Politically Incorrect

I recently read My 'Dam Life: Three Years in Holland, by Sean Condon. As a transplant to the Netherlands, I thought it would be fun to read a humorous memoir about another transplant's experiences. The book is sporadically funny, albeit poorly written. How can anyone who calls himself a writer not know the grammatically correct usage of the words "I" and "me?" Equally baffling, apparently neither the editor nor the publisher know, either. A sad comment on publishing today (that and the fact that hardly anybody's published my largely grammatically-correct writing).


In most cases, I'd never have made it past about the third misuse of "I" as the object in a sentence. Nope, that would've been it for the damn book. But since I'd been trying to get a handle on the whole idea of living here permanently, I was motivated to soldier on past the grammatical violence. Condon shares some interesting perspectives on various aspects of Dutch life and culture. For example, I love his take on Sinterklaas traditions. But first, a little background.


Sinterklaas, or Saint Nicholas, was a bishop famous, among other things, for gift-giving and kindness toward children. Dutch tradition has him sailing a steamboat up from Spain with his Moorish (black) helpers, called "Black Petes" for the annual celebration each December, during which well-behaved children receive presents and naughty children are either whacked or hauled off by the Black Petes to be put to work in Spain.

The Dutch, not widely known for their political correctness, do not seem to see any problem with the race issue here. Let me illustrate. When we lived in the D.C. area and Ben was little, we'd go to the Dutch Embassy-sponsored Sinterklaas festival each year. The Embassy not being conveniently located on a waterway, Sinterklaas would drive up in a convertible with the top down, accompanied by his costumed Black Petes, who were just every bit as white as most Dutch people, but wearing blackface. Blackface. Really, really dark blackface. In Washington D.C., a city whose population was about 56% black. Right out in the open. And it that weren't bad enough, one year when the Sint was taking questions from the little kids, one kid asked which Black Pete was his favorite. The answer: "Michael Jackson."


I don't think there's even a way to say "politically correct" in Dutch.


Anyway, here's Condon's twisted take on the Sinterklaas celebration: "When the bearded, mitre-clutching Sint arrives, he rides a white horse...accompanied by Moorish 'Black Petes' (the Dutch equivalent of elves but with heavily racist overtones) who distribute sweets to the good children and allegedly put the bad children into sacks and haul them back to Spain, thus providing the children of Holland with material for a lifetime of horrific nightmares, terrified as they are of having to live in a land of sunshine, merriment, and flavoured food." (2003, p. 62). 

I wonder whether the horrors of all that sunshine, merriment, and flavored food have anything to do with why our Sinterklaas-derived Santa took up residency at the North Pole?