The Veil and Sinterklaas [in English]

If you travel [and even if you stay at home], you will have contact with people from all over the world. You will meet people you first only could think of as exotic. You will see them in real live, get rid of your stereotypes and see how 'those people' really are.
That is like the issue of 'saving the muslim women from their veil' [from the standpoint of the West; Europe and the US]. Who said they don't want to wear it? What do we know about it? For some women it gives respect and safety from unknown man in public places. It brings them closer to God and their family. It will diver per society, per person. It is a way of dressing, something you are used to maybe without thinking about. If you forbid all women to wear it, it is quite odd to think that they will be free then. Because forbidding is not giving them an option, it is everything except freedom. Let every women choose for herself. Why should women not be able to wear a headscarf, like nuns do and some Jewish women wear a wig? And why do European women need to wear shorts? It goes into integrity of women. Should we be sexy so that men can look at us? I can understand why to wear such a scarf, if I had for example the feeling it would protect me. We should not think other women don't have agency. We should not think about ourselves as if we were superior, and needed to help them. We should if we can and if we know what others want.

We should not look at others from our own way of living, from our norms and values, from our situated knowledge and history. People all over the world have different norms, wants, desires. It is culture specific.

That is what you will notice when you are here. The Dutch are punctual. The Spanish are late. The food is different. And above all, we should not generalize. There are Dutch people who will be late, believe me, and Spanish who are early. But everyone is formed by their environment.

And like Sinterklaas. Why does he have only 'black' people around him to help him? I know it sounds strange for foreign people, it is like slavery. It is bad and it still goes on. I actually never saw them and never thought about them as 'black' people. Just as Zwarte Pieten.

[I don't like the word black people, neither do I like the usage of the word Negroes. I don't like the division at all. People are not different from each other. Someone just made two boxes; black and white. But people aren't either black or white. I'm not white, but pink-white-brown-yellow. And so has everyone his own mixture of colors. And why should that matter?]

As a child I always wanted to become one of them, one of Zwarte Pieten and make other kids happy. They are nice, funny people. You can also think about them in an other way, why can white people not help them? You can see the discrimination in that way. That black people are positively discriminated. 'I don't want to talk it right', as we say in the Netherlands. But I want to show you that you can always think the other way around. And besides that, things are not always what they seem to be. You should know the past and the inner view, before you can judge. And I really love Sinterklaas and his Zwarte Pieten, and I don't and never did discriminate 'others'/'black people'. Just like Sinterklaas do I love all people, and I don't make difference in who I give a gift or not.