think Pete should look like this forever, and anti-blackface activists are - literally - aggressively dismissed. I wrote a short essay about this last year. Why is it worse for a tradition to be CALLED racist than for it to BE racist? bit.ly/2zRMeaQ
My answer revolves around heritage, progressive ideals, and what happens when those ideals are ossified as quintessentially ’(white) Dutch’ - any accusation of racism = blaspheming a civic ideal at the core of Dutchness. Call blackface racist, and you are the enemy of progress.
Bizarre, but it’s really like that. One Twitter response to my article last year was to say that if I were really Dutch, I’d know Zwarte Piet is not racist. I’ve always loved the quip that when you talk about feminism, men will prove its point for you - same goes here apparently.
Really cannot overstate how pervasive the ‘I am progress and therefore how dare you call me racist’ response is in my country. This soccer commentator - super popular show in the Netherlands - talks about how it’s not racist to refuse African players. bit.ly/2QEtT8d
He fought for ‘freedom’ in the 60s, you know, 'and the fact is that players from the African continent, no matter how well they play, cannot assimilate' (includes a vague linking of blackness and sexual violence, under the thin thin veil of ‘culture’). This was 6 days ago.
Dutch debates about racism go nowhere because Dutchness = progress and so the very term can’t get traction, and this position seems to be becoming less, not more, susceptible to critique. Meanwhile, the bloggers I work on have begun writing about blackness explicitly. #amrel
They did not do that during the Obama presidency, nor during the first Trump year. It lingered below the surface. Now, some host (very) young ‘guest bloggers’ who are African American, to write about reversing ‘the generational curse on the black race’ by not being ‘Jezebels.’
Nothing new, historically speaking. But this season - midterms, Sinterklaas, sudden frankness on Evangelical women’s blogs - has meant I'm grappling anew with making legible and concrete this movement of shielding anti-black racism by constantly claiming high(er) grounds.
