Zwarte Piet (whose name means “Black Pete” in Dutch) is a figure in the folklore of the Low Countries (i.e., the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg) who is said to accompany Saint Nicholas or Sinterklaas. In the weeks leading up to the feast day of Saint Nicholas, which is celebrated in the Netherlands on 5th December, he is traditionally portrayed by white actors or volunteers wearing blackface, along with thick red lipstick, a black wig of afro-textured hair, a large gold earring, and colorful faux-Renaissance-style clothing. These “Zwarte Pieten” traditionally take part in parades, entertain young children, and pass out cookie-like confectionaries known as pepernoten and kruidnoten.
Zwarte Piet has been a widely beloved figure among white people in the Low Countries for generations, but, for decades, some people (mostly people of color) have criticized the character as racist (because he is). Over the course of the past decade, and the past few years in particular, there has been something of a sea change, as a deracialized version of the character named Roetveegpiet (“Sooty Pete”), who wears light soot makeup instead of blackface, has eclipsed the traditional blackface version of the character in popularity.
Some white people have tried to defend the traditional Zwarte Piet by claiming that the character can’t be racist because he (supposedly) has no connection to the U.S. tradition of blackface minstrel shows. In this post, I intend to explore the real history of Zwarte Piet and demonstrate that the character does, in fact, owe very much to blackface minstrel shows and is, in fact, racist. Needless to say, readers should be forewarned that this post will discuss some truly deplorably racist material, including both historical and contemporary derogatory visual portrayals of Black people.
Introduction
On 4 January 2022, someone asked the question on Quora: “Why is the symbol of slavery, ‘black piete’ [sic] still celebrated in Holland? It’s extremely racist.” Many people have written answers in response to this question. Although a variety of perspectives are represented among the replies, the most common perspective among Low Countries answerers to the question seems to be that Zwarte Piet is absolutely not racist because he has nothing to do with blackface minstrel shows, which are a uniquely American phenomenon, and that anyone who says that Zwarte Piet is racist is wrongly imposing twenty-first-century U.S. racial politics onto an age-old Low Countries tradition.
I will quote a few of these answers—not because I want to call anybody out or embarrass anyone, but rather simply because I want to give my readers some impression of the general attitude that I will be arguing against.
A Dutch answerer named Dan L. Oom says in an answer he posted on 5 January 2022:
“Only since the Black Lives Matter movement has Zwarte Piet been linked to slavery and racism, when slavery was abolished in the Netherlands and its colonies over a century ago.”
He further elaborates in a comment underneath his answer, which begins with the following paragraph:
“This racism must be an American thing. In Europe, we have different races of cats and dogs, of apples and pears and of tulips especially, but not of humans. We did not hold slaves, we just bought Africans and sold them in America. Slavery was common throughout history.”
Another Quora writer named Jane Williams, who apparently lives in the U.K., not the Netherlands, says in an answer she posted on the same day:
“It’s only ‘racist’ if for some reason you’re so ignorant as to imagine it has anything to do with the opinion of White Americans about Black Americans. Hint: it isn’t. Nobody cares about American insanity outside of America.”
Chrysaor Jordan, a Dutch American writer whose political views are generally progressive and with whom I am on good terms, posted an answer on 6 January 2022, in which he defends Zwarte Piet, writing:
“. . . many of my fellow Americans are seeing Zwarte Piet through their own cultural lens. They’re seeing *blackface*. Would you believe that I have had to explain to some of my fellow Nederlanders what ‘blackface’ even means?”
“It’s not seen that way because blackface is a peculiarly American phenomenon. It happened in the Dixie South, where racist slavery was once legal; once slavery was outlawed, the racism remained.”
“The Netherlands does not have the same history, in that respect.”
[. . .]
“I am hoping that my fellow Americans will be able to look past their cultural prejudices and not assume that what might *look like* blackface *on first impression* is not necessarily so.”
Nick Nicholas, a Greek Australian Quoran with whom I am also generally on good terms, leaves a comment underneath Jordan’s answer, saying:
“One of the few upsides to the coming Pax Sinica is, at least the world won’t be straitjacketed as much into America’s culture wars…”
All of these responses are wrong, for two reasons. First, they all incorrectly assume that, because Zwarte Piet is from the Low Countries, he cannot possibly have any connection to U.S. slavery or blackface minstrel shows. In reality, as I will soon demonstrate, Zwarte Piet most likely does have a significant connection to both of these things, thanks to the often-ignored influence that U.S.-style minstrel shows had in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Second, these responders to the question all make the second incorrect assumption that, if Zwarte Piet did have nothing to do with American slavery or blackface minstrel shows, this would automatically mean that he cannot possibly be racist. This is also wrong.
One thing I think white Europeans in general need to realize is that U.S.-style racism, influenced by the history of slavery and Jim Crow laws in the South, is not the only kind of racism that exists. It is merely one specific kind of racism out of the many diverse kinds of racism that exist in the world. European countries have their own kinds of racism, which are related to U.S. racism, but which also have their own distinct histories and attributes.
In fact, as much as white Europeans love to pretend that racism isn’t a problem in their countries and is only a problem in the U.S., European countries have at least as much of a problem with entrenched racial prejudices as the U.S., if not more. The main reason why we don’t hear about endemic racism in Europe as much as in the U.S. is simply because most European countries have much lower populations of people who are not white than the U.S. and, as a result, racism there tends to be less visible.
Even if Zwarte Piet really did have nothing at all to do with the American racist tradition of blackface minstrel shows, this would not automatically mean that he is not racist. In fact, as I will soon show, Zwarte Piet is a product of the confluence of several different racist traditions, of which the U.S. blackface minstrel show tradition is only one.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing Sinterklaas and three Zwarte Pieten at an elementary school in the Netherlands on 5 December 2012
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Saint Nicholas’s medieval reputation as an exorciser of demons
If we’re going to discuss the history of Zwarte Piet, we might as well do it thoroughly—so let’s start at the very beginning, long before anyone ever imagined him as he is known today.
It is widely recognized that the figure of Sinterklaas or Sint-Nicolaas in Dutch folklore originates from the legendary Christian saint Nikolaos of Myra (commonly known in English as Saint Nicholas), who probably lived in around the fourth century CE.
I myself have written extensively on this blog before about the development of Nikolaos of Myra into both the Dutch Sinterklaas and the American Santa Claus in this post from December 2019, which is a general piece about the historical development of Santa Claus, and this post from December 2021, which is a more detailed debunking of the popular misconception that the modern American version of Santa Claus has been influenced to any significant degree by the Norse god Óðinn.
During the Middle Ages, Saint Nikolaos was known for, among other things, his reputation as an exorciser of demons. The Life of Saint Nikolaos of Myra, a hagiography written in the ninth century CE in the Greek language by a Byzantine Roman writer named Michael the Archimandrite, records (in sections 28–30) the earliest known version of a legend that would eventually become very popular in the later Middle Ages.
The legend holds that the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos was haunted by demons and Nikolaos exorcised them. Throughout the rest of the hagiography, though, the demons he banished from the temple keep coming back to try to hurt him and hinder his work spreading the good news of Jesus Christ.
ABOVE: Digital reconstruction by Németh Ádám showing his best approximation of what the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos might have looked like in antiquity
Saint Nicholas and the Devil in chains in late medieval mystery plays
In western Europe during the Late Middle Ages, Latin Christians would perform mystery plays in which they would act out Christian stories. In these plays, Satan and his demons were usually depicted as comically incompetent villain figures, over whom Christ and his angels would always easily triumph.
