After reading  comment on Sinterklaas and his Black Peters I had a vague feeling that he missed something. He states that black Peter represents everything that is: “ugly, stupid, frightening-  and bad”. They are wrong. Beauty and ugliness are in the eye of the beholder, and in the eyes of black people, a white Peter would be more ugly. Stupid now is another matter. What is so stupid to be in the service of a high official? Sinterklaas is(was) a bishop, a pretty high rank in the hierarchy of the Christian church who was the authority at those times. And still very much is. Frightening,Black Peter is only to those children who misbehave and who do bad things. Black Peters are policemen. And they should be frightening to the bad ones. Bad, I do not see where they gets the idea that Peters are bad. And if he feels that Sinterklaas represents all that is good, his feelings are his own. After my research into past, Nicolaus from Myra on the Mediterranean coast in Turkey, was traveling all along the harbors of the then known seas and helped women and children who had lost husbands and fathers through storms a shipwrecks. He gave the children the presents that they needed or liked on the way, some North African young men came along to help him. No slavery , no stupidness, nothing ugly or frightening. Nothing racist about all this, there is no exploitation, and the black fellows help the old man voluntarily. Here on St. Maarten I often enough see some young black boys help carry a load for an old white man. What is so racist about that?? The only person who can ever know who you are and how you think and how you feel is yourself; do not try to speak for others, as you cannot know what the others see, feel or think.

What I as an observer find very strange is that modern  people walk around with the same Book that the racist slave masters of old had in their hand to justify their doings. The old testament of the Bible makes it look like slavery is a normal and accepted practice, and it was in those days. The very book that brought so much misery to so many, now is in the hands of black people that swear oaths on it and believe it is the One and Only Book. Exodus 21 does not talk about what color a slave has, but it makes a difference what the slave beliefs. If the slave was of the same belief as the authors he(she) only had to suffer 6 years, if not,it was a life sentence. Sinterklaas is of the new faith that Jesus came with. No slave talk there and that his helpers happened to be black was mere coincidence, it was there he traveled where the people had had a bit more sun than in Turkey. Cool down mr. Lake, and check with yourself and with history what the facts are. Black Peters are the upholders of morality, and law. To reward the good and punish the bad. Help where it is needed and do so voluntarily.