Blackface traditions

[GeenDienst]

Video thing in the Graun today about opposition to "Zwarte Piet" (Black Pete), which involves blackface parading at this time of year in That There Netherlands. You could guess the competing teams, pretty much, in advance:

Supporters - gone on for generations, tradition, nothing to do with race. Black is from coming down the chimney.
Opponents - it's racist, feeds into general attitudes against black people, needs stopping.

Rutte, local PM, has spoken in support and said he takes part in it. Footage of local gammons wishing violence on protesters. Footage of police dealing out violence to protesters (one worrying choking scene).

Apparently there's a compromise on offer arising from increasing protests - some groups are doing "Chimney Pete" instead, with soot smears on their face instead of brown pancake makeup (i.e. still visibly white, but a bit sooty, as per recent chimney diving). The main anti-Black Pete protester appears to endorse this.

Round where I live there arose another thing where that compromise wouldn't work. Apparently, in ye oldene tymese locals would go busking for the odd extra groat, but this would cause them to lose their jobs if seen, so they blacked their faces. There's now a tradition of blackfaced morris dancers. The local folk festival stopped allowing them to perform there a year or two back, to similar howls of pc-gorn-mad-history-tradition-nothing-to-do-with-race as per above.

On a kind of technical level, both sets of shaded performers are right, in that the origins of their evening out are not embedded in racial politics per se. OTOH we're not where we were back then, and any blacking up reinforces old stereotypes and maybe helps to create new ones.

I distinctly remember siding with the folk festival as, in no particular order, (a) people had complained last year, (b) traditions are not inviolable in a changing society and (c) all morris dancing should be ruthlessly suppressed, because it's sh.t. Nobody seemed to care much about it.

I'm guessing there's not much support for it around here, and I'm happy to just let it go. Just for interest, is there an argument that the tradition element has any value? Are we losing something of any importance with the border tradition thing?

[geejaytee]

Ignore this - carry on.

[Woodchopper]

As mentioned in this article the 19th and 20th Century Zwarte Piet traditions do appear to be about stereotyping Africans rather than people who’ve been down a chimney.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news ... iet-dutch/

Seems to be a good idea to change though.

[GeenDienst]

Ignore this - carry on.

I saw it and it was interesting, and not contentious.

[geejaytee]

Ignore this - carry on.

I saw it and it was interesting, and not contentious.

Ok, I mentioned that NE Essex and SE Suffolk appeared to have a Black Peter tradition, which I linked to the area's long-standing close ties to the Netherlands, but it turns out it was imported by a Belgian priest about 15 years ago, so not really much of a tradition, particularly when the racist origins were pointed out to said priest, so it stopped a few years ago.

After writing the post, I read more about it and found out it was more recent than I claimed, and couldn't edit the post to make this clearer...

[GeenDienst]

OK, fair enough.

I've also read that the border thing became much more popular at the time of minstrelling. But only old farts like me are old enough to remember that now, and the current practitioners seem to be looking back before that to the incognito begging.

[dyqik]

There's a related issue with Bonfire in Lewes. Bonfire societies would dress as smugglers, including blacked faces (which was done by smugglers as camouflage at night). The dressing up came out of disguises from when the Bonfire celebrations were illegal and the riot act read to disperse them.

I think the various societies have mostly just dropped the blacked faces, along with much of the native American dress (from historical associations with supporting native Americans against white settlers), as they aren't particularly important. But I haven't been to Lewes for Bonfire for about 10 years.

Some of the Sussex village societies haven't been as quick with avoiding unnecessary offence.

[El Pollo Diablo]

Back where I'm from, except about 4 miles towards the inbred, there's a Morris society who dress up in black face called the coconutters. It's a mining thing. There isn't really much of a history of black presence there, so I'd be surprised if it came from that. But, yeah, it's a weird old thing. I can see why people today would feel uncomfortable with it, but amongst certainly older people there is a sense of "hmmph" that I can understand from those who feel they're having to change despite there not being any direct link with actual racism, even if the expression is pretty much indistinguishable. It can carry a sense of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. So there's a sense of conflict there.

[Pucksoppet]

Other traditions are the Rebecca Riots and Ceffyl Pren Welsh mob 'justice', both of which had participants that used blackface as a form of disguise. I am not aware that there were any racial connotations in either, but I could be wrong.

These days, wearing blackface in public is probably 'behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace', and therefore arrestable conduct. While it may have been acceptable in the past, social attitudes have changed, so while the wearer may protest they had no racist intent, that's actually irrelevant as the Equality Act 2010 includes as Harrassment behaviour that was not meant to cause offence but the victim regards as harrassment. As I understand it, the test is how the victim perceives it, not the intent of the harrasser.

[greyspoke]

There's a related issue with Bonfire in Lewes. Bonfire societies would dress as smugglers, including blacked faces (which was done by smugglers as camouflage at night). The dressing up came out of disguises from when the Bonfire celebrations were illegal and the riot act read to disperse them.

I think the various societies have mostly just dropped the blacked faces, along with much of the native American dress (from historical associations with supporting native Americans against white settlers), as they aren't particularly important. But I haven't been to Lewes for Bonfire for about 10 years.