A common scene in these plays was the harrowing of Hell, in which Saint Michael the Archangel was often portrayed as binding Satan in chains. There were also mystery processions, which sometimes included Saint Michael leading the Devil in chains, accompanied by various human saints.
Saint Nicholas was sometimes one of the saints who accompanied Saint Michael in these processions. The Grosses Regiebuch (or Big Scriptbook) for the Corpus Christi play and procession for the city of Zerbst, Germany, in 1506 has survived (Neumann item, 3402). The scriptbook lists figures who were set to appear in the procession. It mentions Saint Nicholas as follows, as translated in the book The Medieval European Stage, 500 – 1550, edited by William Tydeman and published by Cambridge University Press in 2001, on page 394:
“Saint Nicholas as a bishop, with a choir cope and mitre. A staff and three gold balls in his hand. His hand raised in benediction.”
Just a few lines later, the Grosses Regiebuch mentions the Devil in chains led by Saint Michael:
“St Michael as an angel, elegantly turned out, a cross in front of his head, a stole worn crosswise on his neck. Is to lead a devil on a chain.”
Thus, by the early sixteenth century, we have attestation of Saint Nicholas accompanying the Devil in chains in at least one mystery procession in Germany.
ABOVE: Illustration from 1885 depicting how the artist imagined a crowd watching a mystery play in Flanders in the fifteenth century might have looked
The racial aspect of late medieval and early modern depictions of Satan
Geraldine Heng, an Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin, documents in her book The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, originally published in 2018 through Cambridge University Press, in Chapter Four (“Color”), how, starting in the twelfth century CE and continuing over the course of the High and Late Middle Ages, western European Latin Christians gradually came to see themselves as “white” in color and portray themselves this way in their art.
Meanwhile, around the same time, western European Latin Christians came to closely associate dark coloring with evil, Satan, demons, and people who are not Latin Christians. Satan himself is normally portrayed in medieval art as a terrifying monster and, from around the twelfth century onward, he is normally shown with dark brown, gray, or black fur.
He frequently has long horns, an overly long tongue that hangs out of his mouth, clawed hands, and either bird talons or cloven hooves on his feet. In some depictions, such as the one in Codex Palatini Germanici 137, folio 216v, or Hans Memling’s Triptych of Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation, he has one or more demonic faces in various places on his body. His demons are likewise frequently represented as dark brown, gray, or black in color.
ABOVE: Illustration of a dark-colored Satan tempting Jesus in the desert from the St. Albans Psalter, created at St. Albans Abbey in England at some point between 1120 and 1145
ABOVE: Illustration from the Smithfield Decretals, f. 192, drawn in England in the fourteenth century, depicting a black demon pushing a nun off a bridge
ABOVE: Illustration from Codex Palatini Germanici 137, folio 216v, dating to c. 1460, probably produced in Heidelberg, Germany or thereabouts, depicting Pope Sylvester II consorting with the Devil
ABOVE: Detail of the Devil from the right panel of the Triptych of Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation, painted c. 1485 in the Netherlands by the German painter Hans Memling (lived c. 1430 – 1494)
At first glance, this association of dark coloring with evil and Satan might not seem like it is racial. There is, however, a racial aspect to it. Notably, in western European Latin Christian art and literature from around the twelfth century onwards, people who are not Latin Christians are also often portrayed as having dark skin and sometimes even stereotypically African features in order to mark them as evil and affiliated with Satan.
Among many other striking observations, Heng notes that the central figure in The King of Tars, an English romance that was originally composed sometime around 1330 or thereabouts, is a Muslim Sultan of Damascus. At the beginning of the story, the Sultan is described having black skin. Then, however, he marries a Christian woman, who is described as being as white as a swan. In the end, the Sultan converts to Christianity and undergoes the ritual of baptism. Upon being baptized, his skin instantly turns from black to white.
The reverse transformation also appears in The King of Moorland, a romance written in Middle High German, in which white western European Christian knights are seduced by black women and consequently convert to “heathenry,” causing their skin to literally change color from white to black.
Western European Latin Christians even racialized the Devil himself to some extent. By the Late Middle Ages, they had begun using the euphemistic nickname “the Black Man” to refer him and, by the Early Modern Period, this had become one of Satan’s most widely used and recognized appellations. They also began depicting Satan in their art as a dark-skinned man, sometimes even with certain other features that Europeans have long regarded as stereotypically African.
For instance, the Flemish miniaturist Simon Bening (lived c. 1483 – 1561) painted a manuscript illustration that shows the famous scene from the gospels of Satan tempting Jesus in the wilderness to turn a rock into a loaf of bread. Bening’s illustration depicts Satan as a dark-skinned man with thick, curly gray hair, a short, blunt nose, pointed ears, and bird feet, wearing the gray habit of a friar. The pointed ears and bird feet are obviously fantastical, but the dark skin, curly hair, and short, blunt nose are all stereotypically African features.
ABOVE: Illustration of a dark-skinned Satan tempting Jesus in the wilderness, painted by the Flemish artist Simon Bening (lived c. 1483 – 1561)
Knecht Ruprecht, Hans Trapp, Krampus, and other early modern bogeymen associated with the winter holidays across northwest and central Europe
From at least the seventeenth century onward, throughout German-language-speaking lands (i.e., the lands that now comprise the present-day countries of Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Austria), eastern France, and the Low Countries, sometime in November and/or December, either around the feast day of Saint Martin (11 November), the feast day of Saint Nicholas, and/or Christmas, a man would customarily dress up and pretend to be a demonic servant of Saint Martin, Saint Nicholas, or Christ himself whose job was to punish all the children who misbehaved.
The costume for this demonic servant usually involved the man either painting himself black or wearing a black mask over his face and wearing some kind of chains or bells, which he would rattle menacingly in order to frighten children. The wearing of chains as part of this costume is most likely a holdover from the late medieval tradition of portraying the Devil in chains in mystery plays and processions.
The figure of Knecht Ruprecht, who takes his name from the word Knecht, meaning “servant,” and Ruprecht, a common German name cognate to the English name Robert, is attested as a demonic bogeyman meant to scare children into behaving who frequently appeared in Christmas plays and processions in German-language-speaking lands in the seventeenth century.
One important source of information about Knecht Ruprecht and other Christmas bogeymen in German-language-speaking lands during this period is the German Protestant theologian Johann Gabriel Drechssler, who wrote a bilingual treatise in Latin and German titled Christianorum Larvas Natalitias Sancti Christi, which was first published in Leipzig in the year 1674.
In this treatise, Drechssler strenuously deplores the masked performances that commonly took place during the Christmas season featuring demonic figures like Knecht Ruprecht who were meant to scare children. In process of condemning these performances, though, Drechssler ends up giving a very detailed description of what they usually entailed. Perhaps most interestingly, he describes Knecht Ruprecht as “der schwartze Popantz,” which means “the black bogeyman,” and seems to equate him with Satan.
Dresschler writes in the German portion of the treatise, on pages 50–53, as translated by Markus Rathey in his book Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratio: Music, Theology, Culture, published by Oxford University Press in 2016, on pages 23–24 (with a few edits of my own based on the German text, which Rathey also quotes):
“Long before [Christmas] masked persons run around with jingling bells, pretending to be a servant of the Holy Christ, Saint Martin, or Nicholas, scare the children and admonish them to pray, and give them little gifts. When Christmas draws nearer, the number of crazy spirits increases until finally on Christmas Eve the whole heavenly host (which is probably sent out by the black bogeyman [der schwartze Popantz]) fills the streets.”
