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Why blackface is still part of Dutch holidays - YouTube - 0 views

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    Dutch holidays consisted not only of the fun festivities of St. Nicholas Day, but also a relatively recent new character called Black Pete, traditionally a slave to St. Nicholas and a racist caricature often played by white Dutchmen from the Dutch colonial days. Many arguments have been made for the keeping of Black Pete as a part of the celebration including that black Dutchmen were okay with it (many were not and found it offensive and insignificant enough to be removed from celebrations), that the coloring was not meant to represent skin tone but soot from climbing around in chimneys (which was also not historically true as the author wrote him as a slave from Spain who helps St. Nicholas), that children enjoyed it too much to remove it (as one woman said in the video, Black Pete often scared children because of his stories of hitting or kidnapping naughty children). Black Pete was meant to be removed from celebrations and replaced with an adapted version, Chimney Pete, who is a white Dutchman not in full blackface but with smudges of soot to actually go with the story people have been trying to use to justify its continued use in holiday celebrations after a poll found black children were actually being discriminated against by their peers for looking like Black Pete
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