As Sinterklaas approaches, the Netherlands will be treated to repeated appearances by the man himself and his companion, servant, lackey — choose one — Zwarte Piet. The gleeful pair show up at regular intervals in department stores, city centres and parties.

Traditionally, Sinterklaas (who is definitely not Santa Claus, the Dutch will sternly remind you) interrogates lap-sitting children as to their naughtiness and niceness while Piet throws candy and hands out gifts in a "jovial" way.

The two roles are moulded by tradition and history, with echoes of the Spanish occupation and Europe's long history of Christianity coloured by Muslim influences. Sinterklaas is wise, authoritarian, good-natured but stern; Piet is surly, irreverent, undisciplined — and black.

My first reaction to Zwarte Piet was one of absolute horror. Fresh from a politically correct university career in North America, the idea of what is essentially blackface struck me as an abhorrent anachronism, bizarre in a modern, "progressive" country.

The Dutch will go to great lengths to explain that Zwarte Piet is not a caricature of a black servant, that he is not a racist stereotype playing step-n-fetch-it for his master.

But that is exactly what he is. If the application of black make-up weren't enough to convince you, the "Moorish" outfit of earrings, kinky hair and pantaloons should cinch it.

And there he is, doing his master's bidding. Surely this is most the offensive racial slur I've seen since the Japanese tar-baby doll scandal of the 1980s, and just as bad as anything you would have seen in the US South or, dare I risk stirring up the greatest of Dutch self-righteousness — during 1930s Germany.

"Oh, but it's all in good fun," they say. "He's not a real black person."

Yes, true, and that's exactly the point. If it were a real black person the act would be so humiliating as to provoke outrage. We would hope.

But this is Holland and outrage is unsightly unless someone cuts you off on the highway. Outrage is not for the allochtonen (literally, "speakers of other languages" but used to mean mostly people of colour), who are preferred to stay put in their designated areas but who are increasingly causing trouble by "not fitting in".

To understand the endurance of an icon like Zwarte Piet is to know the gaping divide between tolerance and acceptance, between a multi-cultural society and one which is Dutch with buitenlanders on the begrudging periphery. It is one of the subtle paradoxes of Dutch culture, but one I believe illustrates perfectly the hypocrisy and passive aggressiveness of the Dutch character.

It explains the growing racial divides in this small country and why the Dutch just don't get it when it comes to integrating new populations.

The result has been tension, fear, resentment and a generation of immigrant children who have been systematically excluded from Dutch socialisation.

Is Zwarte Piet the cause of racial tension and the failure of immigrant groups to integrate? It's much more complicated than that. But it's a symptom of a society that in its self-congratulatory claims of tolerance denies some very sinister undercurrents — the sentiment that the best place for the black man is at the end of a figurative leash.

November 2001, updated November 2002

Kevin Lowe is a Canadian expatriate living in Amsterdam.

Subject: Zwarte Piet