Now I’m really going off the deep end with respect to what this blog is supposed to be about. But since it is a personal blog, I’m allowed to do that. And it is something I seem to run into more frequently: political correctness.

The trigger for this blogpost is the newspaper of this morning; school changes “carnaval” to “dress up party”, because carnaval is a faith related festivity (Roman Katholik to be exact) and they are a public school.

Really?

Carnaval may be faith related, but it’s not like they are not going to celebrate it. The whole southern half of our country does, Katholik or not, and it’s simply called carnaval. It has to have a name, you know, so people know what you are talking about. Dress up party is what children do, carnaval is something quite different.

By now we’ve changed the name of pastries; “moorkop” became “roomkop” because it referred to someone with a dark skinned head, and yes, it is made with dark chocolate. We’ve undarken black piet into someone with smears. And the list goes on and on. Everything needs to be politically correct nowadays, so that no one can be offended.

But that is not possible. Not in the least because I’m offended by this whole political correctness movement. It’s so… Totally not what real life is about. So incredible first-world-problem. Just like the hypocrisy of that you can’t use “the f-word” in the United States on TV, but in real life the Americans use daily.

You know what??? Fuck… Fuck… Fuck fuck fuck. (Yes, I’m actually agitated right now, and this feels good to type 😉 )

Now… Did someone die? Did all babies grow a second nose? No. Nothing happened. You just read a word that people around the world use frequently. And maybe some readers got offended. Good for you, stop reading this post. Anyhow, we call this fuck-word situation (freely translated) “being holier than the pope”.

So we -the Dutch- have a history of slavery. Yes. I personally never have done anything racist, at least not intentionally, but apparently the father-of-my-father-something may have; not all Dutch went on sailboats to gather up people, some had to keep their finger in the dikes. But removing in a culture all the references to that history does not make it go away. In fact, it will stop reminding us that there is such a history. Black piet in fact is a very interesting starting point to discuss relevant topics with your children, once they grow past the awe of Sinterklaas (who is the origin of Santa Clause, but that is another story).

And the majority of the people don’t feel that all those things are offensive. Most colored people don’t mind that there is a black piet or moorkop, they just enjoy the festivities or eat the caloric bomb. It usually is a very small group of people, with nothing better to do, who just happen to shout very loud (and the press picking up on that).

Now, I’m not a very obedient person (shocker); yelling at me usually works counterproductive. Just like I don’t listen to people who yell that Java is dead, or XYZ is the next big thing, or that you should use YAML for all configurations. (See what I did there? Now it’s still a software development blog. 😁👍)

It’s not like they are wrong, there is something to be said for their arguments, but you can’t have a perfect politically correct society. Someone will always be offended.

So stop. Please. Get a life.

Now. I’m going to get on my bike, with a box of negerzoenen (negro’s kisses), ride on a street made of kinderkoppen (children’s heads), with my game of kolonisten van Catan (settlers of Catan) to my group of all white friends, to play a game. Cheers!