Black master chefs have a longer history in America than you might expect
I don't know if Zwarte Piet is the best example here. I know that the justification nowadays for Santa's servant being black is that it's from chimney soot, but the big red lips and the frizzy hair seem a much.
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Especially since many of the earliest depictions of Zwarte Piet explicitly include having been a slave, coming from Africa (including Morocco), or being a "neger". I understand that blackface has a different history in Benelux than the US, but... well, it's not as if the European versions of blackface have been terribly respectful either.
Personally, I think that Zwarte Piet could be saved by simply having the makeup actually look like soot streaks instead of black skin and getting rid of the lipstick.