“Then one enacts the newborn Jesus, the Holy Christ [Play], ornate with crown, scepter, and beard, as if the dear Christ-Child had come into that world that way. He is accompanied by angels, S. Peter with the key, other apostles, then several Ruprechts or damned spirits. Such a holy company is led in front of little children, who are nearly dead of fear. The arch-villain, Knecht Ruprecht, begins accusing them.”
“The Holy Christ, being upset, leaves and wants to go; however, the angel Gabriel as well as Peter and the other companions intercede and placate the Holy Christ, after which he makes them bring in plenty of gifts and promises mercy and kindness to the little idols. The little children, who were cheated, are meanwhile full of devotion which is directed toward this visible mercy. The Holy Christ is worshipped with prayers because of the gifts; the surrounding saints because of their intercessions; and Ruprecht because of the mercy and only light punishment.”
One of the earliest known artistic depictions of Knecht Ruprecht is a woodcut carved by Joseph Franz von Gotz in 1784, depicting Ruprecht as a bearded man with Devil-like horns poking out of his fur hat, wearing a basket on his back full of branches for beating naughty children, trying to grab a young boy by the ear so that he can punish him.
ABOVE: Very early woodcut illustration made by Joseph Franz von Gotz in 1784, depicting Knecht Ruprecht
The English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge describes a person dressed as Knecht Ruprecht whom he encountered while visiting the city of Ratzeburg in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, in 1798 as wearing “high buskins, a white robe, a mask, and an enourmous [sic] . . . wig.”
The English scholar of Germanic literature and folklore Benjamin Thorpe gives a detailed description of Knecht Ruprecht and other figures associated with him in northern Germanic folklore in his book Northern Mythology, Comprising the Principal Popular Traditions and Superstitions of Scandinavia, North Germany and the Netherlands, volume III, published in 1852, on page 146. Thorpe writes:
“He sometimes carries a long staff and a bag of ashes, and has little bells on his clothes. With the bag he beats those children who have not learned to pray, and is for that reason called also Aschenclås. Sometimes he rides about on a white horse, and not unfrequently has with him a sort of Jack Pudding, as an attendant. Accompanied by fairies, as they call them, or men dressed as old women, with blackened faces, he appears in some places, and is occasionally attended by one enveloped in pea-straw, who is called the bear, and led by a long chain.”
Meanwhile, for centuries, in the Rhineland of western Germany and the neighboring regions of Alsace and Lorraine in eastern France, parents have frightened their children by telling stories of the ghostly robber baron Hans Trapp, who is sometimes known in German as the Schwarzer Ritter, meaning the “Black Knight.”
By the mid-nineteenth century, people in Alsace and Lorraine came to regard Hans Trapp as the companion of the Christkind, the traditional Christmas gift-bringer in the region. Illustrations of Hans Trapp from the 1860s and ’70s show him as a man wearing a black mask with horns, a long, matted beard, and long, matted hair attached, holding a birch switch with which to beat the naughty children.
ABOVE: Illustration originally printed in Otto von Reinsberg-Düringsfeld’s book Das festliche Jahr in Sitten, Gebräuchen und Festen der germanischen Völker, published in Leipzig in 1863, showing the Christkind and Hans Trapp visiting a family home in Alsace
ABOVE: Illustration from 1873 showing the Christkind and Hans Trapp visiting a family home
Of all the present-day companions of Saint Nicholas, the figure of Krampus in Bavarian and Austrian folklore bears the closest resemblance to medieval depictions of the Devil, since he has basically retained the late medieval Devil’s exact image. Depictions of Krampus from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries typically portray him as a black monster covered in fur, with horns, cloven hooves, a long dangling tongue, chains on his arms, and a bundle of birch sticks for beating naughty children. He is sometimes said to drag naughty children away to be tortured in Hell.
ABOVE: Illustration from 1896 depicting Saint Nicholas and Krampus visiting a middle-class Viennese home
ABOVE: Greeting card dated to 1901 depicting Saint Nicholas in the full regalia of a Catholic bishop with Krampus by his side
Given this wider cultural context, it should come as little surprise that, by the early nineteenth century, a tradition was already well established in the Low Countries in which men would intentionally paint themselves black and wear chains on the feast day of Saint Nicholas in order to look like scary demons. Then these men would go around to various houses in order to rattle their chains and scare children into thinking that they were the saint’s demonic servants.
A dialogue published in the Magazijn van Spreekwoorden en Zedenspreuken (Magazine of Proverbs and Moral Sayings), volume 3, printed in Amsterdam in 1802, portrays one of the characters as saying on page 122 (in Google Translate’s translation, which I have double-checked using my own knowledge of German and English combined with copious use of an English-Dutch dictionary):
“There was, and still is here and there, the evil custom, that on the day which is dedicated to a Roman saint, called St. Nicholas, men disguised and blackened, who then had to serve the saints, would go around the houses with rattling chains and frighten the children. To the sweet children they threw treats, and often beat the naughty boys, to whom they also brought a rod. […] I had a brother who was a bit wild. My parents thought they could tame him when they sent a black man to him on St. Nicholas [Day]. […] He was made to believe that St. Nicholas would take him with him. When he saw this black man, he was so frightened that he trembled all over. He contracted severe bile fever and died of it.”
There were already some subtly racist undertones to this practice even in the early nineteenth century, due to the association of the color black with evil and the assumption that demons look like men with black skin. Nonetheless, over the course of the nineteenth century, the practice became much more explicitly racial.
Black servants in the early modern Low Countries
In order to understand how this tradition of men painting themselves black or wearing black masks to look like demonic servants of Saint Nicholas on the feast day of the saint so that they could scare children into behaving managed to produce the figure of Zwarte Piet, we need to talk about the slave trade and the presence of Black servants in the Low Countries during the Early Modern Period.
Throughout much of the seventeenth century, Dutch merchants dominated the Transatlantic slave trade. (The White Lion, the ship that infamously brought the first enslaved Africans to the English colony of Virginia in August 1619, was operating under a Dutch privateering license.) The English eventually surpassed the Dutch in the slave trade by the end of the seventeenth century, but the Dutch still remained major players.
Slavery was technically illegal in the Netherlands itself, but it was still extremely common for wealthy people in the Low Countries to keep Black people of African descent as hired servants. Black servants notably appear in positions of clear subservience in the backgrounds of many paintings by Dutch “Golden Age” painters that center wealthy white people. Thus, the stereotype of the Black servant was well known in the Netherlands and the Low Countries in general.
In light of this stereotype, over the course of the first half of the nineteenth century, some people in the Low Countries gradually began to identify the demonic “servants” of Saint Nicholas (whom, as I mentioned earlier, men usually portrayed by painting themselves black and/or wearing black masks) as Black African slaves or servants, rather than demons. This conflation marks the genesis of Zwarte Piet.
