Who Is Zwarte Piet?

By Emily Raboteau
The arrival of Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas) and Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) in a Frisian village in the Netherlands on November 24, 2012. (Patrick Post / Hollandse Hoogte)
The arrival of Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas) and Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) in a Frisian village in the Netherlands on November 24, 2012. (Patrick Post / Hollandse Hoogte)

A holiday tradition in the Netherlands involving blackface has sparked a debate about race, the legacy of slavery, and the vestiges of colonialism.

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Issue: Winter 2014 / Volume 90/1
Published: January 6, 2014
Emily Raboteau

Emily Raboteau is the author of Searching for Zion (Atlantic Monthly, 2013), which won the New York Book Festival’s Grand Prize and was named a Best Book of 2013 by the Huffington Post. Her essays have been published in the Guardian, the Believer, and the Oxford American. She is an...

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