Black Pete centre of Dutch controversy at Saint Nick celebrations

2014/11/19 Leave a comment

The annual controversy over Black Pete.

Predictable. Just because something is a tradition doesn’t mean it should continue – just get rid of the blackface and imagery:

Black Pete has evolved over the years. A quarter century ago, Black Pete was a scary character, carrying a big bag to hold naughty children and a whip to punish the disobedient. Promoting him in recent years as a happy-go-lucky sidekick full of quirky madness has helped him to compete in popularity with Saint Nicholas himself.

“The last few years, Pete is at least as popular. Kids cling to him, ask him questions, hold his hand,” said Raf Rumes, the secretary of the Flanders Saint Nicholas Guild.

In another new touch, almost half of the Petes greeting children in this towns Saint Nicholas “mansion” — a yearly holiday attraction — are played by women. At the fun house, which reopened this week for a month-long run, children squealed as female Petes showed them Saint Nicholas’ dining room and sleeping quarters for all of the Petes.

But efforts at softening Petes image have failed to subdue bad blood between the pro- and anti-Black Pete camps in the Netherlands, where resentments over immigration have simmered for years. Liberals want to abolish the tradition, while the right-wing firebrand Geert Wilders and his anti-immigration Freedom Party have proposed legislation that would keep Pete black — by law.

“There is a war underway against Black Pete,” said Martin Bosma, the party’s culture spokesman.

Last year, more than two million people endorsed a Facebook petition to keep Black Petes image unchanged. That’s nearly one-eighth of the entire Dutch population, indicating the depth of emotion over the issue.

But Van Bellingen insists democracy is not about numbers alone.”It is about the will of the majority and the rights of the minority,” he said. “As a majority you have to be sensitive and show empathy for things that are hurtful to a minority.”

He says its time to get rid of Black Pete.

Black Pete centre of Dutch controversy at Saint Nick celebrations – World – CBC News.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Dutch foreign minister praises Canada as an ‘immigrant society’

2014/05/08 Leave a comment

Nice reminder by the Dutch that despite the various controversies that emerge from time-to-time, Canada largely has it right in terms of immigration, integration and multiculturalism. European history and patterns of immigration (guest workers, often from former colonies) are vastly different to immigrant-based societies like Canada, Australia and the US, which encourage full participation and becoming citizens:

“I think it is mind-boggling that a huge nation like Canada, with all its diversities, with so many recent immigrants from all parts of the world, with all their different cultures, can maintain this level of social tranquility and integration of difference, acceptance of difference in this society,” Mr. Timmermans told a crowd at a Dutch Embassy and Centre for International Governance Innovation breakfast event at the Rideau Club on May 2.  …

“Still I think Canada has a lot to teach us on this front because we have begun to doubt whether our societies can handle diversity, and diversity has been attacked especially by the extreme right,” he said.

He said there’s been the re-emergence of an old notion in Europe of finding someone else to put the blame on.

“The second step always becomes slowly and gradually dehumanizing that group so that at some point it becomes acceptable to say that they should leave society,” he said.

“We in the Netherlands have reached that point that a politician says we could do with less people of a certain ethnicity in Dutch society.”

“I would have never thought this possible, but it happened,” he said.

Dutch foreign minister praises Canada as an ‘immigrant society’ | Embassy – Canada’s Foreign Policy Newspaper.

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

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