My Lion King Forum

Jumping on an old post; I've never heard of this tradition or the Black Petes in particular, though I can definitely see why people would at least interpret it as blackface and racist. I don't know, if I as a black person am going to get mad at the Dutch it'll be more for their involvement in the slave trade and its imperialistic period, particularly regarding South Africa and what became Apartheid.

I am dutch. lemme explain why black petes ARENT racist.
Black petes are the helpers of Saint Nicolas (sint nikolaas or sinterklaas in dutch)
Back in the day, when slavery was common, this bearded dude decided to free the child slaves.
He took these kids under his care and let them work for him and provided them with a home, care and food.
(providing payed work for kids was a good thing in those days, nowaydays we would discuss child labour)
So, with these freeed kids he took care of, his name grew into holyness.
And the festivities celebrated every december the 5th yearly contains singing, giving presents and having certain treats called "pepernoten" (pepper nuts if you literally translate it)
The story we tell our children for over generations is this: Sint Nicolas and his Black Petes (that represent FREE-d slaves) come with a steam boat from Spain to Holland every year, to celebrate St Nicolas birthday. By giving all children presents and joy.

So this bearded guy has NO black slaves (that would be incredibly racist and sexually harassing) but he FREE'd them from slavery.

^ Amen. Everyone who whines about something as irrelevant to the world like this is for my part just a lower life form.