Black Pit Doesn't Have To Be Described As Black

 How did the Black Pit character and all its controversy begin?

One of the earliest archives of him can be found in the 1850 children's book Sint Nikolaas en zijn knecht 'Saint Nicholas and his assistant' by former schoolteacher Jan Schenkman. This unnamed character is simply called a “helper” who accompanies Sinterklaas activities with the children. His outfit was white with a model resembling a sailor's suit, instead of today's caricature-looking Pit costume.

Launching the website of the National Library of the Netherlands, Schenkman said this additional character is a boy whose physical appearance resembles the Moors—a term used to describe Muslims in Africa or dark-skinned people in general. Izalina Tavares in her research entitled Black Pete: Analyzing a Racialized Dutch Tradition Through the History of Western Creations of Stereotypes of Black Peoples (2004) describes several views on the origin of the Black Pit.

Some say the character was inspired by Moorish paintings dating back to the 17th century. There are also those who suspect that he is Piter, a slave from Ethiopia who is said to have been bought and freed by St. Nicholas. Tavares found that the "black" elements of the Black Pit only emerged after the Dutch became involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which lasted from the 17th to the mid-19th century.

He also discovered that the name "Zwarte Pit" had only been in children's story books since 1891almost three decades after the Dutch ended the practice of slavery. According to Tavares, the Black Pit has no autonomy. Instead of having an equal relationship, Sinterklaas is more accurately called the boss or the owner of the Black Pit. It was Sinterklaas who ordered Black Pit to hold the name notebook and bring him his wand. While Sinterklaas sat in the chair, the Black Pit was always standing. It was also the Black Pit who brought the burlap sacks filled with gifts—which of course were heavy—and brought the whip (until the lead up to World War II, the Black Pit did have a tough image because its duties included punishing naughty children by whipping them or putting them in sacks to carry to Spain.
Over time, the character turns into a silly, stupid, childlike clown.

Some are racist like the examples above, some are the opposite. De Volksrant noted that housewife Riet Grünbauer was among the first to dare to question the Black Pit. On December 7, 1968, in an article in Panorama magazine, Grünbauer argued that Pit's character should not be portrayed as black. The goal was for Dutch children to “no longer have fun at the expense of other races.” “While Negroes around the world are improving their image, while slavery was abolished more than a century ago, we are still confronted with the old tradition of presenting Negroes as slaves,” wrote Grünbauer. Grünbauer also wrote to the DPR and telephoned the national news agencies. But suddenly Grünbauer stopped, perhaps because he was tired of being threatened by those who were disturbed by his criticisms.

According to Przekrój magazine, the critique of the Black Pit was again voiced by the Dutch actress from Suriname, Gerda Havertong, in the early 1980s. When appearing on the Dutch version of the educational program "Sesame Street", Havertong rebuked Big Bird's character for calling him Pit Hitam. Havertong then explained that the name had insulted and offended many people in the Netherlands, both children and adults. Efforts to Eliminate the Black Pit Dutch society considers racism a taboo subject, as they claim to be a tolerant, open, and egalitarian nation. So, in order to spark public discussion about racism in the character of the Black Pit, the Dutch Antilles artist Quinsy Gario launched a project titled “Zwarte Pit Is Racism—the Black Pit is Racism” in 2011.

At that time Gario and rapper Jerry Afriyie wore T-shirts that read "Zwarte Pit Is Racism" while delivering an anti-Black Pit protest at the Sinterklaas celebration in Dordrecht. Not long after, they were both detained by the police—later the Dutch Ombudsman judged the detention to have violated the law and human rights. In 2014, the Kick Out Zwarte Pit (KOZP) campaign group was founded. Launching its official website, this movement demands that the Dutch government and society remove the Pit Hitam character from the celebration of Sinterklaas Day. They also wanted the Netherlands to recognize its colonial past, including the slavery case.

Since then, anti-Black Pit demonstrations have exploded and not all ended well. Demonstrators were detained by police several times. In 2014, 90 people were arrested while protesting the Sinterklaas parade in the city of Gouda. They were judged to have caused chaos and protested not at the designated location, although they were eventually released after each paying a fine of 200 euros. s incident a similar incident repeated itself in Rotterdam in 2016. A total of 198 people were detained even before the protests took place. Their activism has also been met with opposition from fellow citizens, especially right-wing groups including the anti-Islam organization Pegida. The two of them sometimes get into fights. In 2018 in Eindhoven, for example, as many as 250 pro-Black Pit groups and football hooligans pelted a handful of anti-Black Pit activists with eggs and beer cans. Meanwhile in Zaandijk, although the Sinterklaas celebrations went well, several people were present who unfurled the flags of the Neo-Nazi movement.

This activism slowly paid off. The local government that organizes the Sinterklaas festival has begun to abolish the tradition of blackening the faces of people who play the role of the Black Pit. The city government of Amsterdam has even replaced the Pit Hitam character with a more realistic character, RoetPit 'The Chimney Pit' since 2016. Instead of blackening the entire face until its true form is unrecognizable, the white Pit actor just needs to lightly dust his face with ash dust. The television station RTL, which has been broadcasting a series of short films about Sinterklaas, has also started showing the character Pit without black make-up.

Books in the library that featured pictures of the Black Pit were also removed. It is also undeniable that the wave of Black Lives Matter that has swept the world from the United States since 2020 has further enlivened discussions about racism in the Netherlands and put pressure on the authorities that a situation that seems natural is actually problematic and must be changed. Last year, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte acknowledged that his views on the Black Pit had changed. He admitted that he used to belong to a group that thought “Black Pit is already black from the start,” and even blackened his entire face when he played the character in 2014. At the same time, Rutte did not deny that “systemic racism” was a problem in his country.

Other info about the Black Pit protest action has been uploaded by @Kronika here.

Source: tirto.id - Social Culture