DEBATING ZWARTE PIET ONLINE

An Exploration of the Zwarte Piet Debate on Twitter

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“Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned,
Until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes,
Until the basic human rights are guaranteed to all, without regard to race, […]
Until all Africans stand and speak as free beings, equal in the eyes of all men, as they are in the eyes of Heaven,
Until that day, the African continent will not know peace.”

Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, General Assembly, 1963

Full Speech Available Here

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HOW IT GOT STARTED

We are two students in the MA African Studies at Leiden University. As part of the course "Language and Communication in Africa", we decided to dedicate this website to the exploration of the debate on Zwarte Piet that has recently been re-activited on Twitter in 2019.

With this blog, we aim at identifying trends in the way Zwarte Piet is portrayed and debated online and at presenting how social media can contribute to the decolonization of such a tradition. We want to shine light on the ways the online and physical world are fundamentally intertwined.

Lastly, and most importantly, we intend at participating to the wider discussion on the skewed representation of Africa and Africans in Western culture and media. Zwarte Piet is a racist caricature which ought to be questioned.

Welcome to our blog - Enjoy our writing - Keep the debate going.

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AnissaSdm

Nov 23, 20191 min read

#8 Readings to go Beyond

Updated: Dec 6, 2019

Here we want to offer our readers with a set of interesting material available online that were used to support our analyses and that constitute a good start to formalize an informed opinion on the Zwarte Piet tradition and the decolonization debate in general. Enjoy.

Some light reading

Izalina Tavares, "Black Pete: Analyzing a Racialized Dutch Tradition Through the History of Western Creations of Stereotypes of Black Peoples", Humanity in Action, 2004.

https://www.humanityinaction.org/knowledge_detail/black-pete-analyzing-a-racialized-dutch-tradition-through-the-history-of-western-creations-of-stereotypes-of-black-peoples/?lang=fr

Becky Little, "This notorious Christmas character is dividing a country", National Geographic, 2018.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/12/black-pete-christmas-zwarte-piet-dutch/

Antoine Allen, "Antoine Speaks to Black Pete"

https://www.antoinespeaks.co.uk/black-face-why-do-the-dutch-do-it-every-year-neo-nazi-racists-thugs-bullied-black-children-heated-protests-antoine-speaks-to-black-pete/antoinea/

A few informative and entertaining videos