Blakely, Allison

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New DirectionsVolume 7 | Issue 2 Article 61-1-1980Santa's Black Aide A Glimpse of Race Relations inHollandAllison BlakelyFollow this and additional works at: http://dh.howard.edu/newdirectionsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Howard @ Howard University. It has been accepted for inclusion in New Directions byan authorized administrator of Digital Howard @ Howard University. For more information, please contact lopez.matthews@howard.edu.Recommended CitationBlakely, Allison (1980) "Santa's Black Aide A Glimpse of Race Relations in Holland," New Directions: Vol. 7: Iss. 2, Article 6.Available at: http://dh.howard.edu/newdirections/vol7/iss2/6INTfRNATIONAl, ' ... "~ 'I'. . ~'.' .." . '.-:' . ~'. ", .',.~.' .' , '4"j26" .':.',NEW DIRECTIONS JANUARY, 1980A Glimpse at RaceRelations in HollandBy Allison BlakelyThe American traditional Santa Claus ismainly an amalgamation of FatherChristmas, brought here by 17th-centuryBritish settlers, and Sinterklaas, broughtby the Dutch to their New Amsterdam.Both of these figures were, in turn, justtwo of the myriad offspring of a centu-ries-old St. Nicholas tradition. Sin-terklaas as practiced in the Netherlandshas an intriguing component omitted inthe New World adaptationSinterklaas in Holland has a Blackcompanion on his rounds, whose variantnames have eventually melded intoZwarte Piet (Black Peter). Unlike theAmerican tradition, Sinterklaas is not ob-served at Christmas, but rather on thefifth of December, the eve of the day onwhich St. Nicholas is said to have died.At the end of each November, Sin-terklaas appears in Holland in prepara-tion for his treasured visits; Zwarte Piet isat his side. It is not certain whetherZwarte Piet's color was originally in-tended as a racial characteristic, but incontemporary Dutch society, this fabu-lous pair provides an interesting back-drop for a discussion of race relations inHolland.Since the Sinterklaas tradition mayhave possible bearing on Dutch racialattitudes, regardless of its specific rela-tion to racial questions, a brief review ofthe genesis of this tradition is in order.Its inspiration was the legendary me-dieval Saint Nicholas, the most popularof all the Christian saints. He was abishop of Myra, in Asia Minor, in the firsthalf of the 4th century. In the Greek Or-thodox Church, he was believed to havemiraculous powers to protect thosethreatened by catastrophe.In later centuries, after the Christianfaith split into its two main factions -Eastern and Western-the Roman Cath-olic Church retained Nicholas (in itscalendar of saints) and was responsiblefor his popularity as Northern and West-ern Europe became the center of West-ern civilization. There he became thepatron saint of sailors, which explains hisimportance in the area which becamethe Netherlands. He also became asso-ciated with benevolence to children; bythe late Middle Ages, he annually com-memorated the date of his "birth intoheaven" by bearing gifts to all deservingchildren and punishing the rest with birchswitches left for parental use.In different countries, the St. Nicholasfigure had different names but served thesame purpose. He also absorbed paganinfluences. For some, the Scandinaviangod Odin (in Anglo-Saxon, Wodan), anall-powerful deity who was believed to flythrough the air on a magic horse eachDecember on the winter solstice, cameto be fused with the Saint.Zwarte Piet in Dutch folklore is thename for the devil. When he first joinedSinterklaas, it was as a servant-caughtand chained for the celebration eachyear. The two would ride over the roof-tops and the good Saint would make Pietdrop candy and presents down thechimneys and into children's shoes leftout for the occasion. Piet now wieldedthe switches. Even worse, he carried asack in which he would take bad childrenaway. Over the centuries, Zwarte Piethas become a more positive figure of apartner.Another part of the Dutch tradition isthat Sinterklaas resides in Spain most ofthe year, just as Santa Claus lives at theNorth Pole. By some accounts, ZwartePiet was a Moorish orphan boy whomSinterklaas adopted and trained as hisassistant. In keeping with this scenario,Sinterklaas arrives by ship in Dutch har-bors. In other towns, he comes in ahorsedrawn carriage or mounted upon awhite horse, accompanied by marchingbands and local dignitaries. Zwarte Piet,a