Blackface zwarte piet disappearing - but not fast enough

SAINT NICHOLAS' Day in the Netherlands falls on 5 December. It sees the celebration of Sinterklaas or just de Sint (the Saint). He's a thinner version of Santa Claus, as if he were a bishop. St Nicholas was originally a real bishop based in what is now Turkey in the fifth century. Stories of St Nicholas dropping valuable jewellery and other gifts down the chimneys of poor girls who had no dowries gave rise to Sinterklaas and indeed Father Christmas.

In the Netherlands and Flanders - Dutch-speaking Belgium - Sinterklaas arrives on a weekend in mid-November leading up to St Nicholas Day, allegedly "from Spain", turning up in a steam boat at the local harbour. He's accompanied by a retinue of "comical" helpers in the livery of a Renaissance servant boy, named "zwarte piet" (Black Pete). The crowd of retainers accompanying the Saint are known as "the Petes".

Within living memory, zwarte piet would abduct "naughty" children in his sack. He was usually portrayed by a white Dutch person in blackface, often with a "comical" accent to match, a black curly wig, thick lipstick and big fake gold earrings. Some defend the practice of portraying zwarte piet in blackface as "traditional". But the character was invented in 1850 by schoolteacher and children's book author Jan Schenkman, over a thousand years after St Nicholas's career started. Schenkman's book title St. Nicolaas en zijn knecht referred to zwarte piet as the Saint's knecht - a servant, serf or slave.

Recent years have seen anti-racist protests against blackface zwarte piet by activist groups such as Kick Out zwarte piet (KOZP). These protests have frequently been assaulted, often by groups of football hooligans, while groups of protesters travelling to Sinterklaas parades have been blockaded and prevented from arriving. Riot police have stepped in on occasion to escort KOZP protesters away to safety. There have been several such violent incidents around recent Sinterklaas parades.

NUJ Netherlands Branch on it

NUJ Netherlands Branch - a Branch mostly of freelances who write for English language outlets in that country - has been monitoring the zwarte piet phenomenon for some years. Of particular concern to NUJ Netherlands Branch is biased reporting on the numerous protests against zwarte piet that take place annually. Such news reports often portray the protesters as "annoying" and describe attacks as "clashes" when they are clearly assaults on peaceful protesters. NUJ Netherlands Branch has issued guidelines on reporting on zwarte piet.

In this campaign, NUJ Netherlands Branch has been inspired by the NUJ's Code of Conduct and its Guidelines on Reporting Race. The NUJ's National Executive Council has passed a motion in support of the NUJ Netherlands Branch campaign.

This year, very few "arrival of the Saint" parades featured a blackface zwarte piet. Many communities had already replaced zwarte piet with "Sooty Petes", characters with a light smearing of dark soot or makeup on their cheeks as if they had just come down the chimney. Flanders has already fully adopted Sooty Petes - with the exception of a few villages - following a 2015 "Petes Pact" to which broadcasters and the mayors of Flemish cities committed themselves. Amsterdam introduced Sooty Petes in 2017, and the National Arrival of Saint Nicholas, filmed for small children to watch live at home, this year featured exclusively Sooty Pete.

‘Gradually phased out’

Other communities have announced that they are "phasing out" zwarte piet from their parades. The last parade in Eindhoven featuring zwarte piets was in 2019. NPO, the national broadcasting ombudsman, banned zwarte piet from TV screens in the same year. Google in 2020 banned video advertising that featured zwarte piet, and Sooty Pete as well, agreeing with KOZP that Sooty Petes, especially those with curly black wigs, thick lipstick and earrings, still represented "racial stereotypes". Facebook banned images of zwarte piet in 2021. Celebrations on the island of Texel have since 2020 featured Texel Piets, their faces painted in the green and black colours of the island's municipal flag.

In the run-up to the 2022 parades season, the towns of Alkmaar, Putten and Katwijk announced they were switching to Sooty Petes. The town of Woudenberg had planned a 2022 parade featuring zwarte piets but reluctantly agreed to a last-minute substitution with Sooty Piets after police warned that they "could not guarantee their safety" if they paraded with blackface zwarte piets. The city of Arnhemsaid its St Nicholas would be escorted not by zwarte piets by "Spanish aristocrats", as the Saint traditionally arrives "from Spain".

Cancelled in Culemborg

The town of Culemborg scrapped its planned parade, which was to have featured zwarte piets, after its mayor expressed fears over "public order". Druten in the province of Gelderland cancelled its parade too, when it became clear that zwarte piet was "not welcome" this year.

The two neighbouring villages of Eemdijk and Bunschoten, both in Utrecht Province, were reportedly going ahead with zwarte piets as of the day before the planned parades. Neither club organising the parades there were available for comment. The Freelance couldn't find any reports of how these parades went. Nor could the Freelance find anything on the fate of the Saint Nicholas parade in Uden, in Brabant in the south. Trustees of its parade committee had announced in late October that it would go ahead with zwarte piets.

The organising committee of the parade in the city of Venlo on the German border announced that it was pulling its zwarte piets, but it soon became clear there would be light grey-coloured "Grey Piets" on the parade. KOZP's response was reported as "Fifty Shades of NEE".(Nee, Dutch for "no", rhymes with "grey").

