Racism and Beauty, Beauty and Racism

 
My first photograph today is of old Leiden. The seventeenth-century buildings in smaller towns are not as large as in Amsterdam, and this makes them even more charming. I can image Vermeer painting a woman inside one of these houses, the mild Dutch light falling across her face and the domestic interior.

Such moments make it easy to romanticize the Netherlands and to accept the widely touted idea that the country is a haven for "tolerance" (is that ever enough?).

But Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas) arrives on Sunday. He comes by boat along the canals in different cities, or even by coach. There is a grand parade with floats sponsored by various corporations, and Santa's assistants, who wear seventeenth-century style clothing, throw out candy or small gifts to the children. The most popular assistant for many years was Zwarte Piet, usually a white person in blackface. This tradition has been widely condemned in recent years and even banned in some places (for instance, Piet is not allowed to wear blackface in the Amsterdam parade).

The figure persists, however, and in troubling ways. Last year, I saw a group of adolescents in blackface singing to a crowd in Groningen. I couldn't help wondering what kind of parents would cheer as their children participated in an ugly racist ritual. Near Leeuwarden, a group of pro-Piet protesters blocked a highway in an effort to stop anti-Piet protesters; the former were arrested. However, their penalty is largely symbolic community service: https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/11/community-service-for-34-pro-piet-activists-who-blocked-motorway/
In Amsterdam, I noticed this window at the headquarters of a marketing company. They are the worst Piet images I've seen, invoking the stereotype of black people as monkeys and less than human (sorry the picture is so bad). The shop window is in the middle of the city, across from the main station. I also saw black Sambo dolls (remember them?) in another part of town.

I have always taken these last two lines of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats to be cynical and ironic, though they are most often understood to be a truism:
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
 Here in Amsterdam, I wonder what is lying behind beauty. Pun intended.


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