Zwarte Piet: A Racist Caricature?

By Guest Contributor Keisha Wiel, cross-posted from Anthro Meaning People, Dope Meaning Awesome

I wasn’t going to originally post anything on Zwarte Piet but, after seeing discourse after discourse on the holiday of Sinterklaas, I decided to write about it. Ah, where to begin.

I celebrated Sinterklaas as a child. Since my parents were from the Dutch Caribbean, we would go every December 5th to the Dutch consulate in New York City and eagerly sit with the other children (we were usually the only children of color) while Sinterklaas handed out our presents. And, of course, to accompany Sinterklaas, this saintly white man who represented a bishop, were his ‘helpers’ or Zwarte Pieten (Black Petes). These would usually be men, or women, dressed up in blackface with an Afro wig and bright red lipstick. The legend goes that if you’re bad, Zwarte Piet will take you in his burlap sack to Spain. So naturally I was mortified of Zwarte Pieten (Black Petes) as a child. You mean to tell me that this dude who dresses flamboyantly and has this jet black makeup on his face is going to collect me and ship me off to Spain with him? OH HELL NO!!

As I grew up and learned about Golliwogs and minstrel shows, I started to notice a pattern. This beloved holiday that I celebrated as part of my ‘heritage’ seemed to overlap a lot with blackface in America. The similarities are undeniable.

Originally Zwarte Piet was a representation of the devil. He had no name but the dichotomy between Sinterklaas and the devil figure were supposed to represent the good and evil aspects of Sinterklaas. Sinterklaas was modeled after a 4th-century bishop, Saint Nicholas, from what is now modern-day Turkey. The opposite of Sinteklaas was the devil, whom it is believed Sinterklaas captured and made his slave. The first mention of Zwarte Piet comes in 1850 when Jan Schenkman decides to add his own spin to the story and changes the devil to Zwarte Piet, the enslaved Moor from Morocco. His book, Sint Nicolaas en Zijn Knecht (Saint Nicholas and his Servant) is what is used for the modern-day celebrations of Sinterklaas. This is also where you start to see the present-day representations of what Zwarte Piet looks like.

Then around the 1950s, they changed him to his servant. All in all, Sinterklaas is supposed to come from Turkey and Zwarte Piet is supposed to be a Moor from Morocco (interesting how some Dutch have negative attitudes towards Turkish and Moroccan people presently due to Geert Wilders’ racist views on Muslims). But now Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet reside in Spain. When people try to start a discourse of the racist aspects of Zwarte Piet (Afro wig, blackface (even though Moors were lighter-skinned Arabs), big bright red lipstick, some even speak in a faux Surinamese accent) proponents for Zwarte Piet say that opponents are the racists because they bring in American imperialism and that it’s not a racist image at all. Or they say that Zwarte Piet doesn’t represent black people, he just went down a chimney and got dirty from the soot. I’ve seen Mary Poppins, and Dick van Dyke’s character Bert, a chimney sweeper, is dirty from a chimney. Not Zwarte Piet.

So, I’m going to dispel the asinine reactions that you get about Zwarte Piet when you say it’s a racist depiction.

Reason 1: Zwarte Piet does not represent black people. You’re racist for thinking so.

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