Some of the Sussex village societies haven't been as quick with avoiding unnecessary offence.

As opposed to the offence to catholics, which is necessary?

[dyqik]

Necessary and traditional.

Burning people at the stake isn't nice, after all.

And to be fair, when Ian Paisley tried to whip up anti-Catholicism in the town outside of Bonfire, they blew him up in effigy as well.

[Vertigowooyay]

Necessary and traditional.

Burning people at the stake isn't nice, after all.

And to be fair, when Ian Paisley tried to whip up anti-Catholicism in the town outside of Bonfire, they blew him up in effigy as well.

The one year I went there were banners saying NO PAPERY and while they didn't burn an effigy of the Pope, they did burn a mocked-up travellers van. So really, f.ck Lewes.

[GeenDienst]

NO PAPERY

Yes, its all tablets and ebooks now.

[username]

Other traditions are the Rebecca Riots and Ceffyl Pren Welsh mob 'justice', both of which had participants that used blackface as a form of disguise. I am not aware that there were any racial connotations in either, but I could be wrong.

These days, wearing blackface in public is probably 'behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace', and therefore arrestable conduct. While it may have been acceptable in the past, social attitudes have changed, so while the wearer may protest they had no racist intent, that's actually irrelevant as the Equality Act 2010 includes as Harrassment behaviour that was not meant to cause offence but the victim regards as harrassment. As I understand it, the test is how the victim perceives it, not the intent of the harrasser.

I'm not certain, but istr that it's both subjective (perception of the person feeling harassed etc) and objective (a reasonable reaction). I also thought it was a consolidation of (mostly) employment law rather than people wandering the streets, but idk for sure).

Might still be breach of the peace though, even if that's not a crime.

[Gfamily]

Other traditions are the Rebecca Riots and Ceffyl Pren Welsh mob 'justice', both of which had participants that used blackface as a form of disguise. I am not aware that there were any racial connotations in either, but I could be wrong.

These days, wearing blackface in public is probably 'behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace', and therefore arrestable conduct. While it may have been acceptable in the past, social attitudes have changed, so while the wearer may protest they had no racist intent, that's actually irrelevant as the Equality Act 2010 includes as Harrassment behaviour that was not meant to cause offence but the victim regards as harrassment. As I understand it, the test is how the victim perceives it, not the intent of the harrasser.

I'm not certain, but istr that it's both subjective (perception of the person feeling harassed etc) and objective (a reasonable reaction). I also thought it was a consolidation of (mostly) employment law rather than people wandering the streets, but idk for sure).

Might still be breach of the peace though, even if that's not a crime.

Another reason that it might not count as harrassment is that that requires the action to be done repeatedly.

[Martin_B]

if the blackface is a traditional thing to avoid identification, you could suggest that they wear another colour face (probably not yellow, and red may be considered racist in America, or possibly the Costa Del Sol), eg, blue or green?

if they complain that the traditional identification avoidance is black, then there's not much you can do, but at least it would present an alternative where they can dress up in a continuation of their tradition without causing too much offense.

The beer festival in Farnham used to have a group who turned up calling themselves the 'Alternative Morris Men', and dressed in blue and yellow with black faces and top hats rather than normal Morris Men whites. They were far better at dancing and entertaining the crowd than any Morris troop. I think they stopped a few years ago though, knowing that it was a bit near the bone.

[dyqik]

if the blackface is a traditional thing to avoid identification, you could suggest that they wear another colour face (probably not yellow, and red may be considered racist in America, or possibly the Costa Del Sol), eg, blue or green?

For the smugglers mentioned above, the original aim was to avoid showing up in the dark, rather than disguise. But the modern usage is so far removed from that that it doesn't matter.

[Martin_B]

if the blackface is a traditional thing to avoid identification, you could suggest that they wear another colour face (probably not yellow, and red may be considered racist in America, or possibly the Costa Del Sol), eg, blue or green?

For the smugglers mentioned above, the original aim was to avoid showing up in the dark, rather than disguise. But the modern usage is so far removed from that that it doesn't matter.

True, and I fear that if this was put to those who continue to black-up, they either claim that going green was someone trying to instil an ecological agenda, or that going blue would put them at risk of being sued by James Cameron (or worse, the smurfs!) If you like blacking up, I suspect that you'll also try very hard to avoid any change to 'the tradition'.

[GeenDienst]

They were Slugs are far better at dancing and entertaining the crowd than any Morris troop.

Minor modification.

[GeenDienst]

Thinking about the smugglers, some smears of the nighttime camo stuff soldiers use would give the idea, without going the whole way, basically the Chimney Pete solution, and would probably work for all of them, well enough. If acceptable to people who find full blackfacing unacceptable, of course.

Self identified purists (whether or not hiding other motivations) wouldn't have much of a leg to stand on, as nobody knows what these people really looked like back in 16whatever. Trouble is, those people would go the whole way just to cause confrontation and back to square zero.

[Bird on a Fire]

With Zwarte Piet, the claims that it's all just innocent chimney soot don't explain the huge bright red lips, which make it very obviously a racist trope. Nothing up a chimney will do that.

