Poornima Manco

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The Mystery of the Missing Mentor

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Many, many moons ago, when I first began writing as a hobby, the only way I knew how to get any validation was to submit my short stories to various competitions. This was well before social media, and I’d scroll through different sites on the internet to get a feel for different competitions, their submission guidelines, and whether the price of the entry ticket included some kind of review or assessment of the submitted piece. Now these were the best bang for my buck. Whether I won, whether I even got an honourable mention, was immaterial, because I was getting something invaluable—feedback. To a novice, this feedback was worth its weight in gold. After all, how else was I to know if I was any good?

Amongst the very many competitions that I submitted to, there was one spearheaded by a retired English professor who, for a small fee, would give a breakdown of what worked and didn’t work in a particular story. Over time, and multiple submissions, I came to regard him as something of a mentor. He was a fair but forthright judge and his comments/suggestions always served to improve my work. Perhaps he developed a certain fondness for me too, as one day, quite out of the blue, I received a friend request from him on Goodreads.

Back in the day, when social media was a nascent entity, a multi-headed hydra that no one knew much about, we signed up for nearly every account going. If you’d asked me to distinguish between LinkedIn and Twitter, or Facebook and MySpace, I wouldn’t have had a clue. Goodreads was another one of the ilk. To someone who loved books, wanted to write books (however deeply suppressed the desire might have been), finding myself amongst other book lovers in a virtual world was a dream come true. This was where my mentor (who shall remain unnamed) reached out to befriend me. I still remember my squeal of delight in a bar in Budapest. I was on a family holiday with my husband and daughters, and when that little red notification popped up next to the bell icon, I clicked on it to discover that Prof X wanted to be friends!

Looking back, perhaps he was new to the platform too and was befriending every Tom, Dick, Jane and Joan on it. I might have been one of the many “suggested” friends that he clicked on. At any rate, I took it as a good sign. The next year, I signed up for his email course designed to help new writers like me improve our craft. The course was good and to my eternal dismay, I consigned it to the memory of an old laptop that crashed, and I could never recover the contents. Long story short, this man was instrumental in getting me off my mark and on the writing track, however slow a runner I might have been. (I remember him saying something about reining in the metaphors… hmmm!)

Anyway, as the years went on, and I got more serious about my writing, I began submitting (and placing) in more prestigious competitions. In the interim, Prof X had wound down his competition/feedback site. So, imagine my surprise when one day I received an email from him. When I opened it, I found it was actually a missive from his daughter who said that her father had had cancer and had passed away a few weeks ago. She was informing all his contacts and emailing all his previous students.

I was shocked and saddened. Prof X hadn’t seemed that old, but that doesn’t mean a thing with cancer, which is a cruel and formidable foe. For many days after, I would think of the Prof and the many pointers he had given me all those years ago. I prayed for his soul to rest in peace and hoped he hadn’t suffered too much.

More years went by. Now I was a published author, and long and winding as the road might have been, the destination had always been books. My own books of short stories and women’s fiction. Books that were sold on Amazon and Apple, Nook and Kobo. I was nowhere near giving up the day job (which I still enjoy very much) but slowly I was building an alternate career, one that I hoped would take me through retirement and into my dotage.

I was still active on Goodreads, but more as an author than a reader. I knew now that it was bad form to slate another author’s books or try too hard to promote one’s own. I refrained from doing both, only occasionally commenting about a new release, or liking a favourable review. So, the next thing that happened shocked the living daylights out of me!

One day, as was my habit, I wandered into Goodreads and posted a brief comment about a forthcoming release. Moments later, I noticed someone had liked my status. I clicked on to find out who…

Prof X had liked my comment!

What???

I thought he’d long passed on.

Had I imagined it?

I tried looking for the email from his daughter, but that had disappeared alongside the course and possibly my sanity.

Was Prof X alive and kicking? And if so, why had his daughter lied? If not, who had taken over his Goodreads profile, and why?

Questions that circled in my mind like vultures. I nearly reached out to him, but then wondered how to introduce his demise in the interaction?

“Dear Sir,

Is it true that you died several years ago? If so, how are you performing this miraculous act of functioning on Goodreads from the Hereafter?”