Dutchman in blackface and dressed inthe fashion of 16th-century Spain, walksalongside holding the reins so that theSaint, resplendent in his bishop's head-dress and holding his staff in one hand,will be able to wave to all the faithful,which in this case includes Protestants 27and Jews as well as Catholics. In someinstances, the parade will have numer-ous Zwarte Piets who distribute sweetsto children along the way. Some of thechildren may also be made up as Piets.The typical Dutch attitude towardZwarte Piet is highly positive. Just themention of him will bring a smile and atwinkle to the eye of even the mostsombre adult. There are invariablymemories from childhood of beingwarned thatZwarte Piet would come andcarry them away if they did not behave.On the other hand, imbued with thecharity and understanding for which hissaintly master is famous, Piet also isrespected for his fairness and ability toreward good deeds. Such a responsibleand admired figure should not beidentified with the pure buffoon imageprojected by American minstrel shows,of which his blackface visage is reminis-cent. However, at the same time, it seemsquite apparent that the Dutch feeling to-ward Zwarte Piet has to be somewhatambivalent: respect is tinged with ap-prehension. However dubious the va-lidity of this psychoanalytical observa-tion may be, it seems to be consistentwith attitudes shown in the Dutch histori-cal experience with dark-skinnedpeoples.The Race IssueSince its very beginnings, the Nether-lands has enjoyed a reputation as one ofthe most tolerant societies in the world. Inthe 17th century, at the zenith of its statureas a world power, it could boast of two ofthe leading cultural figures in Westerncivilization: Rembrandt and Spinoza,both Jews. Spinoza's parents hadmoved to the Netherlands to escapepersecution in Spain. It was also fromHolland that the Pilgrim Fathers whofounded the Plymouth colony in 1620sailed after years of refuge there fromtheir English king.More recently, with respect to toler-ance for ethnic minorities, the Dutch as-similated around 400,000 EurasiansNEW DIRECTIONS JANUARY, 198028 from the former Dutch East Indies, after itbecame independent Indonesia. TheDutch colonists had obviously mixedfreely with the natives and now in themother country had no difficulty livingwith them. Only those who have spenttime in Holland can fully appreciate themeasure of this achievement.This small country has one of the mostdiverse and cosmopolitan of all theworld's societies, but at the same timeone of the most provincial. Even aDutchman who moves from one town orcommunity into another can expect towait years before he is accepted as apart of the neighborhood.One segment of the population fromIndonesia, about 40,000 Moluccans, de-liberately attempts to isolate itself from itsDutch neighbors. The Moluccans claimto be awaiting fulfillment of Dutch prom-ises to secure an independent homelandfor them in Indonesia.The first of the group to come to HoI-land were soldiers from the Dutch RoyalArmy It is their sons and daughters whoare now pressing the issue-sometimesby violent means Terrorist attacks byyoung Moluccans have done more toheighten ethnic awareness than anyother recent development, although theissues involved are not racial in the usualsense and Moluccan complaints are notdirected against conditions in theNetherlands.With the influx in the past decade ofapproximately 175,000 more coloredcitizens from other areas of the old Dutchempire, the established reputation fortolerance seems to be in ever greaterdanger. The largest group, numberingabout 150,000, came from Surinam.Another group, 25,000, came from theNetherlands Antilles (Dutch West In-dies). Most of the Surinamers are Blackand most of the Antilleans are Creole.Along with the Eurasian and Blackpopulation, there are about 240,000foreign workers and their families, mainlyTurks and Moroccans. There are alsosome 5,000 Chinese from Taiwan, HongKong and Singapore. The total nonwhiteNEW DIRECTIONS JANUARY. 