Dutch rally round ‘right to be racist’

It’s that time of year again. The stockings are being hung by the chimney with care, the hot wine stands are setting up shop, and of course, the Dutch have begun putting on their blackface, big red lips and afro wigs. It’s time again for ‘Black Pete’ to pay us a visit.

And right on cue, it’s also time for the perennial hand-wringing about whether or not this minstrel character, who tags along with Saint Nicholas as he hands out presents to Dutch and Flemish children at Christmas, is racist.

But this year, thanks to some comments by a human rights observer, the debate has taken on an almost frenzied dimension that has even seen a prominent Dutch politician call for the Netherlands to pull out of the United Nations.

The Dutch are furious that a member of the UN’s human rights committee is looking into the issue of whether Black Pete is a racist caricature. The head of the committee, who is Jamaican, told a Dutch TV station she found it impossible to understand how Dutch people do not see it as racist. Dutch people have responded with a torrent of outrage, accusing the UN of trampling on something that is an age-old tradition and is culturally important to them. A petition organised to 'save Black Pete' gathered a million endorsements in its first day. News broadcasters are dressing up as Pete in protest, and Dutch people are making YouTube videos dancing around in blackface singing about how not racist they are.

Yet another tone-deaf video from the EU

A familiar pattern is emerging for the European Commission’s promotional videos: Commission pays six-digit figure for a promotional video, video is released, video causes uproar, video is pulled. Whether its racism, sexism or neocolonialism, the private consultancies who make videos for the Commission seem to have developed a talent for causing offense.

The latest offender is a video promoting the launch of the Commission’s ‘Science: It’s a Girl Thing’ campaign last week. The campaign is meant to attract young women to careers in the sciences. Apparently the makers of the video decided that the best way to do that was to depict science as an episode of Sex in the City.

The video starts with a serious man peering into a microscope. He is suddenly confronted by three skinny, fashionable girls wearing three-inch high heels. They strut on the catwalk as shots of lipstick and make-up are interspersed with the chemical processes that made them.

Anti-Caucasian football riots in Moscow expose World Cup problem

Central Moscow erupted in rioting this weekend as nationalist football hooligans attacked police officers and state buildings. The riots are the result of an explosive mix of ethnic tensions, ultranationalism and football that has cast doubt over the decision by FIFA a week ago to select Moscow as the host of the 2018 World Cup. Today the tensions continue. Hundreds of anti-riot police have amassed around Red Square and the Kremlin.

In Russia, as in much of Europe, football hooliganism often goes hand-in-hand with white supremacy and neo-nazi movements. The spark that lit the fuse for this particular riot came several weeks ago, when an ethnic Russian football fan was killed during a fight with a group of men from the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region of the Russian Federation. He was a fan of the Spartak Moscow football team and a member of one of its most aggressive fan groups - or "firms" as the Russian hooligan groups like to call themselves. The Caucasian man arrested for the murder was subsequently released, prompting outrage from the Spartak Moscow fans who say the police are favoring the ethnic minorities.

'Racist' KFC ad: The perils of globalisation

An internet uproar has exploded over the past few days over a purportedly racist KFC ad airing in Australia. The controversy grew so loud that KFC today decided to pull the ad - not because it was causing any offense in Australia, but because Americans watching it on YouTube were offended.

You couldn't pick a more perfect illustration of this crazy globalized internet age we live in. The ad was aired by KFC Australia as part of its "cricket survival guide" series in the run-up to a big match between the Australian and West Indian cricket teams. The ad features a white Australian sitting in a crowd of unruly black Carribean cricket fans. "Need a tip when you're stuck in an awkward situation?" he asks the camera. He then shares a bucket of fried chicken with the unruly crowd. They devour it, bringing them under control. "Too easy," he says.

British reality TV

It’s strange, who would have guessed that Celebrity Big Brother, which I became so curious about when I first arrived here, would spark a major international incident! The proportions of this have really gotten huge. Could the end result of all this be, finally, the death of trashy reality TV? I do so want to believe that, but my natural skepticism doubts it.

I’m not sure how much play this is getting in the states, so I’ll briefly recap for you. Big Brother is a huge phenomenon here, with a live TV feed and the inane details of the show plastered across the front pages of the tabloids every morning. This seasons Celebrity Big Brother invited on Jade Goody, a woman who became a “celebrity” (the term is used loosely here) through her appearance on a previous Big Brother. Basically, she became well-known for her outrageous stupidity.

Controversy erupted when Jade and two other contestants started picking on Shilpa Shetty, a Bollywood star from India. They said some things that were vaguely racist, such as saying Shilpa should “fuck off home” and saying Shilpa “wants to be white” because she bleaches her upper lip hair. Basically the things that were said were more stupid and ignorant than overtly racist. Well she did call Shilpa “Poppadom,” but I have no idea what that means.

Shilpa shenanigans

Well I would be remiss if I didn’t give you an update on the Big Brother situation. It’s big news here after all! Yesterday's big news (plastered on the front pages of all the papers and leading the news broadcasts) was that there has been a public outcry and allegations of racism against some of the Celebrity Big Brother housemates. Viewers are apparently complaining that three of the British housemates are engaged in “racist bullying” of Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty.

Now I don’t have a TV at the moment, but I watched some YouTube clips of the incidents in question and it’s clear no one is being overtly racist, they’re just being stupid, making dumb comments about India, etc. The thing is Shilpa comes off as a saint, and these other girls just look like nasty idiots (the group is led, by the way, by the very Jade Goody I was mentioning in an earlier post). Anyway everyone from Gordon Brown to the head of channel 4 has had some kind of comment on it, and there have been calls for channel 4 to intervene. It’s leading all the Indian newspapers as well apparently. It’s all pretty silly. Shilpa is stunningly attractive and wildly successful in India, so it’s natural that these D-list British celebrities surrounding her are going to be jealous. Still, it’s an interesting phenomenon, this public reaction. And it should be noted that although the show’s ratings were sagging before, they’ve now shot up, leading to even more allegations that channel 4 is “profiting off racism.”