Nope. I slunk back into my shell, terribly confused and forevermore bewildered by the turn of events.

I wish I could tell you I solved the mystery. I didn’t. I’ve had no further contact with the Prof, and one day I found he had disappeared from my friends list, never to be seen again.

But what I can tell you is this. Once a person has passed on, their social media handles need to be retired too. This instance was the first in what has now become the norm. I see my Instagram stories being viewed by the spouse of a friend who died not too long ago. I see clueless people wishing deceased friends on Facebook on their birthdays. I get jarring reminders of social media anniversaries with people who are well beyond the veil now.

Stop. Just stop.

Much as I would like eternal life for all my friends and family, social media is not the place to acquire that status. Can we all set something in place whereby once we are gone, our social handles disappear too? I’d like to do that for myself. I don’t want my grinning face popping up on anyone’s birthday reminders list after my demise. It’s not fair to them, and it’s not fair to my dead self, either.

Meanwhile, Prof X, if you are reading this, please could you just sort it out once and for all? Are you still amongst us? And if not, does the great beyond have its own social network? If it does, is it as hellish and confusing as the one here?

Oh, wait. Maybe Fire and Brimstone are just alternate names for…

 

 

 

What’s that all about?

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Blame it on my age, but I’m truly at a loss here. What on earth gives anyone the right to ‘cancel’ anyone else? Yes, I’m talking about the phenomenon of ‘cancel culture’. For those who don’t know what this means, here’s the definition according to Mirriam-Webster: the practice or tendency of engaging in mass canceling as a way of expressing disapproval and exerting social pressure.

The long list of people cancelled in recent years include the likes of Liam Neeson, Ellen DeGeneres, Jimmy Fallon and J. K. Rowling. What have they done, you might ask, that merits this kind of social (media) ostracism? Well, some have said some inappropriate things, while others have maybe consorted with the enemy, and others still have held an opinion that is contrary to the public tide of the moment. I won’t spell it out, because Google will do that bit for you, if you’re interested. My point is, while none of them are squeaky clean, what gives anyone the moral authority to pass judgement on these people?

The reason this trend bothers me so much, and why I’ve felt the need to express it on my blog, is twofold. One, there is something sinister in how free speech and opinions that differ from the mainstream, are suddenly being held up to social scrutiny that is at best, infantile and one-dimensional, and at worst, policing that harks back to the censorship wielded by totalitarian regimes. Two, where is the scope, in all this moral grandstanding, for people to make mistakes, to learn, to grow and repent? None of us are born perfect, but if you’re a celebrity, you’d better never have put a foot wrong, because that will come back to haunt you at some later stage in your career. At that point, not even a grovelling apology and a promise to do better could redeem you.

In all fairness, some people need calling out on their obnoxious behaviour, their toxic beliefs and their gruesome opinions. But let’s do it in a fair manner, a manner that befits a society that believes in debate, in conversation, and not in clamping down and deleting a person just because they did not adhere to the popular motif of the moment.

There is a cruelty to ‘cancelling’ someone that is tantamount to a public stoning. A cruelty that doesn’t consider the mental anguish, the financial fallout or failure to allow the person a chance at redemption. Even the law states that a person is innocent until proven guilty, so a cancel culture that rubs out a person swiftly without due process, is no less toxic than whatever abhorrent deed the person in question may have been accused of.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who penned a blistering article on how social media denizens act as moral guardians of the rapidly changing landscapes of what is right and what is not, said it best:

“We have a generation of young people on social media so terrified of having the wrong opinions that they have robbed themselves of the opportunity to think and to learn and to grow,” Adichie writes. “I have spoken to young people who tell me they are terrified to tweet anything, that they read and reread their tweets because they fear they will be attacked by their own. The assumption of good faith is dead. What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness. We are no longer human beings. We are now angels jostling to out-angel one another. God help us. It is obscene.”

It is obscene, and it is ridiculous. Go ahead, cancel me now. See if I care.