I've also seen Morris dancers in blackface and was very confused by it. I second the suggestion that night-time soldier camo would stick with most of the tradition without looking racist. Unless they also try to disguise their lips bright red, of course.

[mediocrity511]

Isn't their some suggestion that Morris dancing comes from Moorish dancing, from the Spanish Moors? And so it might have actually been literal blackface that Morris troops were doing originally.

[tom p]

Video thing in the Graun today about opposition to "Zwarte Piet" (Black Pete), which involves blackface parading at this time of year in That There Netherlands. You could guess the competing teams, pretty much, in advance:

Supporters - gone on for generations, tradition, nothing to do with race. Black is from coming down the chimney.
Opponents - it's racist, feeds into general attitudes against black people, needs stopping.

Rutte, local PM, has spoken in support and said he takes part in it. Footage of local gammons wishing violence on protesters. Footage of police dealing out violence to protesters (one worrying choking scene).

Apparently there's a compromise on offer arising from increasing protests - some groups are doing "Chimney Pete" instead, with soot smears on their face instead of brown pancake makeup (i.e. still visibly white, but a bit sooty, as per recent chimney diving). The main anti-Black Pete protester appears to endorse this.
...
On a kind of technical level, both sets of shaded performers are right, in that the origins of their evening out are not embedded in racial politics per se. OTOH we're not where we were back then, and any blacking up reinforces old stereotypes and maybe helps to create new ones.

As a number of you know, I have recently had to move from that London to the Netherlands, with my wife and young kids, so zwart piet is very much a live issue for us. It's also a live issue for many in the Netherlands, and a number of Sinterklaas entries* last year had significant protests. Support for Piet being zwart has fallen from 96% in 1998 to 68% last year; but that's still clearly a massive majority, so it's no surprise Rutte said he was in favour. I bet if it had fallen a further 19% he'd change his mind.

This year in my city there were hundreds of fly-posters put up by pro-zwart piet racists. The bloke in the picture is an anti-zwart-piet campaigner who they photoshopped. There were demonstrations against zwart piet, but these were kept away from the route of the parade* & the harbour where he arrived had a load of police riot vans round the back end of it in case of trouble.

Zwart piet actually only goes back to the 1850s; whereas celebrating sinterklaas's name day (6th December - he's the patron saint of seafarers, so beloved by the Dutch for obvious reasons) goes back to the 13th Century. Zwart piet originates from a book published in 1859 in which all the current inconography (boat, horse, piet) was established (although I think he was only called Zwart Piet from 1895 - before he was just the (?nameless) servant) and he's very clearly an African slave/servant. He's foolish and subservient, the zwart pieten you would see nowadays have big red lips, curly hair and a gold earring & just look and act like a victorian racist carricature of a negro (to appropriately use the language of the time). The soot thing is b.llsh.t, but it's a convenient lie so those Dutch people who didn't mean anything racist can just leave off the lippy & reduce the amount of blacking-up and claim it's soot and everyone gets along nicely (typical Dutch compromise).

When we went to see the entry & parade, i'd say it was about 1/3 to 1/2 of the Pieten who were zwart. the others were either sooty or just the piet's natural skin tone. It was f.cking jarring and weird seeing them, and also little kids, most of whom were dressed up in a piet costume, in blackface (most kids weren't in blackface, thank f.ck - only a minority, maybe 1 in 10 or so - plenty of 'soot' though).

A dutch documentarian (and anti zwart piet campaigner) made a very interesting documentary about it. There's a version in English available here. It lasts an hour, but it's worth watching. Especially enjoyable is the part where she shows how other countries find it totally unacceptable by coming to London & dressing up as zwart piet & hanging out in (if memory serves) Victoria Park in Tower Hamlets (for those who are unaware, Tower Hamlets is a very multicultural borough, with a very large Indian subcontinent & Black (mostly 2nd/3rd gen Caribbean) population).

*he enters various cities by steam boat with his Pieten**, then gets on his white horse & rides through town, accompanied by pieten & some blokes who look like the swiss guards in the vatican. It's a f.cking big deal & the dutch equivalent of BBC has a 15 minute show every night for about 2 weeks called Sinterklaas Jounaal, in the style of a news programme all about what the Sint & the Pieten have been up to. There's always something up - some story arc of a calamity which might stop Sinterklaas coming, but in hte end he & the Pieten pull through and manage to deliver all the presents to the good girls & boys.

**-en is the Dutch standard plural form

[jaap]

Another tradition here in the Netherlands at Sinterklaas is getting a chocolate letter, i.e. a large chunk of chocolate in the shape of the first letter of your name. I got one at work today from my manager. It is a good quality one, so of course it has a very traditional decoration on it:

IMG_0054.JPG (65.34 KiB) Viewed 4751 times

[tom p]

We got the girls Tony's chocolonely ones. Unsurprisingly, there was no racist depictions on them.

I must say, it's also really weird seeing these zwartpiet golliwog style dolls everywhere and one shop even has a balloon decoration of sinterklaas and zwartpiet, each one a 6ft head made of scores of balloons, and the piet one looking like something from the 1870s, let alone the 1970s.