About men in funny clothes

A year ago, a dispute started. It was set off by Mrs. Shepherd from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. In Netherlands, it is a long and much-loved tradition to get visited by Sinterklaas and his assistant, the Zwarte Piet. Sinterklaas is also known as Santa Claus or Hl. Nikolaus in other countries, and his assistant is depicted and represented by a person with black make-up in its face and funny, clown-style clothes. Since the Zwarte Piet is the one who is traditionally responsible for "punishing" the children (although I was confirmed that this is no longer the case and that the Zwarte Piet is as much loved as Sinterklaas himself) and looks rather funnily, Mrs. Shepherd recognised possible racism and demanded the elimination of this character in future Sinterklaas events.
The Dutch were across-the-board confused and for sure very willing to not hurt anybodies feelings or being racist. But what to do?

 All attempts to find a compromise slurred.

Last Sunday, days before the actual Sinterklaas event (December, 5th) I watched a nice Sinterklaas parade with live brass band in the inner city. Later I discovered the group of about 30 Zwarte Piets dancing with children and distributing pepernoten (ginger-bread style mini-cookies) when passing the Atak! music centre on my running route. I cannot see anything bad about the tradition and obviously it would be a loss for the young ones and also for the old generation which has many nice memories from these festivities in their childhood when most Dutchmen and -women actually believe that Sinterklaas is the one who brings nice presents to them and who watched them throughout the year.

http://www.sintkleurtdestad.nl