JUSTICE IS AN ANGRY BLACK MAN

Tradition is mighty fine.

It is traditional that every year on the Surinam Mailing List there is a screaming match of monumental proportions regarding the issue of Black Pete.

[The Surinam Mailing List is for people who have any interest in Surinam (formerly Dutch Guiana), many of whom are from there, or have some connection to the place and the people.]


Usually World War Three starts on the list right about now, and continues all the way through to Nittel Night. The rhetorical bombing runs and hate-mail missiles take out enemy cities, verbal napalm denudes entire provinces. The injured stumble from the battlefield of dialectic with wounds all bleeding and puss-y gangrenous, the mute cadavers of those who fell in word-war are spitefully carved up and mutilated. The hoarse rasping gasp of Shma-Yisroel or Our Fadder by a dying disputant can faintly be heard.
All of this entirely in a flood of furious letters, of course. A metaphor.


Stop scratching your head, I shall explain.


It relates to a fictionalized holy man (Sinterklaas, Saint Nicholas) whose holiday is celebrated in the Dutch-speaking part of the world on December 6th. or on the evening beforehand (Sinterklaas avond - Saint Nicholas eve, December 5th.).
In the middle of the night the fictionalized gentleman squeezes his portly middle-aged self down narrow chimneys to give presents and candies to good children, coal to mediocre children, and drag the truly awful ones back to Spain with him when he leaves.

Formerly the bishop of Smyrna, a millennium ago he retired to the Costa Del Sol - the European equivalent of Miami. Once a year he comes out of retirement, puts on his glad-rags, gets on his silver-grey horse, and goes to the Netherlands for a month.
For the children. Candies. Peppernuts. Marzipan. Playstations and Nike.


However, if you've been a particularly nasty little brat, you get something unpleasant instead.

A savage beating by six to eight black men.

You see, part of the story is that 'Sinterklaas' is accompanied by six to eight big butch black men wearing the type of poncy frou-frou costumes you've seen in Italian paintings. Individually and collectively they are called "Zwarte Piet" (Black Pete). They have no actual identities of their own, no individual names, they do not get to ride horses. They are mere retinue. And they are goon. They are not the sweet and gentle type of black man with which you are familiar.

A bad child will get fiercely birched within an inch of his life by one or more of these gentlemen, then dumped into a gunny-sack and dragged off to Spain, never to be seen again.


Traditionally, the six to eight big butch black men are impersonated by one to three white people (often young ladies), with crudely applied black-facepaint, wearing whatever gaudy big butch drag they find in the rag heap. They utter nasty foreign sounding boogabooga grunts and pidgin Dutch threats to scare the crap outta the little kids - especially the ones who haven't spent the previous month acting all goody two shoes, kissing up, singing cutesy songs about how happy they are to await the coming of the Saint (and his six to eight big butch black men), and dutifully putting out cookies for the Saint every night, and a carrot for his horse (but nothing for the retinue). They occasionally chase a brat, do a handstand or a cartwheel, or act colourful in some way.

Many Dutch people have not grasped the racism of this yet, as they remember the joy of the season that they felt as children, getting candies, toys, cake, marzipan, chocolate letters. And as adults, they want to recapture that joy, and pass it on to their kids. Fear, trauma, bribery, and payola - all combined into a cheery feast.

White folks in blackface.


You can no doubt understand why Surinamers in the Netherlands are "ambivalent" about this.

Yearly there is much venting about it on the list.

It is therefore with bated breath that I await the start of battle. All is quiet at the moment. But this cannot endure. Huge buckets of hate, of puss, of venom, are intrinsically part of the holiday tradition. And we must respect tradition.

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About the title of this post:
Justice is usually pictured as a blind white woman, scantily dressed, holding a pan-scale. Absurd! Justice is not blind or white - Justice is actually a large black man, holding a bunch of birches. And boy, is he angry.

David Sedaris said so.


See: Live at Carnegie Hall.

Or rather, listen.