yes , here's a question for you DutchRed................................Will there be riots in Amsterdam this year over Zwarte Peit...its getting heated!!?
I don't think so.
Just to explain this phenomenon a bit because outsiders might find it a little odd.
Your Santa Claus tradition is based on the Dutch worship of our Sint Nicolaas(Saint Nicolas). It's the same idea, a big man with a big, white beard who pops up in December(albeit the 5th rather than the 25th) to give children the day of their years. This part of it is rather innocent.
The part that isn't innocent is, indeed, about Zwarte Piet(Black Pete). Sint Nicolaas is pretty much always accompanied by one or multiple Zwarte Pieten, who are, like you would expect, black. The official explanation is that they are black because they have to climb through the chimneys in order to deliver presents in houses. But that is obviously rubbish, more so because that doesn't explain their thick lips and Afro haircuts.
A saint assisted by a couple of black guys dressed like, you could say, idiots, obviously has more than a slight hint of colonial racism about it. Moreover because, until like 1960, he was made out to be a silly man who didn't talk properly. All of that never caused a fuss because, essentially, until the 1970s we didn't really have black people(or any people with non-Dutch origin, barring a slight amount of Indonesians) in the Dutch society anyway.
In and from 1975, lots of people from Suriname, a former Dutch colony with a huge amount of former slaves among them, came over here. So obviously you'd expect trouble for our lovely little tradition.
Amazingly: there wasn't. It worked two ways. Black Pete obviously remained black, but wasn't made out to be a stupid idiot anymore. To this day, he still is dressed like a slave though. Yet the kids from Suriname, Turkey, Morocco and all the countries from which people migrated to the Netherlands seem to love him. Basically we celebrated a rather racist party and everybody seemed to love it. Everybody just got along. So in the end we had a party that was racist from the outside, but it wasn't racist in spirit at all. Nobody ever protested against this so we had a rather bizarre party, but the times that blacks were looked upon as 'second-rate citizens' was long gone.
Now a couple of people are causing a huge fuss about the racism and a UN person has told the Dutch to stop celebrating this party because it's racist. Yet the overwhelming majority of the population(no matter which descent) still is in favour of upholding this tradition, so I don't see real, real trouble.