ABOVE: Detail of a Black servant in the corner of the painting Fantasy Interior with Jan Steen and the Family of Gerrit Schouten, painted by the Dutch artist Jan Steen between c. 1659 and c. 1660, now held in the The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
ABOVE: Portrait by the Dutch painter Jan Verkolje depicting a wealthy man named Johan de la Faille with a Black serving boy, painted in 1674, now held in the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
Blackface minstrel shows: an American cultural export
In addition to the strands of influence that I have already discussed, there is another strand that has also had an enormous influence on the development of Zwarte Piet: blackface minstrelsy. Starting in the late eighteenth century, blackface performers began appearing with increasingly regularity in U.S. stage performances, usually portraying slaves or servants, who served as dimwitted comic relief characters.
Blackface minstrel shows proper first emerged in the northeastern United States in the late 1820s. These performances typically involved song-and-dance routines with enslaved Black characters portrayed by white performers in blackface, often with deliberately exaggerated features, speaking in an exaggerated imitation of African American Vernacular English of the time. Minstrel shows of this era usually (but not invariably) portrayed enslaved Black people as happy with their condition and eager to serve their white masters.
In 1828, the New York performer Thomas Dartmouth Rice created his song and dance routine “Jump Jim Crow,” which quickly became wildly popular with white audiences. To give you some idea of the dialect that this type of song was composed in, here is the first stanza and the chorus of the song:
“Come, listen all you gals and boys,
Ise just from Tuckyhoe;
I’m goin’ to sing a little song,
My name’s Jim Crow.”CHORUS
“Weel about and turn about and do jis so,
Eb’ry time I weel about I jump Jim Crow.”
In 1836, Rice took his blackface minstrel troupe on tour in Europe. By the 1840s, blackface minstrel shows had become one of the most popular forms of entertainment among white people in the United States. Their enormous popularity in the U.S. led them to become possibly the first highly influential American cultural export. The most successful blackface minstrel troupes in the U.S. would frequently go on tour in Europe, where they invariably attracted large audiences.
ABOVE: Cover for a sheet music booklet of popular blackface minstrel songs from c. 1844
Blackface minstrel shows were at the height of their popularity from the 1840s until the end of the Civil War and the de jure abolition of slavery under the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865. They remained significantly popular after the Civil War, but they lost their status as one of the most popular forms of entertainment.
Despite their origin in the U.S., minstrel shows had enormous influence on the nature and perception of blackface performances outside the U.S. as well. An especially striking example of how popular blackface minstrel shows became in Europe is the BBC light entertainment variety television program The Black and White Minstrel Show, which was broadcast at primetime every week for twenty years, from 1958 to 1978.
The show featured white performers in blackface performing traditional U.S.-style minstrel show acts for the entertainment of British audiences. In line with traditional U.S. minstrel shows, the blackface performers portrayed Black people as dimwitted, lazy, and happy-go-lucky and spoke in an exaggerated imitation of slavery-era African American Vernacular English.
Despite numerous complaints from civil rights organizations, the idea that The Black and White Minstrel Show might be promoting genuinely harmful racial stereotypes does not seem to have ever occurred to any of the white people in charge of the BBC at the time, who dismissed critics of the program as simply “killjoys.” The BBC finally cancelled the program in 1978 not because they thought it was racist, but rather because variety programming in general was losing popularity and they believed that another, non-variety show in the same time slot would attract more viewers.
The BBC now describes The Black and White Minstrel Show on its website as “arguably the BBC’s most glaring failure to understand the damage it could do when it traded in out-dated stereotypes.” (Sadly, despite this acknowledgement, the present-day BBC remains far from enlightened on matters of social justice; as I have discussed in several previous posts, including this one from November 2021, the corporation continues to routinely promote bigotry and harmful canards against transgender people.)
ABOVE: Screenshot of blackface performers on the BBC’s light entertainment variety television program The Black and White Minstrel Show, which was broadcast for British audiences at primetime every week for twenty years from 1958 to 1978
The origins of Zwarte Piet
It is in the historical context of the mid-nineteenth century, when performers dressed as black demonic bogeymen were terrorizing children across German-speaking lands, eastern France, and the Low Countries, when wealthy white Dutch people had been commonly keeping Black people as “servants” for roughly two hundred years, and when American-style blackface minstrel shows were regularly going on tour in Europe, that the figure of Zwarte Piet gradually developed into the form in which he is known in the Low Countries today.
In the year 1850, Jan Schenkman, a primary school teacher in Amsterdam, published an influential illustrated book for children titled Sint Nikolaas en zijn Knecht, or Saint Nicholas and His Servant. In Schenkman’s story, Saint Nicholas and his servant (who is never given a name) come from Spain on a steamship to bring presents to all the good little children. The illustrations to the original 1850 edition of the book portray this servant as a Black man wearing clothes stereotypically associated with the “Moors” of Iberia and North Africa.
Although Schenkman’s original book does not give Saint Nicholas’s servant a name, by the late nineteenth century, he was widely recognized by the name Zwarte Piet, which is attested in the Low Countries in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a colloquial nickname for the Devil, similar to nicknames for him in English like “Old Nick” and “Old Scratch.”
ABOVE: Illustration from the original 1850 edition of Jan Schenkman’s book Sint Nikolaas en zijn Knecht
Zwarte Piet’s portrayal today
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Zwarte Piet was still generally seen as a menacing figure, akin to other bogeymen associated with winter holidays across northwest and central Europe like Knecht Ruprecht, Hans Trapp, and Krampus. His primary job was to punish naughty children.
Even today, Zwarte Piet is still sometimes said to have a chain that he rattles menacingly. Some of the older Dutch Christmas songs that are still sung today warn about him coming to punish the children who have been naughty, either by shoving them into his burlap sack and dragging them off to Spain, by beating them with a rod of birch, or by giving them a lump of coal instead of presents.
ABOVE: Lithograph illustration made by J. Vlieger c. 1885 for an edition of Jan Schenkman’s book Sint Nikolaas en zijn Knecht, showing Zwarte Piet shoving a little boy into a burlap sack in order to drag him off to Spain
Over the course of the twentieth century, though, portrayals of Zwarte Piet increasingly came to emphasize his benevolent side, with him passing out of candy to children becoming a major focus. Meanwhile, under the influence of U.S.-exported blackface minstrel shows, Zwarte Piet increasingly came to be portrayed as a dimwitted buffoon, often speaking in a sort of Dutch translation of the parody of slavery-era African American Vernacular English used by performers in U.S. blackface minstrel shows.
In fact, U.S.-style blackface minstrelsy and anti-Black racism in general had such a pervasive influence on Zwarte Piet during this era that at least one depiction of him from this time portrays him wearing stereotypical clothing associated with the southwestern United States or Mexico.
ABOVE: Advertisement made by the Dutch cartoonist Daan Hoeksema sometime between 1900 and 1925 for Gebroeders Koster, an Amsterdam-based business, depicting Zwarte Piet in a stereotypical Mexican or southwestern U.S. costume
At least one of the Dutch answerers to the question on Quora that I referenced at the beginning of this piece actually discusses this at some length. Berend Harmsen, a Dutch man who grew up in the Netherlands in the 1970s and whose credential mentions that he currently lives in Amsterdam, states in his answer to the question, which he most recently updated on 7 January:
“Personally, I always had a complicated relationship with black pete as a kid in the seventies. Truth be told, back then (and you rarely hear about this in international analysis of this Dutch tradition) black pete was very much played as a dimwitted individual. It did have a somewhat racist vibe, albeit borne out of ignorance, I thought.”