 

The trouble with Brexit (Part 2)

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2. The ‘unique’ British media

When I first moved to London from The Netherlands in 1990, there were quite a few things that struck me as more than a little odd about the UK. Carpet in the bathroom? What was that all about? Separate hot and cold water taps? Weird…Why did some people leave a little bit of tea at the bottom of their cup? Who was Del Boy? And what exactly were Yorkshire puddings?

I also soon realised that, unlike The Netherlands, the UK didn’t really see itself as being part of Europe. If you were going to the continent from the UK, you were ‘going to Europe’ – as if you weren’t already in it! I reminded my English friends that London was not in Asia or South America, much to their amusement. It was also a long-standing British joke that Germans were Krauts, Italians were Wops and the French were Frogs. Even if there was no malice in these terms and it was meant to be funny, it still underpinned an underlying feeling of ‘us’ versus ‘them’. 

In spite of (or perhaps because of?) all of its eccentricities, I did fall head over heels in love with this beautiful country though. I loved the language, the “hello mate!” and “alright, darling?” greetings, the wit, the banter – and pretty much everything else! I even found myself an English boyfriend, and asked him what the British, in general, think about the Dutch. “We tolerate you”, my boyfriend answered with typically dry British humour.

His father read several British tabloid newspapers every day: the Sun (with its famous Page 3 Girl), the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. It was my first brush with something I found even more puzzling than anything I had seen before: anti-EU sentiment on a massive scale.

I couldn’t believe just how many hostile articles there were in these newspapers, and that pretty much all of them were blatant lies. Where I came from, nobody really talked about the EU – most people didn’t really have an opinion about it. But in London, they most certainly did – and it was all extremely negative! “Oh, it’s just a bit of a joke”, I was told, “these silly stories are not meant to be taken too seriously”.

Interestingly enough, I later found out that the origins of some of these so-called “Euromyths” – funny but completely fake news stories about the EU – could be traced back to none other than good old Boris Johnson. He had been hired by The Times during the 1980s (a job he got through family connections), was fired for making up two stories, and was hired by The Daily Telegraph almost immediately afterwards to become its Brussels correspondent between 1989 and 1994.

Boris loved ridiculing the EU for his own amusement, and invented plenty of stories about it. His Euromyths always followed the same pattern: they started off with a tiny element of truth, but soon turned into completely made-up conspiracy theories – ones that were so crazy that it was almost funny! There was supposed to be an EU plot to ban prawn cocktail flavoured crisps, Brussels bureaucrats wanted to standardise condom sizes, and one of his most memorable headlines was “Snails are fish, says EU”. Years later, Boris was quite happy to admit that he enjoyed telling complete porkies about the EU: “I was sort of chucking these rocks over the garden wall, and I listened to this amazing crash from the greenhouse next door over in England, as everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive ­effect on the Tory party. It really gave me this, I suppose, rather weird sense of power.”

Over the next 30 years, EU bashing became a staple of most British tabloids, and Fake News became fashionable long before the expression was even invented. Here’s just a small selection of some newspaper headlines over the years:

  • “Bureaucrats declare Britain is ‘not an island'” (The Guardian)
  • “Eurocrats say Santa must be a woman” (The Sun)
  • “Scotch whisky rebranded ‘a dangerous chemical’ by EU” (Daily Telegraph)
  • “Domain names – .uk to be replaced by .eu” (Daily Mail)
  • “EU plot to rename Trafalgar Square and Waterloo Station” (Daily Express)
  • “EU to ban zipper trousers” (The Sun)
  • “2-for-1 bargains to be scrapped by EU” (Daily Mirror)
  • “New EU map makes Kent part of France” (Daily Telegraph)
  • “Corgis to be banned by EU” (Daily Mail)
  • “EU forcing cows to wear nappies” (Daily Mail)
  • “Brussels ban on pints of shandy” (The Times)
  • “Now EU crackpots demand gypsy MPs” (Daily Express)

This is just a tiny, tiny part of it – and these are just the headlines, so you can only imagine what the accompanying stories are like! Sadly, deliberate misinformation, half-truths and outright lies are still the order of the day in some newspapers. It is no wonder that the British press has been amongst the least trusted in Europe for years.

