Zwarte piet - Racist?

**dig**

Personally I do not, however I believe I can see why some may take offense to it.
The following are the 'Origins' of 'Zwarte piet' taken from wikipedia

Spoiler :

However it seems to me that there is no real intention to offend here in comparison to say..
Blackface, which not only had the intention of offending African-Americans, but mocking and making fun of them
for the sake of comedy. This of course was a big problem around the time prior to Martin Luther King.
And I have to admit, there are some stark similiarities between 'Blackface' and 'Zwarte Piet'
EXAMPLE:

Spoiler :

The primary offense is that this person is meant to be a servant, and this person just so happens to be of dark complexion, and this person
just happens to originate from a time period in which slavery was practiced openly, so if you put two and two together odds are whenever this tradition began
it probably did involve an actual slave or two.

EDIT: Worth noting it does state something about the dark complexion being because these guys are up and down chimneys.
Also a large percentage of social media users had an uproar when a celebrity by the name of Julianne Hough used a sort of 'blackface' costume
based on a character from Orange is the New Black.. So if there was uproar about that, I am not at all suprised there is some about this.