"Sinterklaas & Zwarte Piet (black face)" Racism & Slavery

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(the french version looks like some expelled monk and bisshop)


or other alliances


popcorn and let the culture wars continue

You will have to explain what it is that you're showing us.

The dude who looks like the Pope (or a bishop or something), with the tall hat, and the big shepherds hook, is … the equivalent of Santa Clause?

The guy dressed like a monk with a big black beard is...what?....one of Santa's helpers?

Niether are particularly un pc or offensive.

Looks like the French mix a little bit of Halloween into their Xmas. Those scary looking guys hanging with Santa in the bottom pic have some rather wickedly cool costumes!

Santa's best bud, Rasputin!

That guy does look like Rasputin.

I am always interested in what passes for "normal" in different cultures. Even though I'm from the Southern US, I've never been to a party where someone wore black face, nor would it occur to me to do it myself. I don't know why, I guess it's a good thing. But, in all honesty, it would just never occur to me to paint my face black. If I were going to assume the role of an AA, I might choose a wig to do so. But never face paint... strange.

Am from the DC area. My attitude and experiences are similar to your's about this.

The office supply store I worked for had a Halloween office party back in 1983 (when the Thriller album came out), and I dressed up as Micheal Jackson. But I didn't do Blackface. There are ways to convey that you're doing a particular Black celeb without Blackface , and Micheal Jackson has a plethora of gimmicks to imitate. So there was no need for it.

I DID do "black face" of sorts once, on stage in local community show. There was a big made-for-TV movie years ago depicting a town in Kansas getting nuked. So we spoofed that show in a little musical skit I was in in which I played a survivor crawling out of the ruins with my face painted black (like a cartoon character surviving a TNT blast), and then I joined the other survivors in breaking out into song ("Everything is blown away in Kansas City! They've gone about as far as they can go...."). But that wasn't racial. It was Dick Van Dyke chimney sweep type blackface (with a lowercase b), not Al Jolson type racial Blackface (with a capital B).

Although the racist Joe Biden would like the slave Zwarte Piet, I certainly think he would look just as angry to the Sinterklaas in the photo as the white people around the black Sinterklaas. In this photo you see someone demonstrating against the racist caricature of Zwarte Piet. The reason why i connect Joe Biden is because he has upgraded the mass murderer Ariel Sharon to the status of 'Ubermensch'.

you're angry at Biden because Biden once said something nice about Ariel Sharon????

Those folks look alarmed to see a Black Santa.

2 weeks ago there was a football game in this part of the planet.
The fans did sing zwarte-piet songs for a black football player. They did it not in a friendly way, they did it in a racism-way. Not only the fans use wrong words, 1 week ago there was the famous former footballplayer Marco van Basten who did say "Sieg Heil" in a interview. What a shame.





A song that give me power.


About Biden, Sharon-Sabra-Shatila-Jenin i make next year a own topic.

A statue of President Roosevelt. Not from Franklin Roosevelt's but Theodore Roosevelt.
This statue reminds me of that controversial bishop Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas), but a few notches worse.
Theodore on his horse, with that slave on the one hand, and on the other, someone who exemplifies the greatest genocide in the history of mankind. Inequality is too weak to say, i find this statue sadistic.
Show off the victims of slavery and genocide. I know little or nothing about that Theodore, I also know nothing about his ideas when he was still alive. I suspect that this statue was made and placed after the death of this Roosevelt.
Am i crazy now, or is the rest of the world crazy?

Theyve already taken that particular statue down.

It was vandalized in 2017, heavily guarded by police in 2020, and it was finnally taken down months ago.

Theodore Roosevelt flanked by a Black African guy, and an American Indian guy- both on foot while he is in the middle on horseback. Its at the entrance of the New York City Museum of Natural History.

That statue was put up in 1940, long ago, but long after TR's administration-put up to honor TR. Obviously very "colonialist" if not outright racist in look and therefor a lightening rod for political vandalism in 2020.

TR's dad was a founder of the museum, and TR was a naturalist, outdoorsman, and adventurer, before becoming POTUS. As for TR and his policies and attitudes- no worse than White Americans in general of his pre World War One time. Or maybe its more accurate to say that he was BOTH better AND worse than most White Americans of his time - so it balanced out. He said nasty things like "the only good Indian is a dead one", but also fought alongside American Indians and Blacks as well as Whites who volunteered to join his Rough Riders.

Interesting thing. He was the first POTUS to integrate the White House lunchroom. The staff no longer ate in separate racially segregated cafeterias in the White House when he took over. A symbolic act that presaged Rosa Parks igniting the Black civil rights upheaval decades later. He deserves credit for that IMHO. When his successor Woodrow Wilson took over Wilson immediately re-segregated the White House staff lunch room (kinda like how Carter had solar panels installed on the roof of the WH, and Reagan immediately removed them).

Nice to read that this racist statue is gone.

Because of corona there are no offical Sinterklaas parade's this year. But pro and contra people of 'zwarte piet' are on the streets. In Eindhoven there where some Pegida people who are dressed like zwarte piet Some footballhooligans are also in the pro camp.

The stories are variations of the same thing. In Northern England as a child I was told that there was an imp who sat on the top of the chimmney, listened and watched everything, knew if you had been bad and would report back to Santa. In England, you never saw representations or role play of this imp. My guess is that Zwarte Piets are a version of this imp, though interestingly they hand out sweets rather than have a persecutory informant atmosphere. Black creatures that relay messages to a father figure of whether you have been good or not? - I am reminded of a couple of ravens from mythology, in much the same way that the English Santa Claus looks more like a walking Amanita Mushroom than Saint Nickolas.

The Santa story can get ferociously dark, meet the Krampus, and this is a relatively light hearted version from Austria



They are a bit more free range in bavaria

It is wonderful.

Last edited by Alexanderplatz on 29 Nov 2020, 9:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Bulgaria looks interesting, and unfathomable, on acid. Which is good

I love seeing Christmas figures from around the world. It makes me want to travel the world around this time of the year.