Hardly any British politicians challenged this negative portrayal of the EU in the media. Nobody said: “Hey, hang on a minute! How come we still have playgrounds, corgis and bendy bananas, if we’re constantly being told that they have been banned?” It probably suited them that the EU could be used as a convenient scapegoat for their own unpopular policies.

At first glance, all of this anti EU-ism may seem quite harmless, and even a bit of a laugh. However, it is probably fair to say that after many years and decades, the ‘drip, drip’ effect of this narrative did start to influence British opinions. And not just those of tabloid readers, but, as you can see above, also readers of more respectable newspapers like The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian. A persuasive portrayal of an EU full of spoilsports getting rid of British playgrounds, double-decker buses and truckers’ fry-ups became a powerful ‘alternative fact’ in the UK: surely everybody knew what those patronising busybodies in Brussels were like? They were the enemies of common sense and the British way of life, so it was high time that the UK started fighting back against these oppressors. And this is exactly how some very influential Eurosceptic newspapers portray themselves: as noble representatives of the man on the street, fighting against those nasty elites in Westminster and Brussels.

You might therefore be surprised to learn that most of the UK media is owned by just a handful of extremely wealthy men with very strong ties to Westminster and the political establishment. One of them, Ukip donor Richard Desmond, sold the Daily Express not long ago – but that still leaves four billionaires with a huge amount of power and influence.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch owns The Sun, The Times, the now-defunct News of the World (shut down after the phone hacking scandal), and also pro-Trump Fox News in the US. His company News Corporation has subsidiaries in the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, the Channel Islands and the Virgin Islands. From 1986, News Corporation’s annual tax bill averaged around 7% of its profits. Anthony Hilton, columnist for the Evening Standard wrote during the referendum campaign: “I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. “That’s easy,” he replied. “When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.”

Identical twins the Barclay brothers are the owners of the five-star Ritz hotel in London, as well as pro-Brexit publications The Daily Telegraph and the Spectator. Currently number 17 on the Sunday Times Rich List, they have houses in both the Channel Islands and Monaco. In 2012, BBC’s Panorama reported that they had paid no corporation tax for the Ritz, and in 2017 the Barclay Brothers lost a £1.25 billion tax case against HMRC.

The Daily Mail is owned by the 4th Viscount Rothermere. His great-grandfather was a friend of Adolf Hitler, and supported the Nazis when he owned the newspaper in the 1930’s. He also wrote an interesting article entitled ‘Hurrah for the blackshirts’, supporting Oswald Mosley and the facist movement in Great Britain. The current Viscount Rothermere is said to be richer than the queen, he has non-domicile tax status and owns his media businesses through a complex structure of offshore holdings and trusts.

So, not exactly ‘men in the street’, but billionaires with direct access to Downing Street, influencing opinions all over the country through their newspapers.

Regardless of their owners, does this mean that we should not have any critical Eurosceptic newspapers at all? Is the EU, in reality, just a perfect club of countries happily working together, holding hands and singing Kumbaya, that shouldn’t be questioned?

No, of course not.

There is nothing wrong with a healthy dose of scepticism towards the European Union. The Eurozone crisis, the migration crisis, the banking crisis, problems in Eastern Europe: it has plenty of problems – some outside of the EU’s control, some within it. But this is about fairness and balance. The world is not black or white – there are always fifty shades of grey in the middle. So let’s be sceptical of both sides. Let’s look at the pros and cons of the EU, without painting it as some kind of one-dimensional monster.

Why, for instance, do British newspapers never write about the good things the EU has achieved: clean beaches, no roaming charges, the protection of children that is enshrined into EU law? Why does nobody mention that the British film industry has received nearly £300 million in funding from the EU in the past 10 years? And why do you never hear about about all the money the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and European Social Fund (ESF) have spent in poorer regions within the UK?

How about the £640 million it has paid to save old buildings in  Birmingham city centre? A £2 billion investment for Wales? £1 billion for South Yorkshire? €60 million to help repair flood damage in the UK, and a similar amount for Cornwall over the last ten years? Not a peep about any of this in the British media.

