Dear Sir, I Intend to Burn Your Book by Lawrence Hill

Author:Lawrence Hill [Hill, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of Alberta Press
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

I won’t go on. Suffice it to say that it was a painful time in Dutch and African history, and that the legacy of this injustice lingers—and festers—in The Netherlands today. The Turkish scholar Jan Erk, who teaches at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, notes that the four biggest immigrant communities in the Netherlands are Turks, Moroccans, Antilleans and Surinamese. Together, they total almost one million people in a country of 17 million. Nonetheless, Geert Wilders, an important and influential politician in the country, has gained popularity and political currency by leading a political party that spews anti-Islamic rhetoric. As Jan Erk pointed out last year in an article entitled “The Famous Dutch (In)Tolerance” for Current History, in one media interview Wilders derided Islam by calling it—and I quote—a “violent and retarded” religion.

Some Blacks, North Africans and Muslims in The Netherlands feel under siege these days. There are two references to Black people in contemporary Dutch culture that seem to be particularly offensive to people of Surinamese and other Black descent living in The Netherlands today. I want to mention them, because they contextualize the response of Mr. Groenberg in deciding to burn my book cover last year.

You have all heard of Saint Nicholas. In the Netherlands, December 5 is set aside as the day to celebrate the birthday of Sinterklaas, as he is known there. He has a Black helper—a white man who is dressed up in blackface and shown to have exaggerated black features such as thick red lips and a wild mop of an Afro—who goes by the name of Zwarte Piet, or Black Peter. On the day of the annual Sinterklaas parade, Black Peter traditionally cavorts around in pantaloons like a fool and a bumpkin. In some instances, he dispenses candy to good children. In other instances, he carries a rod for punishment and a burlap sack into which unruly children will be stuffed and carted back to Spain, where he and Saint Nick come from.

I asked Amy Abdou, who at the time of the book cover burning incident worked in Amsterdam for the now-defunct National Institute for the Study of Dutch Slavery and its Legacy, to interpret Zwarte Piet to me. Zwarte Piet, she told me, emerges after a time when the Dutch parliament was discussing ways to abolish slavery and yet keep the enslaved Africans working on the plantations. At the time of abolition in 1863 in the Dutch colonies, those who had been enslaved were not truly liberated. They were forced into a sort of reintegration program that led to ten more years of indentured servitude.

Ms. Abdou goes on to explain that out of this story emerges Zwarte Piet, an enslaved man who is so grateful to his “liberators” that he remains forever in their servitude. The costume that Piet wears in the Sinterklaas celebrations comes directly from the page-like outfits enslaved Africans were forced to wear in the 19th century, when they were brought to Europe to serve their masters in their homes.

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