“Because, although he was arguably dressed as a Spanish nobleman, he acted like a buffoon. Playing a Black Pete (St. Nicolas tends to have several of them in his entourage) means that you dress up, paint your face black, put on big red lipstick and then talk like you are a bit retarded [sic]. You were supposed to talk in mangled ‘Yoda-like’ sentences and the schtick would always be that the ‘pieten’ constantly screw up, misunderstand things – play a clown. ‘Me no understand Sinterklaas, me be a bit stupid’. There was something iffy about it all.”
The “mangled ‘Yoda-like’ sentences” that Harmsen describes here are a Dutch adaptation of the parody of slavery-era African American Vernacular English from U.S. blackface minstrel shows. Harmsen doesn’t recognize it as such, though, because he has evidently had little other exposure to this kind of speaking.
Harmsen goes on to describe how the portrayal of Zwarte Piet has changed over the course of his lifetime, how, in the 1980s, the mainstream portrayal of Zwarte Piet shifted to make him no longer a “stupid,” clownish figure and instead make him into a clever, heroic figure who always manages to save Saint Nicholas Day. Harmsen writes:
“And by the end of the seventies (another thing you rarely hear about), Sinterklaas was on his last legs. The onslaught of Christmas had all but replaced Sinterklaas here as the premier moment for kids to get presents. The tradition was starting to disappear. Dutch national tv decided to promote the tradition by turning Sinterklaas into ‘event television’ somewhere in the 80s, and they were responsible for Sinterklaas 2.0. And it was truly amazing event tv for the kids.”
“About a month before the festivities, there would be (and still is to this day) a daily‘news broadcast’, lasting about twenty minutes, where they would see a dramatised story play out on how Sint and his Pieten would make the journey on a steam ship, full of presents, from his summer residence in Spain to the Netherlands. It culminated in a live show where the ship would go into port in a different town each year, and tens of thousands of families would show up for that. His arrival on tv was the signal for the rest of the country to start dressing up and take over from there.”
“There would always be drama; presents getting lost, some bad guy trying to steal them. Sint loses his staff, his glasses, his hat. But the big innovation was in the Black Petes. They still looked just like they always had: black face paint, colourful outfits, red lipstick. But gone was the retarded [sic] speech and the bumbling around. This time, Black Pete was the bad-ass, sharp-thinking dude who continually saves the day. Sinterklaas became a dotard (thank you Kim Yong Un, for adding that word to my vocabulary), who would be utterly lost without his amazingly accomplished assistants.”
Harmsen argues that, although the portrayal of Zwarte Piet used to be racist back in the 1970s when he was portrayed as a dimwitted buffoon, it is no longer racist now that he is portrayed as clever and heroic.
I think Harmsen is probably right that the portrayal of Zwarte Piet is less racist now than it was half a century ago. It sounds like most of the most obvious influences from American minstrel shows have already been purged. Nonetheless, I maintain that the portrayal of Zwarte Piet today is still racist because the way the character looks, the people who portray him, and the status that he holds haven’t changed; Zwarte Piet is still regularly portrayed by white performers as a caricature of a Black servant.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing a Sinterklaas procession in the city of Groningen in the Netherlands in 2015, with Sinterklaas himself riding on a horse and Zwarte Piet walking on foot ahead of him
The rising tide of change
Regardless of what any individual person believes about whether Zwarte Piet is racist, as a result of broader social changes that have taken place over roughly the past half century, the tide of popular opinion seems to be slowly but surely turning against him.
In 1975, the Dutch colony of Suriname, which is located on the northern Atlantic coast of South America and whose inhabitants are mostly of South Asian, African, Indigenous South American, and/or Creole descent, gained its full independence from the Netherlands.
Since then, many Surinamese people have immigrated to the Netherlands. As result of this, both the overall number and the percentage of Dutch people who are not white have significantly risen over the decades. According to Statistics Netherlands (a Dutch government organization), as of January 2022, Surinamese Dutch people in the Netherlands now number 359,814 and make up roughly 2.05% of the total Dutch population. In some specific areas, the percentage is much higher.
For decades now, despite most white people from the Low Countries insisting that Zwarte Piet is not racist, communities of color in the Low Countries have generally regarded him as a racist caricature and a symbol of racial oppression.
A study conducted in Amsterdam in 2012 found that, even though 73% of white Dutch people at the time insisted that Zwarte Piet is not discriminatory, fully 77% of Surinamese Dutch people said that the character is discriminatory and 27% said that they felt that he is personally discriminatory against them. The same survey found that 73% of Antillean Dutch people and 70% of Ghanaian Dutch people at the time said that Zwarte Piet is discriminatory.
Over the course of the past decade, critics of Zwarte Piet have become increasingly vocal. The Dutch anti-racist activist organization Kick Out Zwarte Piet (KOZP), founded in 2014, has campaigned against him using slogans such as “Zwarte Piet is racisme” (“Zwarte Piet is racism”), “Free Piet,” “Stop Blackface,” and “Zwarte Piet Niet” (“Zwarte Piet Not”). The international George Floyd protests and the growing recognition among white people of the existence of systemic racism have further contributed to a significant shift in popular opinion.
ABOVE: Photograph from this article in Politico showing Jerry Afriyie, the leader of the Dutch anti-racism activist organization Kick Out Zwarte Piet (KOZP), at a protest
The Roetveegpiet replacement
Many proponents of change have supported a new character to replace Zwarte Piet named Roetveegpiet or Roetpiet, whose name means “Sooty Pete,” whom actors portray wearing soot makeup instead of blackface, allowing their natural skin color to be seen.
In the past decade especially, Roetveegpiet has been gaining popularity in the Low Countries. A survey by I&O Research in 2020 found that only 39% of Dutch people said they supported maintaining the traditional blackface version of Zwarte Piet, while 50% said they supported replacing him with an alternative character who does not wear blackface, such as Roetveegpiet.
It is extremely likely that, gradually, over the next couple of decades, Roetveegpiet will completely replace Zwarte Piet. The traditional blackface version of the character will gradually be seen less and less until, eventually, he will become almost universally accepted as offensive and inappropriate. Until that happens, though, it is worth continuing to point out the character’s racist history and nature.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons taken 29 November 2019 showing a person dressed up as Roetveegpiet or “Sooty Pete” at a school in the Netherlands
As a black man who has dated a Dutch woman I wasn’t offended when I celebrated Sinterklaas twice in NL. From my understanding, the dudes face got black because he climbed down the chimney to place gifts and back out the chimney. Of course his face would be black with soot. I doubt the Dutch, who are very tolerant and accepting culture, would use it as a caricature to mock us (black folk). Like the history, but I don’t believe they need to change their historical traditions. Now, if this was a jim crow caricature of my culture, then I’d agree.
Here are three things I would like to point out:
1. Just because you aren’t personally offended by something doesn’t mean that it isn’t racist or offensive to other people. As I note in the post above, in a 2012 poll, 77% of Surinamese Dutch people said that they considered Zwarte Piet discriminatory and 27% said that they felt he was discriminatory to them personally.
2. The older tradition is that Zwarte Piet is black because he is a “Moor” from Spain. The tradition that Zwarte Piet is black because he goes down chimneys is a more recent invention that tries to provide a non-racial etiology for his appearance so that people can claim that dressing up as him is not a racist practice.
3. The Dutch people today do have a reputation for being very tolerant, but Zwarte Piet is a character who originates out of the nineteenth century at a time when the Netherlands had a very different culture from the one it has today and he survives today mainly due to the force of tradition. Even people who have generally tolerant outlooks can perpetuate racist traditions.