And while we’re at it: apart from some more balance, can we also have a discussion that is based on evidence-based facts please? I know that it it is not always easy to separate fact from fiction, but there are plenty of fact-checking websites out there these days. Take the famous fake Lisbon Treaty post doing the rounds on Facebook: “OMG!!! WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THE LISBON TREATY THAT COMES INTO FORCE IN 2020??” Because it’s fake news, that’s why. And it is not just the Brexiteer side that makes things up, by the way. A recent claim that Nigel Farage was involved in the far-right National Front as a teenager is based on an old photograph, that is almost certainly not him.

Media bias, alternative facts, Russian bots, fake Twitter accounts: they are all a threat to democracy and our ability to separate truth from fiction.  Apparently, it will soon be possible  to make photo-realistic HD video, audio and document forgeries, even for amateurs, and some of these forgeries will be good enough to fool even some types of forensic analysis. Imagine what damage a Fake News story can do, when it’s accompanied by a very convincing Fake Video?

And whilst talking about media bias towards the EU, we haven’t even touched upon newspaper stories regarding some other groups of foreigners: immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees. More about that next time.

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Johanna Brunt was born and raised in The Netherlands. She has spent half her life there on the continent, and half her life in the UK. After studying English and European Studies at the University of Amsterdam, she moved to London where she started working for an international airline. She is married to a Brit, and they have three children together.

The Dutch tradition of Black Pete – a jolly children’s friend, or a racist caricature? Johanna Brunt

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As a little girl growing up in The Netherlands in the 1970’s, the festive tradition of Sinterklaas was my favourite time of year. Based on Saint Nicholas, patron saint of children, Sinterklaas is seen as ‘the Dutch Santa’: a kind, elderly man with a long white beard, who hands out presents every year on the 5th December.

Sinterklaas lives in Spain, but every year in the middle of November he, and his loyal helpers, called Black Petes (of which there are many) arrive in The Netherlands on a steam boat. This is a huge event, which is broadcast on live tv, and a few hours later the same event takes place in towns all over Holland. Parents, grandparents and children all go to see the arrival of Sinterklaas together, and many children dress up as Black Pete (including black face paint), in celebration of this wonderful event. Sinterklaas is finally in the country. How exciting!

During the three weeks that follow, every Dutch family with young children watches the Sinterklaasjournaal (Sinterklaas news) at 6pm every day. The following day, children watch a repeat of it at school. It shows how Sinterklaas is busy preparing for the 5th December, with his Black Petes collecting children’s drawings and wrapping presents, and all of them settling into their temporary accommodation in The Netherlands (the Black Petes all live together in the Pietenhuis). Children put their shoes in front of the chimney, sometimes with a carrot in it for Sinterklaas’ horse Amerigo, and the next day there will be some chocolate coins or a small present in it. Also at this time of year, shops sell chocolate letters, marzipan and kruidnootjes (little Malteser-sized gingerbread cookies). Sinterklaas songs can be heard everywhere. Everybody is getting ready for the big day on 5th December: pakjesavond (present evening)! That’s when families get together, and children are beside themselves with excitement waiting for that loud knock on the front door. They run there as fast as their little legs will take them, and find a huge canvas sack full of presents on the door mat. “I’m sure I just saw a Black Pete running away behind those bushes! Quick, let’s get the presents into the house and open them up!”

‘Sinterklaas’ really is a fantastic tradition, and most Dutch people associate it with the kind of happy childhood innocence that is so rare in this day and age. It brings a warm and fuzzy feeling to the heart, like a soft, comforting blanket from the past that we want to pass on to the next generation.

So, when protests started against Black Pete about 5 years ago, most people were genuinely baffled and upset. Huh, Black Pete is racist? What on earth are you talking about? Black Pete is not a person, he’s a fictional character – it’s like talking about elves or gnomes as if they are real people! He is black, because he goes down the chimney to deliver presents to children, and the soot gets onto his face. Saying that this is a racist tradition is belachelijk (ridiculous)! Telling me that I am racist, because I, and millions of other people, enjoy this amazing children’s event, is very offensive and makes me quite angry. I really object to you accusing me of being racist – I am not, and you are spoiling the Sinterklaas celebrations with all this nonsense. I also know several people of colour who are perfectly happy with the traditional Black Pete, so that means that there is no problem. Political correctness has gone mad!