1980population is about 6 percent of thecountry's population of 14 million.Further, there are several thousand il-legal immigrants in Holland withSurinamers accounting for the largestnumber.It may be that some of the emergingdifficulties in coping with this nonwhitepopulation stem from the suddenness ofits arrival.In order to better understand possibleexplanations, it is necessary to referonce again to Dutch history Apartheid isa Dutch word, and the associated at-titudes and practices which have be-come infamous in South Africa, wherethe Cape Colony was originally Dutch,do also have a place in the Dutch tradi-tion.From the earliest period of Dutch colo-nization abroad, the policies adoptedtoward the colored peoples showed anambivalent attitude. On the one hand,the Dutch believed they should standabove and apart from the coloredpeoples. But at the same time, it wassurmised that intermarriage with indi-genous women would promote stabilityand loyalty to the Dutch. Concomitant tothis was legislation prohibiting the entryof colored wives or children into theNetherlands, although there were someexceptions made.Slavery was also not allowed in theNetherlands, even after the Dutch over-came earlier moral scruples andplunged deeply into the slave trade in thelater 17th century. In the colonies, theDutch practice of slavery came to beequally as brutal as that of their colonialrivals. Incidentally, it was in Surinam thatthe Dutch slavemasters were the mostsevere.The current Dutch channeling of sub-stantial contributions toward the costs ofestablishing the new nation of Surinamattests to acknowledgement of thesepast wrongs, as does a policy whichtemporarily allowed free movement ofSurinamers to the Netherlands.The Bovenkerk ReportNotwithstanding such good intentions,the Surinamers and other ethnicminorities appear to be confronted withmounting evidence of racism. A recentstudy by cultural anthropologist FrankBovenkerk of the University of Utrechtconcludes that the idea that the Nether-lands is a tolerant country with regard toethnic minorities is no longer accurate.Bovenkerk's research group foundthat there is unquestionable racial dis-crimination against Surinamers andforeign laborers, as shown by experi-ences concerning housing, work, andlaw enforcement. The volume of discrim-ination seems to have grown apace withthe increase in number of ethnicminorities - with a radical changenoticeable since the 1950s. At that time,the Netherlands had such a strong repu-tation for having no "Negro problem" thatsome Americans fled there to escaperacism at home. But the atmospheresupporting that has changed with thegreat increase in the number of coloredpeoples and the realization that they willremain - creating for the first time amulti-racial society in Holland.Cognizant of the difficulty of gettingpeople to admit that they have racistattitudes, the research group proceededby having Moroccans, Tunisians andSurinamers go and apply for jobs andhousing and then sending a Dutchmanof comparable age, experience anddress .to make the same request. Theyfound discrimination to be obvious andsystematic.Another experiment was aimed at de-termining whether Dutchmen would sitnext to Surinamers on a public bus. In-conclusive evidence showed at least aninclination to avoid sitting by aSurinamer.Discrimination in newspaper reportingwas also surveyed. The researchersfound that in all the Dutch dailies, reportson misdeeds in which ethnic minoritieswere involved comprised a proportion oftheir crime reports which was at leasttwice as great as the share in crimesactually attributed to these groups in of-fical records. In one newspaper, forexample, a third of all the crimes re-ported were those involving Surinamers,Turks, and Moroccans. This amounted tosix times as high a percentage as theirshare in overall Dutch crime statistics.Their actual involvement in crime isabout the same as their percentage ofthe total population.The survey also noted that the wordsSurinamer, Moroccan, Turk and Tunisianwere more often mentioned in the head-line than was the case with Dutchmen'saffairs. Contributing to the exaggeratedperception of the involvement of ethnicminorities in crime is the widely held be-lief that Chinese and Surinamer elementsare mainly responsible for the recentsurge in illegal drug traffic in Holland.Investigation of the Amsterdampolice's treatment of Surinamers founddemonstrable injustices, just as an ear-lier Ministry of Justice review had. Anincident in September 1978, afterBovenkerk's study, showed that his find-ings were correct and, moreover, that thesituation had not improved. In this case,the Surinamer Rights Committee pro-tested against a police raid which re-sulted in the arrest of 48 Blacks. Takenfrom cafes and from the streets, theywere held as suspects