Right, but why would the soot make his lips bright red or frizz up his hair?
I understand that the story's been altered to make it less offensive, so why not just alter it further to not make him a dude in blackface with cherry-red lips and a cartoonish afro? He can still hand out candy and whatnot.
I'm not Dutch or Belgian, so my only context for this is the annual GAF threads. I understand that, for many of you, this is a cherished childhood memory, and you don't want those memories tainted by something as unseemly as racism.
That being said, if a lot of your citizens (and many of your black citizens, at that) are offended at the custom, what's the harm in changing it? You still get the holiday, and by changing a few details, you still get the character. He's just not a guy in blackface. And that's, I think, where a lot of the arguing comes from. Dutch posters being so resistent to changing the blackface, that it might be misunderstood as you guys clinging to that feature for its own sake. And I don't think wanting to see people in blackface for "tradition's" sake is very defensible.
Again, this is a foreign custom to me outside these yearly threads, so I'm always willing to hear more sides to the story. But as of now, especially when I see videos of black people who are offended by the custom, I can't see myself supporting it.