A huge discussion in Dutch society followed, and suddenly everyone was talking about the ‘Black Pete is racist’ issue. Around 90% of the population wanted things to stay as they were, and a pro Black Pete ‘pietitie’ (Piet-petition) on Facebook received a million likes within one day. It appeared that the people who wanted to abolish Black Pete were in a tiny, loony left, out-of-touch minority, and the not-so-silent pro-Black Pete majority was having none of it.

Personally, I wasn’t really sure where I stood in those days. I had moved to London when I was 20 years old, so I was following the debate from a distance. I could certainly understand the traditional pro-Black Pete point of view, based on my own happy childhood memories, but I could also see the other side of it. I remembered once reading a letter in my older sister’s Club magazine in the late 1970’s, in which a young black girl stated that she hated Black Pete, because children used to use it as a swear word towards her. Having spent many years living in a big, multi-cultural city, and meeting people from different countries and all walks of life through work, I probably also knew a lot more non-white people than the average Dutch person. I was pretty sure that they would find it hard to accept the idea that the Black Pete concept was completely innocent. It simply came across as unintended racism.

Curious to hear a neutral, non-Dutch, outsider’s opinion, I asked my English husband Chris what he thought of it all. He and I had been together for almost 20 years at this point, but amazingly, I had never talked to him about the Black Pete phenomenon – so I had no idea what he really thought of it! Chris is a very middle-of-the-road kind of guy: not particularly left-wing, nor particularly right-wing. He grew up in a half-English, half-Polish household in the middle of cosmopolitan London, so he’s pretty tolerant of other cultures, and not bothered about strange habits that other people may have. I truly had no idea what he thought, but I secretly suspected that he would say it was just an innocent Dutch tradition, and that the protestors were making a big fuss over nothing.

To my complete surprise and astonishment however, Chris said that he had always found Black Pete to be totally racist, and that he couldn’t believe that the Dutch were still getting away with this kind of stuff in this day and age. What??? Had I been missing something all these years? He wasn’t exactly on the fence – that was a very definite and damning opinion, from a pretty laid-back person. Was Chris right? Had I been blind to some kind of racist undercurrent; had I been too Dutch, too naive to see it?

I still wasn’t convinced that this was the case, but I did start to look at things through different eyes. “Black Petes”, i.e. black men, being helpers/servants to a white man. The songs: “Even though I am as black as soot, I do mean well..” In the old days, rather menacing and sinister-looking Black Petes putting naughty children in the sack, ready to take them away to Spain – while white Sinterklaas was the good guy giving presents (although, to be fair, Black Petes are very happy and friendly now, and everybody loves them). The similarities between Black Petes and black slaves (Holland’s involvement in the old transatlantic slave trade is notorious). The similarities between Sinterklaas’ steam boat, and old slave ships from colonial times. Black Pete’s name, the blackface, the big red lips, the afro wigs, the golden earrings. Try to google the words “Sinterklaas Russell Brand” on YouTube, and you will see what I mean. If you’ve ever had to explain the concept of Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet to someone who has never heard of it, you will suddenly hear yourself utter the words “Look, I know it sounds bad, but it’s really not meant to be racist – honestly!” The more I saw and heard, the more I started to change my mind. Dutch people’s outraged and continued insistence that Black Pete was most definitely NOT a white person’s caricature of a black person began to ring quite hollow.

I also started to hear personal stories. I had a conversation with a black American colleague who came across some Black Pete-type pictures in a cafe in Barcelona. Being a very calm, culturally aware and sensible kind of guy, he debated whether or not he should stay quiet, but he then decided that he shouldn’t. He called the owner over, pointed at the pictures, and asked: “Is this how you see me? The blackface, the bright red lips, the curly hair…really? Do you think I look like that?” The owner was clearly embarrassed – to him, they were just pictures. But to his customer, they were hurtful, offensive and degrading.

