Black Pete exposes the Netherlands’ problem with race
White people dressing up as fools with black faces is not the harmless Christmas fun that the Dutch make it out to be
▻http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/05/black-pete-race-netherlands
As I hinted in the first paragraph, Zwarte Piet is not the only sign that the Dutch have a problem with race. Dutch society also has more subtle ways of reminding black people of their place and keeping them there. If you spend any time in the Netherlands, you will soon hear the words “allochtoon” used in polite conversation.
People of “non-western” descent are labeled “allochtoon”, not only by the white society, but also by law. “Allochtoon” is based on a Greek word, “allokhthon”, and means “found in a place other than where they were formed”. But no non-Dutch white person living in the Netherlands is referred to as allochtoon, only non-white people, Dutch and otherwise.
Yet a fifth of the Dutch population consists of people of colour. This includes people from former colonies such as Indonesia and Surinam, but also people whose roots lay in Morocco and Turkey. Since the 1980s, there has also been a steady stream of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa to the Netherlands. Some of them are now grandparents, with kids and grandkids who consider the Netherlands home (or try to, at any rate). All of these people are “allochtoon”.
In this context, one can start to understand why the unemployment rate of non-white Dutch people (at 15% in the first quarter of 2012) is two-and-a-half times higher than the Dutch average.
