this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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Depressingly true, but largely because our popular culture is so pervasive that anything weird that you'd talk about openly is already pretty commonly known.
Like, the Netherlands don't have a particularly pervasive culture, so anything you learn about them that's not "everywhere" won't make sense at first. It dilutes the whole "wait, what the fuck is 'black pete'?" thing.
All that to say, not all of our nonsense is racist, just the unfamiliar nonsense we don't talk about anymore.
what the fuck is ‘black pete’?
Bizarre Dutch Santa Claus helper. Like an elf, except canonically a black person with curly hair, silly mannerisms, bright clothing, big red lips and played by a white person wearing blackface.
It's almost over the top how racist it is, and there's controversy around if they should keep doing it.
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/12/4/the-netherlands-black-pete
Turns out if you have a history selling slaves, you'll pick up some stuff.
Point being less about pivoting this to the Dutch, and more that not hearing much about a culture also means you don't hear as much about their awful stuff, and when you hear a lot about a culture you tend to mostly hear about the parts that people want to share in public.
No one's gonna make a movie that just casually drops the wide variety of ethnic slurs for the Italians or Irish that have existed.