There were other stories as well. A colleague’s son had been teased at school, with other kids calling him Black Pete when he was younger – which led to his mum now being a fervent anti-Black Pete protester. A Canadian friend who came to visit us in our Dutch town, joked “Oh, that’s not racist at all!” when she saw a picture of the “old-fashioned golliwog” (incidentally, another Thai friend who visited commented on how blonde everybody was, and that there was barely a non-white person to be seen). The “OMG-I-can’t-believe-it-this-is-so-racist!!” face of our English au pair, who came to the arrival of the steam boat in our town, and who texted photos of Black Petes to her friends back in the UK. They couldn’t believe it either.  I began to realise that every single foreigner seemed to see instantly what every Dutch person insisted did not exist.

Personally, I gradually became convinced that it was high time we changed Black Pete’s appearance. The debate in Dutch society is still ongoing as we speak, but it is also still pretty polarised. The question is, though: why are there not a lot more people like me in The Netherlands, who have changed their mind on Black Pete? Surely I can’t be the only person who has heard new stories and opinions, that they weren’t aware of before? My own solution would be simple: a gradual change from the traditional ‘blackface’ Black Pete, to a ‘Chimney Soot Pete’, who only has some soot on his face. It’s an easy compromise, and one that I think both sides could live with.

It’s hard to explain, but I suspect that the reason that people are sticking to their own uncompromising position, and why this is still such a black-and-white issue in The Netherlands (pardon the pun) is that the whole debate started off on the wrong foot some 5 years ago. Millions of regular Dutch people felt shocked that they were, in their view,  suddenly being accused of being racists, so it got their backs up. The anti-Black Pete approach was perceived to be very aggressive, and as a result, people on the other side dug their heels in. Extremism on the one side breeds extremism on the other side, unfortunately.

On the other hand, though, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the pro-Black Pete brigade to continue to deny that many people find Black Pete hurtful and offensive. Hundreds of tv programmes and news articles have been devoted to this issue. We now know, for instance, that many black children are being teased, and even bullied, and that the figure of Black Pete is no fun for them. Surely we can collectively agree that ALL Dutch children should be able to enjoy that warm, fuzzy Sinterklaas feeling? Or is that only reserved for white children? Even if you yourself may not particularly see the need for change (possibly because nobody in your predominantly white environment thinks that there is a problem..?), try to at least have an open mind, rather than the closed one which so many Black Pete supporters seem to have these days. No wonder that this debate keeps coming back every year – that’s what happens when you stubbornly refuse to move an inch.

Thankfully, things are changing, albeit much slower than the anti-Black Pete brigade would like. In 2013, 89% of Dutch people wanted to keep the traditional Black Pete, but now that figure has gone down to 68% in just 4 years. 26% of people now agree that Black Pete’s appearance should change. The irony is that it would have been pretty easy to reach a compromise many years ago, if things hadn’t become so polarised. But a change is still possible, desirable and inevitable in my view. Nobody wants to take away the joy of Sinterklaas – quite the opposite. Changing Black Pete’s appearance is hardly going to make much difference in the grand scheme of it all.

Roetpiet (Chimney Soot Pete), I believe that YOU will ultimately save the day. It is already happening, in the Sinterklaasjournaal, in shops and other places. And you know what? The world won’t end. Grownups will finally grow up, and Dutch children will be just as happy as they have always been.

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My name is Johanna Brunt (my Dutch name is Joke), and I was born in The Netherlands in 1970. After secondary school I studied English and European Studies at the University of Amsterdam. I went to London on a ‘gap year’ when I was 20, met my husband Chris, and ended up staying in London for 24 years.  Chris and I married in 2004, and we have 3 children: Emma (10), and twins Daniel and Katie (7). We moved (back, in my case) to The Netherlands in December 2014.

I have been a flight attendant for United Airlines since March 1992, flying out of Heathrow to the United States. Apart from the flexibility, the best thing about my job is that I get to meet passengers and crews from all over the world. I truly enjoy talking to people from different nationalities and backgrounds, and I have learned a lot from hearing various points of view about a variety of subjects. I am a firm believer in the Mark Twain quote that ‘travelling broadens the mind, and is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness’.