Grey Piets

Grey Piets first appeared in 2020 in Breda, Dordrecht and Leeuwarden among other cities: see our report on Breda in 2021. It was quickly noticed that some Grey Piets still had "Afro" wigs and thick lipstick, while the Grey Petes caught on video in Breda in 2021 were of a shade of grey so dark as to be indistinguishable from black. KOZP said it had "exactly the same effect as the racist blackface tradition that originated in the days of slavery". There followed discussions with The Venlo Children's Parties Foundation and the town's mayor and councillors, after which it was agreed to replace Grey Piets with Sooty Piets.

The Venlo parade organisers then explained that they wanted children to see "the same Piets" as in the National Parade and in the Saint Nicholas News TV programme. They also noted that many mothers, fathers and grandparents were "focussing on the appearance of Piet this year." Spokesman for KOZP Jeffrey Afriye told Parool newspaper that his organisation is regularly asked by parents which parades they can take their kids to.

Last year there was trouble in the picture-postcard tourist-attraction historic town of Volendam, where traditional costumes are still worn and where attitudes are deeply conservative. Its 2021 parade included some "traditional" blackface zwarte piets and saw a protest by KOZP, whose activists were pelted with eggs, fireworks and produce from the street market before they were escorted away by police.

This year, KOZP - which had planned a demonstration in the town again - was surprised when the Volendam association organising the parade announced in October that the Saint would attended exclusively by Sooty Petes in this year's event.

Volendam's Saint Nicholas Foundation's press release noted that local shopkeepers experience problems if they have zwarte piet in their window displays. The character is now seen as an "anti-advertisement" by shopkeepers and businesspeople and parents no longer consent to have their children photographed with zwarte piet. The Foundation is losing volunteers over the issue.

The parade went ahead and was reportedly "harmonious" and well attended. But there was zwarte piet trouble in Volendam at the home game of football club FC Volendam the previous day, when a group of at least 20 fans turned up dressed up and made up as zwarte piet. Xavier Mbuyamba, a second-generation Congolese player for FC Volendam, later said he was so shocked when he went onto the pitch that he refused to acknowledge the fans and expressed dismay that those fans had been allowed in at all. FC Volendam later distanced themselves from their dressed-as-zwarte-piet supporters.

Pelted with eggs

In the days running up to the arrival of St Nicholas, 12 demonstrators were arrested after interrupting a Council meeting in Emmen, demanding that planned parades for the town and villages in the municipality which were to feature zwarte piet be "adapted". Emmen's parade committee were following a plan of "gradually phasing out" zwarte piet within the next year or two. The Emmen parade committee told NU.nl news website that they planned to have "no zwarte piets" in the 2023 parade, during the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the Kingdom of the Netherlands and its colonies. The municipality of the provincial capital of Groningen said it planned to ditch zwarte piets completely by 2024.

A demonstration against zwarte piet at this year's "arrival of the Saint" saw around 30 protesters in the village of Westzaan, just north of Amsterdam, pelted with eggs and manure was dumped on the area where they had been given permission to demonstrate.

Two men were arrested and charged with breach of the peace after pelting a large anti-zwarte piet demonstration with eggs at the parade in Zaandam. The village of Staphorst in Overijsel was one of very few communities in the Low Countries that announced it was going ahead with a Saint Nicholas parade with the zwarte piets "unchanged". KOZP activists travelling in cars to a demonstration in the village were prevented from entering the village when a group of "hundreds" of "opponents" - some in zwarte piet costumes - blockaded them at the entrance to the village. Riot police were deployed and, after discussions with the police and magistrates, the mayor banned the demo. While there were no arrests or injuries, police took statements regarding threats, criminal damage to cars and theft of items from a car. A police investigation has been opened.

Piets for hire

Reporting of the events around anti-zwarte piet protests were less biased than In previous years. (This had been a particular concern of NUJ Netherlands Branch.) News reports generally accurately portrayed violent incidents as attacks on peaceful demonstrations, not as "clashes" as previously. Overijsel Police described those attacking the KOZP demo in Staphorst as "rioters", with several news outlets noting that the rioters had "beers in their hands".

RTL news recently interviewed five agencies that hire out Saint Nicholas and at least one Piet helper for parties. Four agencies said they were sending out exclusively Sooty Piets; the other five said Piet would appear made up as requested by the client. One Piet actor said the kids used to freak out in terror and hide under the table when zwarte piet showed up and that they were much less scared by Sooty Pete. Other Piets-for-hire said the kids were all fine with Sooty Piets - it's the parents who gave actors a hard time about not being zwarte piet anymore.

Dirk Bloothoofd of the Sinterklaas Centrale agency said many of his actors had switched to performing as Sooty Piets only after so many people on his books had been jostled, shouted at and sworn at while on their way to children's parties and while passing through "immigrant neighbourhoods" in full zwarte piet make-up.

The kids are all right

Ben Coates, a reporter for AD newspaper, commented on Twitter: "Very few blackface zwarte pieten around this year, compared with say five years ago. Can we now just agree that getting rid of (most of) them wasn't actually that hard, and most kids didn't even notice the change at all?"

© Matt Salusbury