after a street fightinvolving a white student and someyouths alleged to be Surinamers. Theonly thing all the suspects had in com-mon was their color.The arrests were conducted violently,and one injured Surinamer received nomedical attention at the police station,despite repeated appeals. He claimedthat he had been beaten by several menat the instigation of an officer, althoughhe never resisted arrest.With respect to the labor movement,~e Bovenkerk group showed that the:.mions had manifested little support for~oreign-born workers, and, in fact, seemto tavor their departure. In recommenda-ions concluding his study, Bovenkerk2.dvises that discrimination has to be~QUght through full enforcement of thenew anti-discrimination law, by givingmore attention to foreigners in theschools, and by sponsoring more neigh-borhood activities which foster positivecontacts between variant ethnic groups.And, most importantly, he urges that it bemade more widely known that there isracial discrimination in the Netherlands,since most Dutchmen seem not to beaware of it.A Black visitor to the Netherlands willfind that all of Bovenkerk's findings andconclusions are instructive. Perhapswhat is most striking is that most of theDutch are not ready to admit that racismis present in their society Since most ofthe recently-arrived ethnic minoritiestend to be concentrated in certain lo-cales, it is quite possible that in someareas there is still no racial conscious-ness-just as there are some Dutchmenwho never see a Black face except forZwarte Piet. It is not uncommon for aDutch child to shout to his parents andpoint upon seeing a Black person.The problem, it is worth noting, is partlybased on color. Although a wealthy soci-ety, the Netherlands has a chronic, acuteshortage of housing and Jobs. The equi-table distribution of these scarce essen- .tials, which is required by the country'ssocialistic system, has to be greatlycomplicated by the influx of what mostDutchmen view as outsiders. Resent-ment of the groups in question mightfollow regardless of their color.Ten years ago a Black American couldalmost certainly expect to receive morefavorable treatment after a Dutchmandiscovered that he was not a Surinamer.However, with the explosion in the num-ber of Blacks in Holland, such distinc-tions have become increasingly blurred;color alone has become more of a definit-ive factor, and racist thought seems to beovershadowing non-racist factors as thecause of friction.This pattern of development is all toofamiliar to Americans. It has also nowbecome pronounced in the homelandsof all the former European colonial pow-ers and in other European societies thatin the past have relied heavily upon 29foreign laborers for menial chores.The situation between the races in theNetherlands has not yet reached crisisproportions. Except for some Surinamerwomen's groups, the ethnic minoritiesare still divided among themselves. Inaddition to the diversions along nationalorigins, the Blacks and the Creole stillreflect the contours of the past slavesocieties to which they belonged.Unless the types of discriminationmentioned here are checked, theircommon plight may eventually forge theoppressed into a militant whole. DAllison Blakely, PhD, is an associate professor ofEuropean History and Comparative History atHoward UniversityREFERENCESBagley, Christopher The Dutch Plural Society Lon-don: Oxford University Press, 1973.Boxer, C. R.. The Dutch Seaborne Empire: 1600-1800. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1970.Jones, E. Willis. The Santa Claus Book. New York:Walker and Company, 1976.Nijkamp, W. Sint Nicolaas en Zwarte Piet inKleuterlandlSaint Nicholas and Black Peter inNurseryland/. Ijmuiden, 1967.Ruyter, Martin. "Verdraagzaamheid afgenomen"/Tolerance Declined/. de Volkskrant, 21 September1978."Surinamers klagen over razzia politie Amsterdam"ISurinamers Complain About Amsterdam PoliceRaid/. NRC Handelsblad, 26 October 1978."Tradition of Tolerance for Minorities is in Question,"International Herald-Tribune, 11 December 1978.Van Nierop, Henriette. Santa Claus the Dutch Way.New York: The Netherlands Information Service.1955.NEW DIRECTIONS JANUARY, 1980

Santa\u27s Black Aide
A Glimpse of Race
Relations in Holland

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Santa\u27s Black Aide A Glimpse of Race Relations in Holland

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