Just one word – golliwog.
Well, this was a very interesting article, more than expected. I had never really looked into Zwarte Piet, and I didn’t know that it was a caricature of black people. That was very informative and well-researched. Some random thoughts about the article:
1) While there is no doubt that Zwarte Piet being racist is not simply an import of American ideas onto foreign ground, there certainly are examples of this happening. In my homecountry, for instance (Italy), especially in the Southern regions, Mardi Gras parades tend to be very lavish, featuring huge ensembles of people in lavish costumes. Among the noble characters there often are ‘Moor’ characters, most of which are played by light-skinned people with dark makeup on. Unlike Zwarte Piet or minstrel shows, however, these are not meant to be caricatures of darker-skinned people, and instead it used to be simply a matter of convenience – not many darker-skinned people around. Now, I don’t mean to say that some conversation is not to be had about these depictions: the makeup tends to emphatize the ‘otherness’ of these kings, but not in a negative light; it represents a part of the history of Southern Italy (when it was ruled by Arabic powers), and how remarkable they were for being foreign. Nonetheless, they are depicted as like any other rulers. So, yes, there are some dated elements in these depictions (kinda Orientalistic and ‘othering’), but ultimately nothing mocking in tone, and they even depict darker-skinned people as people with legitimate power. The make-up in this case has no connection to (nor meaning similar to) American-style blackface. With the increasing numbers of darker-skinned people, I believe make up could be done away altogether, or simply do a colorblind casting. The clothes themselves, after all, are very telling about the different provenance of these people. The makeup itself, however, was not meant as something comical or disparaging.
2) As an European, I don’t believe Europeans have less racism that America. If anything, America is quite better at integrating people of different ethnicities. However, it always surprises me how… ‘traditional’ can be America’s racism. Most racist politicians over here (even the far-right ones) tend to simply be xenophobic. They see non-white people (especially African ones) as people coming from lesser countries who don’t know how to behave properly by default and who have come here to ‘steal our jobs and our women’. However, very few would dabble into 19th-century-sounding theories like ‘the great replacement’, and pretty much none has a desire to defend ‘the white race’. The concept of a ‘white race’ existing is laughable in Italy, at the very least, or honestly, talking about race at all except as an outdated concept. I was appalled when I found out that American ID cards list ethnicity on it; in Italy, if you were to suggest something like this, you would sound like a Nazi. And everyone would point out that it would be impossible to determine someone’s ‘race’ since that doesn’t even exist. So yeah, European (Italian) racism is more common than America’s, but America’s racism, at least to us, is much more ‘dated’ and absurd in nature.
3) I found it interesting that ‘The Black Man’ was an appellation of the devil in the late medieval period. ‘The Black Man’ is the standard Italian translation of ‘the boogeyman’. In today’s age, however, it has no racial connotation whatsoever, and the ‘black’ of the title refers to darkness or shadow. ‘The Shadow/Dark Man’ would be a better translation. When a kid, I never imagined ‘the black man’ as a… black man, but more as a ghost or something of the sort. Just look at what you can find by looking up ‘l’uomo nero’ (‘*the* Black Man’ – had to put the article in so as not to get results of black people) on Google Images.
(shorturl.at/dlzPW)
Pretty much no dark-skinned monsters. For some reason, I never associate the expression ‘black man’ with actual black men, though, to me and other, it makes it difficult to talk about actual black people without referencing the spook, so maybe we could find another name. Nothing racist, just inconvenient.
If you aren’t already aware, you may be surprised to learn that the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory was actually invented by an openly gay French man, Renaud Camus, who coined the name in his book L’Abécédaire de l’in-nocence, which was published solely in the French language in 2010. He further expanded on the conspiracy theory in his book Le Grand Remplacement, which was also published solely in the French language in 2011. Neither book has ever been commercially translated into English. I think that you are very much correct, however, that the theory has become significantly more popular among those on the right here in the U.S. than it has in Europe.
I realize that U.S. ID cards listing a person’s ethnicity might seem strange to someone who is not from the U.S., but it’s not necessarily racist in and of itself. The ostensible purpose of listing it is because a person’s ID is supposed to give a general description of their physical appearance. Thus, a person’s ID usually also lists their legal sex, their hair color, their eye color, their height, and their weight.
Here in the U.S., people are also asked to state their ethnicity for the census, on most university and college applications, and on most job applications. In most cases, though, asking people to state their ethnicity is actually supposed to be about combating systemic racism. Race does not exist as a biological reality, but it does very much exist as a social and cultural construct. As a social construct, it has an enormous impact on every person’s day-to-day life and experiences. Tracking it can therefore be useful for ensuring representation and for diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
Asking for race on the census, for instance, allows the government to know how many people of a certain racial demographic there are in the country and which areas of the country those demographics tend to be more highly clustered in, which can be important for ensuring that those groups receive proper representation. (Whether the government actually ensures this, of course, is another question, but this is at least the theoretical justification.)
Meanwhile, asking for people’s race on college applications allows universities to see which racial demographics are more or less likely to apply to their programs so they can know which demographics they might need to improve their outreach efforts with. It also allows them to check to make sure that they are not disproportionately rejecting applicants from marginalized racial groups and allows them to take the goal of having a diverse student body into account as part of the holistic admissions process. (Whether universities actually do these things, again, is another question.)
2) Not all States in the US require you to list your Race/Ethnicity on your DL/ID, All my American IDs/DLs are racially/politically neutral which is super freaking cool compared to the ID cards that we are given in most parts of Europe which lists our Birthplace, (Political) status which is enough to stir everything up in 5 mins in any classroom, workplace or social environment. This gets even more brutal and bizarre when you do not belong to any legally recognized ethnic/minority group like me where I live. They use the elements of my culture all around but do not even recognize my existence, let that sink in for a min. I often get called “Gypsy” especially during the summer due to my tanned skin and bullied or harassed in public but when they find out that they cannot subdue me the perpetrators quickly disappear. One of my friends from somewhere in Africa carries a legally registered weapon as people try to fight him in public. He is a well built person FYI and he is not a trouble maker. He has beautiful blue/gray eyes and lighter skin FYI. He also confessed that he is called “Gypsy” too as they literally hate Romani people where we live. Although Romanis are non native in the area where I live but I’m Native, they are given a special minority status which is cool but they use my culture for art, architecture and even on their emblems but we are less than hundred politically but much more genetically which is a long discussion that I do not want to get in here and most of my people got a much better status than I got so I get F’ed over even deal with the problems that do not belong to me. (Yeah I’m a F up, I failed to come up with 40+K for my USC, go ahead and judge me). However I cannot imagine how frustrating it is to be falsely profiled in public and feel so much tension for survival as things can quickly escalate into a fight.
