Dutch Sinterklaas Tradition: Blackface is not innocent

Dutch Sinterklaas Tradition: Blackface is not innocent

On the 13th of November, I, Kno’Ledge Cesare, & Quinsy Gario (poet, film maker) took our campaign against the racist element Zwarte Piet in Dutch national holiday Sinterklaas (Saint Nicolas) to Dordrecht. Dordrecht, a little over an hour from Amsterdam, was the national televised arrival of the Saint Nicolas and his Zwarte Piet’. Zwarte Piet’s are white people with black face reliving minstrel shows during our winter holiday annually. They are called the servants of Saint Nicolas, a white wise man sitting on a white horse. We both worn a shirt reading ‘Zwarte Piet is Racisme’. Our presence was met with police brutality as the World could see it on YouTube.

So this is where we are. We are faced a nation that deemed herself to be perfect and refuses to grow. She refuses to look at herself for improvement because she can neither do wrong nor go wrong. The whole world is looking at her and shakes her head in disbelief, but she dismisses what others think of her and continue to believe in a false morality. She believes she’s not racist and therefore she cannot commit an act of racism. I think there’s a terrible flaw in her personality and her only hope is for her to look in the mirror and take responsibility for her actions. The later she deals with this the lethal the consequences of her ignorance become.

We have live inside this house for far too long without caring for it, now I see a crack in the ceiling. We have taken part in this travesty and no one said `hold on a minute`, now I see the veil of innocence, slowly fallen. We cannot let our house fall and neither can we let this charade carry on. We need a change between these walls.