Good riddance Zwarte Piet

Tonight dutch social media are in minor frenzy because of a relatively minor update to Facebook’s community standards that has added “Caricatures of black people in the form of blackface” to its list of banned dehumanizing comparisons, generalizations, or behavioral statements (in written or visual form). While this will seem like a sensible update in most parts of the world, a substantial portion of dutch society sees this as an attack on its national culture, because in the their view racists stereotypical depictions of people of colorin the form of “Zwarte Piet” are part of dutch national heritage. As a result there is much complaining about corporate censorship and the outsize power of social media platforms.

While it is true that this is yet another demonstration of the power to shape political discourse that social media platforms have amassed, (reminiscent of the way that Apple and Google settled the discussion about exposure notification apps by virtue over tehir power over the mobile phone operating systems) this is hardly something that the Dutch can legitimately complain about. They have only themselves to blame as they have had ample time to realize that their cherished, and deeply racist “Zwarte Piet” has been well past its expiration date.

With today’s decision by Facebook (which means that publicly funded programming featuring racist stereotypes produced by the national public broadcaster will have to be removed from Facebook going forward) and the cancellation of this year’s Sinterklaas parades because of the CODID-19 emergency it seems increasingly likely that the days of Zwarte Piet as an official sanctioned form of cultural expression are finally numbered.