Furthermore there is this Indian guy who was shocked to be called the “N word” and spat on while he was trying to hitchhike as he is a traveler passing by a city which is very close to where I used to live. Oh boy! He got the courage to write about his experience on Quora. Due I live amongst hard core Supremacy where they got nerves to call Micro Minorities(TM) like me “Nazis” for only asking for respect or equality. I do not want to mention the cuss words that I hear on a daily basis which noone can remedy. If you complain you get fired period. Good luck with the police with no witnesses an recordings/tapes that will be denied in the court. All bizarre, yet we don’t have rights to do anything as we are not recognized therefore we are not humans. For those are shocked to hear what I say here or do not believe as usual I go thru this because my douche bag uncle refuses to give me one birth record which cannot be obtained by the authorities for decades due to the political mess that we are in. And you probably figured out where this political chaos originated from, right? Most of us cannot even speak about this how can we even file a hate crime to the Police who are also mostly racist? I cannot imagine what Romani people go thru but all I know is in Italy we all are treated with much more respect and dignity. I can literally ride a bicycle to Italy where I get treated like a human but cannot work there due to political mess. This is all because of some douche bag wants to declare someones ethnicity/race/sex on their behalf for political/mass control. Back to being spat on which is a hate crime too in Europe as far as I know; I was also spat on my face during the first covid at a market and accused of bringing Covid to Europe during the winter when I had much lighter skin color which did not make sense. To make this even more bizarre I’m a tall and said to be a handsome man and sadly a European who is often treated like non European due the fact that I speak English and my relatives also live there and I do not. We cannot report all these crimes but what we can do is either suck up or counter attack. First two options do not resolve anything.It is ultra bizarre for even native european to go thru this crap( Without an Eagle Passport) if you got one of those Eagle passports you will be treated like a God where I live, I kid you not. I have to give most people a history lesson every time when I meet someone new who is brainwashed by fake news and non European politics which is absurd. After Covid and the Invasion of Ukraine this has become a bigger problem and it has to be addressed internationally and solved. I shouldn’t have to carry a DNA test to prove my ethnicity or Identity or get an expensive consulate stamp on my ID/Documents because some racist people call the cops on my for “fraudulent documents” and now I have to prove it to the beloved prejudice public. Good luck finding out who these racist people are and taking them to the court, hundreds of people will line up to testify against you. Racism simply does not exist where I live. So long story short if we all were given an International ID with the choice of name, sex and OPTIONAL Ethnicity/group that they are proud of (or they belong to ) This would solve all the problems. but oh no this would solve many problems, wouldn’t it?
Racism sucks, and thank you for reading
P.s. Yes some people cannot even change their names in 21st century due to some reasons which are out of their control
For this reason I try to use my American DL(CA/AZ) as much as possible as it is much more superior compared to the problematic IDs that they give us here. And yes they all know the problems that a simple ID can cause and theny refuse to remedy it. I am also shocked to find out that Colorado, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, NEbraska, South/North CAroline all list race or ethnicity on DL app.
Wow this so deep and very informative! As an avid traveler who originated from the Mediterranean/Balkans with a unique skin color that drastically changes every summer/winter, I can assure you that Racism in the east block exists in a very crude form behind the curtains but always so subtle on daily basis as everyone covers up the very frequent hate crimes and racism due to the fear of severe social retribution and persecution (even most people of colors are in denial due not being educated about this or fear and I do not blame them) but this is always denied in public and a Supramacist Social Caste system exists at least where I live. There is no way to fight this system and you must comply with it, yet the majority of people in power who claim to be against racism and media gets paid for covering up all this BS. It is so severe and brutal the “others” are enot allowed to have certain jobs or continue their education, have or raise children here in the 21st century! I cannot stand this very open systematic racism which is beyond Xenophobia anymore and it must change for a better world. Many people hate and reject the American literature in this field due political reasons as the poison is the cure itself and it spread world wide like cancer and some manage to make fortune out of it as they are very familiar with it but we all must cure it in the name of humanity. Will you come out of the closet and make your confesssions or deny?
Thank you Spencer, this article was very comprehensive and well-researched. I’m a child of Dutch emigrants and when I was a kid (in the 1980s) I was told the story that Zwarte Piet was a young chimney sweep. It made sense to me – who would be better qualified to climb down the chimney and deliver the gifts? (Child labour etc aside.) It wasn’t until later that I heard the other version and I was shocked. I’m glad my parents were more anti-racist than many others seem to be.
The chimney sweep story was the canonical story around that time. It was the way people rationalised themselves into thinking “it wasn’t racist” despite the blackface. I’d hardly call it (more) antiracist for that time.
Racism against Romanies seems to be rarely addressed in America, idk if it’s because they’re not as common as in Europe or what (or that I’m just not looking at the right places). My earliest memory of seeing a form of media that features Romani characters is the Disney 1996 animated adaption of the The Hunchback of Notre-Dame which used the G-slur (not gonna spell it for obvious reasons). Of course at the time I had no idea that was derogatory exonym (one that does make sense when spoken by characters who are bigoted against Romani like Claude Frollo, but still a derogatory one nonetheless), I thought it meant simply a certain people who more festive (the dark skin and hair that would have given indication of them being a distinct race flew passed me as a kid).
As I note in my reply below to Jaojao, the United States actually has the highest population of ethnic Romani people of any country on earth, but, unlike in Europe, where many Romani people still live a traditional nomadic lifestyle, nearly all Romani people in the U.S. are settled and assimilated into mainstream U.S. society and most don’t talk about their Romani heritage except with their families. As a result, they tend to be largely invisible.
‘The BBC finally cancelled the program…because …they believed that another…show…would attract more viewers and earn them more revenue.’
In the interests of accuracy, you might want to amend this sentence. My understanding of the BBC is that they are funded by subscription payments for TV licenses, not by payment for commercials aired. Perhaps I’m just picking nits here, but I have noted that you strive to get details correct on your blog-even minor ones. And I imagine you expect nothing less than persnickety pedantry from your audience here.
Another good post here-and, as usual, I learned a few things. Had a thought while reading: given the number of myths you have dispelled about various holidays, it might help drive traffic your way if you bundled them together under a common heading for each holiday. ‘The Truth About ____’ or ‘____Myths’. Some judicious use of keywords might present more than one of your articles when someone searches Eoster, for instance. I know very little about search engine optimization, so take this with enough salt to alarm your physician.
I wish you a Merry Christmas (or joyful celebration of whichever holidays you subscribe to)!
Thank you so much for this correction! I absolutely do appreciate your “persnickety pedantry” and it always makes me very proud that I have cultivated an audience of readers who care deeply about the accuracy of even extremely tiny details such as this. I have now removed the clause about higher revenues.
I like the idea of “Regenbogenpiet” (Rainbow Piet), “the Piet with his face painted in the colours of diversity”.
https://raffia-magazine.com/2020/12/02/outgrowing-zwarte-piet-turning-a-racist-past-into-an-inclusive-future/
I like that idea too!
I actually see it the other way round. I grew up in Belgium in the 1970’s and I distinctly remember Sinterklaas parades in which the Saint was accompanied by black, blue, red and green ‘pieten’ : actors wearing the common 17-th century ‘moorish’ outfit but their faces made up in blue, green, red…. as well as black makeup and wearing wigs in matching colors.
At that time I thought it to be one of the prime examples of ‘seventies’ excesses, like neon Christmas ornaments on silver lametta artificial trees. Or the fake plastic-covered styrofoam ‘woodwork’ supermarkets installed in their meat section to give the outfit a fake ‘butcher shop’ vibe.
I was actually glad in the 1980’s when the ‘colorful’ piets were thrown out and Piets were just simply black.
