Zwarte Piet

Keep Zwarte Piet Black! The PVV, the party of Geert Wilders, are proposing a new law to keep Zwarte Piet black. I say black, but actually, brown is also ok. Martin Bosma, a spokesperson for the PVV goes as far as to suggest that the physical characteristics of Zwarte Piet …

As a black foreigner living in the Netherlands, I went through several phases when I first came across Zwarte Piet. Prior to moving here, I’d never heard of ZP, so you can imagine my surprise the first time I saw a group of white guys blacked up and dressed as Zwarte …

We don’t need nieuwe Sinterklaas liedjes The Shallow Man has been feeling pretty depressed this year. The reason for this is that it hurts me to see so many Dutch people being dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty first century. Some minorities have used the rights available to all …

Sinterklaas gedichten and how to survive the season Back in the days when songs actually had more than one or two repetitive phrases, repeated over a dreadful electronic beat, there were people known as musicians. (Look it up on Google if you’re not sure what that means). They would perform on songs, …

This is the first and last post that the Shallow Man will write about Zwarte Piet this year. Like many of you I’m sick of the whole thing. Today the Raad van State will make a decision with regards to the appearance of Zwarte Piet and the recent court ruling …

An Interview with Sinterklaas The Shallow Man recently had the dubious honor of interviewing the world’s angriest not black man, Zwarte Piet. Like many of his supporters, I found him to be very emotional, irrational and downright aggressive. There were a number of questions that he failed to answer, so …

The Shallow Man, in his never ending quest to fulfil the requests of his readers, went to great efforts to secure an interview with the man who is a hero to so many Dutch children. A man, that to many represents the very essence of Dutch culture, yes after much …

The Dutch Love of Blackface The Shallow Man is an elegant but aged fossil. I’ve been around since the days when Madonna still made decent music when Mick Jagger claimed that he wouldn’t continue performing once he reached the age of forty. I can recall a young boy who used …