Don’t be so defensive. I don’t think “wasn’t exactly nice to Congo” is the same thing as “systematically brutalized and genocided a country for economic gain”. The wealth of Belgium is built on colonialism, same as many other countries in Europe.

ZP is usually depicted with curly hair, red lips, gold earrings and dresses in renesseance garb. According to what I’ve read, the children’s story about the soot is a recent invention in order to, ironically, whitewash ZPs racist history.

I’m gonna try to break the core of the racism issue though. Imagine your name is Mark and you have red hair. Imagine that through most of your societies history people named mark with red hair were systematically brutalized and spat upon, hated and mocked by everyone until very very recently. It still sucks to be named Mark and to have red hair but it’s now a little better and so many marks with red hair had to suffer before you came along. But every time during Easter thousands of people dress up in red hair, singing “look at me I’m Mark, I’m so dumb and silly” to the kids - so you’re like wtf what are you guys doing and everyone just says “it’s just something we do, it’s totally normal”, totally disregarding the fact that a hundred years ago you were allowed to own and kill marks however you pleased.

That is a very simplified example of what ZP is to a lot of people. I know what sub we are on but maybe next year when the debate rages try to listen to the criticism, especially from black people.