We had another p.c. scandal here in the Netherlands last week, with hordes of defenders of common sense crawling out of the woodworks to defend the noble negerzoen. The negerzoen is an old-fashioned Dutch treat (though of Danish origins) and consists of a mixture of egg white and sugar, surrounded by a thin layer of mock-chocolate, all on top of an almost stale biscuit. The picture on the left shows a typical example.
The controversy was that the manufacturer of these negerzoenen finally came to the conclusion that the name of this chemical delight might be slightly on the racist side, a “negerzoen” literally translating as a “negrokiss”, which in combination of the look of the thing is slightly … suspect … This years or even decades after the product (dating from 1927) had been rebranded in other countries, but then us Dutch tend to hang on to our slightly racist (“but we don’t mean it that way, though!”) traditions…
Anyway, this sensible discussion evoked the inevitavble storm of pc angst, with all the usual assholes coming out to loudly declare the ridiculousness of the idea, drawing the usual flawed comparisons and in general acting as if the renaming of a not very nice snack most people stopped eating by the age of twelve means the total surrender of all traditional Dutch values. You know the type; if they were American they would’vde been doing stories on the war on Christmas… It’s all very tiresome and stupid. They know full well that it’s just not right, but are just trying it on for shock value and to show how freethinking they are, this herd of independent minds.