Can you please tell me Black Pete is awfull!

[drumstick diva]

agree

 

[Loopeend]

He's Santa's helper in the Netherlands. He's depicted as a silly, dopey, loopy little guy who happens to be black and he serves St Nick in his delivery of presents. He, not white St Nick, gets to go down the sooty chimney.

Instead of looking at it as racism, why don't people look at this as cultural diversity? In the US, Santa's helpers are all a bunch of really short white people....

I have no idea what black Pete is, aside from the OP's explanation, but don't see it as a bad thing at all.

Because black Pete's talks in a way we thought "dumb black slaves" talked. With an accent. U.S. knows that accent from blackface. We have an accent how we thought our Dutch speaking black slaves talked in the same way. Dumb. It has the same symantics. "me not know nuthing bout that master Im a dumb dumb".
We are often told they are black from the chimney; but we mixed that up with the German/pagan/folklore legend of a black devil that would enter throurgh the chimney. Which had nothing to do with Christinaity at ALL.
Instead of the holy saint nicolaus being a new character to this "black demon"; we; after a time of active slavery; thought it would be okay to replace that active devil with "dumb n-word slaves"; the chimny story was an excuse in later years, when people had their "mmmmmm's" since we did not really take any action in taking care of the slaves we created IRL; just left them in the U.S. and such and said "K, bye; we are finally done with slavery now, as last country in the world, good luck with our sugar-cane slaves we leave here on plantains! lol!!"; following a war in U.S... and we offcourse came off as really shady in the end in the 70's when we were still making fun of slaves..not taking any responsibillity or whatevs "cough, no they are black from the chimny they sure are no slaves!". Yeah sure bruh.

 

[ShannonR]

Because black Pete's talks in a way we thought "dumb black slaves" talked. With an accent. U.S. knows that accent from blackface. We have an accent how we thought our Dutch speaking black slaves talked in the same way. Dumb. It has the same symantics. "me not know nuthing bout that master Im a dumb dumb".
We are often told they are black from the chimney; but we mixed that up with the German/pagan/folklore legend of a black devil that would enter throurgh the chimney. Which had nothing to do with Christinaity at ALL.
Instead of the holy saint nicolaus being a new character to this "black demon"; we; after a time of active slavery; thought it would be okay to replace that active devil with "dumb n-word slaves"; the chimny story was an excuse in later years, when people had their "mmmmmm's" since we did not really take any action in taking care of the slaves we created IRL; just left them in the U.S. and such and said "K, bye; we are finally done with slavery now, as last country in the world, good luck with our sugar-cane slaves we leave here on plantains! lol!!"; following a war in U.S... and we offcourse came off as really shady in the end in the 70's when we were still making fun of slaves..not taking any responsibillity or whatevs "cough, no they are black from the chimny they sure are no slaves!". Yeah sure bruh.

Woah, ok.
Does your chicken coop need cleaning? Maybe a fresh coat of paint or some other maintenence? Something to get your mind off the subject at hand? This seems like a really trivial thing to get all upset about. Recreational outrage at its finest... I am positive there are more pressing matters in life.

 

[NewBoots]

I'm not black so not sure how important my opinion is, but I know that the Black Pete thing would have been stopped a long time ago if it had ever been a thing in the US. It's a matter of a joke "punching down", never a good idea.

 

[azygous]

The whole point of inventing Black Pete was to entertain white people with a black stereotype. It's exactly what minstrel shows were invented to do in the early 1900s, a small step removed from a trained animal act.

I grew up with these stereotypes and also grew up with black people at school. Even at age ten, kids were starting to segregate automatically, and I was starting then to get an inkling of how black people saw these "charming" stereotypes-as-entertainment completely opposite of us white kids. They didn't think the book "Little Black Sambo was terrific and they even recited the incantation when choosing which kid got to go first in jumprope, "enny-meeny-miny-mo, catch a ni**er by the toe" as "catch a tiger by the toe." I can see now it must have really offended them when we would recite it the first way.

No big deal to us with white skin when all the common white stereotypes are of heros and supermen and Snow White and Cinderella. If all the white stereotypes were of sloppy, ignorant, silly, or barbaric swamp dwellers, while the heros are all black, maybe it would be a big deal then.

 

[itsasmallfarm]

am going to be honest here.

while i don't get the whole story i am going to say, why change what is tradition? i mean as long as no one is hurt. and i mean physical hurt. i don't see a problem.

now am not racist but am really tired of people always playing the race card. why do i have to keep saying sorry for what people did 200 years ago?

the last thing i want to say is, are we all not the human race?

 

[TwoShepherds]

Well, it's not my culture, and I hate to insert myself into thorny issues, but this character seems quite inappropriate to me--far too similar to the minstrel shows and black face that is a sad part of American history. I like to think that I would take a stand for my faith, ethics, and beliefs. But I'm not sure why anyone would so strongly defend a fictional/mythical character that is (or can be construed as) mocking, perputrates negative stereotypes, seems to do more harm than good, and certainly is not necessary to the telling of the Christmas story.

 

[CapricornFarm]

I really am sad that 4 of my grandchildren don't believe in Santa because his mother believes it is lying. I think it's a fun tradition, and sorry that they don't get to enjoy it. I never heard of black Pete .

 

[ShannonR]

Well, it's not my culture, and I hate to insert myself into thorny issues, but this character seems quite inappropriate to me--far too similar to the minstrel shows and black face that is a sad part of American history. I like to think that I would take a stand for my faith, ethics, and beliefs. But I'm not sure why anyone would so strongly defend a fictional/mythical character that is (or can be construed as) mocking, perputrates negative stereotypes, seems to do more harm than good, and certainly is not necessary to the telling of the Christmas story.

Need to remember though-- we are only hearing what the OP has chosen to share about this black Pete, and they have painted this character in a very negative light for whatever reason.

Could be true, could be a far stretch of the truth, could be not nearly as bad as the OP is making it out to be. Unless you are a part of the culture there is no way of knowing.

 

[TwoShepherds]

I had to google the phrase as I was not familiar with Black Pete. I think there would be a lot of people who would be very upset were Black Pete to make an appearance in the U.S. I think as white people in 2019 we need to move past black-face representations due to their past connotations.