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chirasul posted:
my only advice is to BE CAREFUL posting about holiday traditions around europeans. you’ll post something casual like “anyone else watch the old Grinch movie every year? what a classic” and a european will appear as if summoned and say some shit like “funny how USAmericans always CONVENIENTLY forget that Not Everyone On Earth is from The USA……… no of COURSE we dont watch ‘the grunch’ or whatever the fuck that is…. our tradition is to attend a community showing of Glummdorf the Racial Stereotype”
themainspoon replies with screenshots of several tumblr tags and comments:
riseupriseupandcomealong:
my mom’s (american) class tried doing a language exchange thing w a sister school in spain and they decided to send each other boxes of gifts for christmas. the spanish class made remarks about oh christmas in the usa is so commercialized we have ~real traditions~ here and then my mom opened a box full of blackface dolls and blackface doll ornaments and blackface clothespins in front of her students
raygender:
Did once have a Dutch woman
vehemently defend the Festive Christmas Blackface by repeating "it’s different in Europe” with increasing desperation until she was crying. Literally all anybody else present did was just like, calmly say they were uncomfortable with the practice and not change her mind when she wailed about it.
monkey-mulch:
you bring up rudolph the red nosed reindeer and they bring out Skimbo the filthy redskin and im barely even joking about that they actually had this thing called indian plays in both soviet countries and germany
themainspoon:
European children waiting patiently on Hatemas Eve for Racism Claus to slur down the chimney and segregate all of their presents by colour.
Most people in the Netherlands are now also opposed to having blackface during Sinterklaas. However, there is a significant group that feel that their identity is threathed if you criticize their tradition. They are not the smartest people in our country (to say it lightly) and they express this opinion by doing stuff like that. Fortunately, they are a minority now and zwarte Piet does not look like that anymore.
It is a bit strange to have grown up in the Netherlands with zwarte Piet. As a child, I really liked him because I believed that he brought me presents. I wrote him and Sinterklaas letters and I have a lot of drawings of zwarte Piet that I made as a child. I did draw him like a stereotypical black person, because that was what he looked like at the time. As a child I did not know any better and I just liked zwarte Piet. But now when I look back at it I feel ashamed.
When I found out the issues with zwarte Piet, I stopped including him in the celebrations as a black person. I also had discussions with friends and family members about this. This sometimes lead to a lot of anger. I think they felt like their innocent and happy memories of zwarte Piet they had as a child were tarnished and they were accused of being racist. That was difficult for a while. Currently, all people in my direct environment do not celebrate Sinterklaas anymore with zwarte Piet as a black person. If I ask them why they were angey before about it, they just tell me that I wanted to change things too fast and they felt accused.
Thanks for your personal anecdote, there is always a bit of a disconnect between what is reported on media and how things are actually looking on ground. But glad to hear things have changed much over there.