Also, I wonder if the statement “Sinterklaas was on his last legs. The onslaught of Christmas had all but replaced Sinterklaas here as the premier moment for kids to get presents. The tradition was starting to disappear.” that Harmsen is referring to is that of the growing international spread of Santa Clause and other American traditions that caused many local European winter gift-givers to become heavily influence by and eventually lose their distinct cultural identity and become synonymous with Santa (most famous example I know being Britain’s Father Christmas who was originally simply the personification of the holiday but today only exists in name only). I imagine this would have probably cause some push back by the Dutch people who wouldn’t want their Sinterklaas to suffer a similar fate which resulted in things like this “Sinterklaas 2.0.” on national tv. Considering Sinterklaas is still around today as his own distinct local holiday figure, I guess it was successful.
Either way, I guess you can consider this the first major step of purging the racist elements of Zwarte Piet, by turning him from Sinterklaas’s buffoon sidekick to a more intelligent one the sometimes incompetent Sinterklaas would depend on.
I think you make some very good points here!
To begin with, I am very sorry to read of what your classmate experienced. To some extent I think it show the unreasonableness of racism; the vicious hatred many Europeans have of Roma people often seems to surprise Americans (though I know nothing about the situation for them in the USA so correct me if I am wrong). Similar to how some Imperial Japanese officials were perplex by antisemitism in the West, seeing no reason to hate Jews. I have also seen many Americans confused by discrimination against the Sami, seeing both them and Germanic/ethnic/majority (there is no good terminology for this) Scandinavians as white.
I think it was very interesting (and you showed this well) how various traditions coalesced into the modern Zwarte Piet. I am also intrigued by your discussion on the image of the Devil as black. Previously my understanding has been that the idea of whiteness and racism as we see it today came into being during the Renaissance and the “Age of Discovery”, but it seems recent scholarship has set it to the High Middle Ages, is that correct?
Your interest in European folklore and traditions is apparent to longer readers of this blog, but I am curious if the works you cite like Tydeman’s and Rathey’s were things you had read before or looked up for the purpose of writing this?
The United States actually has the highest population of ethnic Romani people of any country on earth, but, unlike in Europe, where many Romani people still live a traditional nomadic lifestyle, nearly all Romani people in the U.S. are settled and assimilated into mainstream U.S. society and most don’t talk about their Romani heritage except with their families. As a result, they tend to be largely invisible. As a result, overt anti-Romani prejudice here in the U.S. is generally not very common. Many, if not most, people here in the U.S. wouldn’t even be able to tell you who the Romani people are if you asked them.
In response to your first question, recent scholarship generally sees the development of the concept of the white race as a gradual, complicated process. The High Middle Ages is when western European Latin Christians first began to think of themselves as “white” in color terms, but it wasn’t until much later, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that full-blown white supremacist racial ideology as we might recognize it began to develop and, even then, this ideology didn’t reach its mature, fully developed and systematized form until the nineteenth century.
In response to your second question, I had not read any of Tydeman or Rathey’s work until I started doing research for this post back in January of this year. I discovered them only in the process of doing research specifically for this post.
Thanks you for elaborating on these things, Spencer!
You’re welcome! I’m usually very happy to elaborate!
hey spencer, great post yet again. however, i notice that you consistently use the term “african-american” when referring to Blacks in the United States. Though I myself am not black, I think the term “african-american” can be offensive to some Black US Citizens.
https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/stanfordlanguage.pdf
I do not “consistently use the term ‘african-american.'” On the contrary, in all my posts that I have written in roughly the past three years, I have generally consciously avoided that term and instead used the term “Black Americans” or just “Black people” if it is already clear that I am talking about Americans. The reason why I use the term “African American” a few times in this particular post is because, in every case where I use it, it is as part of the set phrase “African American Vernacular English,” which is a standard term used by linguists to describe the varieties of vernacular English that are spoken by Black Americans.
Unrelated point but do you know anything about the history of depicting the devil with extra faces on his belly, joints etc? It is a striking depiction and I wasn’t able to find out what it’s meaning or origin was when I tried to look into it.
I don’t find the black devil argument that convincing. We find exactly the same imagery in China and Japan where there were not many examples of Africans to model. I think it is more likely that „dark=bad“ was originally a classist development. Peasants worked outdoors and turned dark – aristocrats and Burgers had lighter skin from spending more time indoors (and more clothing), therefore „lighter“ equals better. Unfortunately that preexisting stereotype was easily available to justify racism towards darker skinnedAfricans (which we also find in Asia).
The medieval Christian association of the color black with evil and the color white with good is ultimately rooted in the figurative language of the Bible, which frequently associates darkness (and hence the color black) with evil (such as in Gospel of John 8:12, Acts 26:17–18) and the color white with purity (such as in Revelation 7:9–14). This was not originally a racial association, but, over the course of the High and Late Middle Ages, it influenced the way western European Latin Christians thought about race and, as a result, became racial.
The tradition of Krampus exists also in Slovenia and Croatia, which were influenced by Austria a lot (and in fact, dominated by Austria for centuries). However, Krampus doesn’t look like an African. He looks almost like an alien, of course with constraints of what can be improvized by common people. For instance, his skin could be bright red.
Thank you for writing this, Spencer. Lots of (mostly white) Europeans seem to be under impression that race is strictly “an American thing” and they “don’t see color.” Sometimes I don’t even know how to respond, as it’s so blatantly false.
Thank you so much! I’m so glad to hear that you appreciate my post! I absolutely agree that the assumption among white Europeans that race is just “an American thing” and that racism is not a problem in their countries is thoroughly erroneous. Part of my aspiration in writing this post was that it would hopefully help to change some people’s minds.
Dear Spencer,
I must admit that I’m usually pretty skeptical of so called “woke” talking points, but this time you managed to change my mind on this topic with this really well researched article!
Personally, I strongly believe that only people and rights should be defended, not traditions, so I’m perfectly fine with outdated customs being dropped
I’d like it if Zwarte Piet were made hyper-traditional, like a kind of animalistic devil without discernably racial features.
That removes the racism, while still preserving a beloved tradition, arguably being more true to it than the later version.
Thank you for this article. I grew up in Flemish speaking Belgium in one of the few villages that celebrated St Martin on November 11 – not St Nicolas on December 6 or Santa Claus.
The night before, we put a carrot for St Martin’s horse and a lump of sugar for Black Piet’s donkey (or the other way round I forgot). The kids that did not behaved well were put in Black Piet’s bag and taken to Spain – but I guess we all behaved well as I never saw that happening.
I have been living in the UK for over 25 years so I am a bit out of sync with local culture but my understanding is that Black Piet is also controversial in Belgium. As a white person I would tend to respect the opinions of the non white people there – though there is no unanimity there either.
Your article is really well researched, but I think the link between the US minstrel tradition and Zwarte Piet is not very strong.
Thank you!
Bart
“Zwarte Piet has been a widely beloved figure among white people in the Low Countries for generations,”
He was a widely beloved figure among many people willing to put up with a Christian feastday, until a point after 2008 when activists managed to achieve greater prominence. Strange to single out “white people”, though yes that’s obviously the group that supported it the most and that’s now where the rearguard comes from.
Agree it’s a racist figure, but your telling kinda exaggerates how racialised opinions around the figure were. The opposition to it was a tiny group until pretty recently.
So this:
“For decades now, despite most white people from the Low Countries insisting that Zwarte Piet is not racist, communities of color in the Low Countries have generally regarded him as a racist caricature and a symbol of racial oppression.”
Is not supported by your evidence, cause it dates from just 2012.
“Even today, Zwarte Piet is still sometimes said to have a chain that he rattles menacingly.”
If so, that’s really really rare. There are a few unclear allusions in some songs but that’s it.