THE HAGUE - In recent years, Prime Minister Mark Rutte has started to think differently about the appearance of Zwarte Piet or Black Pete. "I also belonged to the group that said: 'Zwarte Piet is simply black'," said the prime minister in the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament on Thursday, which included debates about anti-discrimination protests. He thinks differently now.

For years, the prime minister was an outspoken opponent of the modification of the appearance of Zwarte Piet. In his own words, he has changed his mind after conversations with people who made their objections clear. "When I met people who said: 'I feel incredibly discriminated against, because that Piet is black', I thought: that is the last thing you want at the Sinterklaas party."

Rutte made the revelation after a discussion about the use of the term institutional racism. The prime minister acknowledged on Wednesday that "systematic racism" is also a problem in the Netherlands. Because of their migration background, religion or sexual orientation, people do not always get equal opportunities, but the prime minister called institutional racism "sociological jargon".

Institutional racism includes discrimination in the labor market and housing market and ethnic profiling; structures within institutions with power that judge and treat groups of people unevenly.

At the urging of DENK MP Tunahan Kuzu and GroenLinks faction leader Jesse Klaver, the prime minister acknowledged that institutional racism does indeed occur in the Netherlands, but that he does not want to use the term. That would deter too large a proportion of the Dutch. According to the prime minister, they can get on the defensive, because they can get the feeling of being labeled as a racist when they are not.

Rutte does not believe that the appearance of Zwarte Piet should be adjusted by the government. According to him, the tradition is already changing. "In a few years, those Pieten will no longer be black, I expect. It is a folk culture that changes over time under the pressure of the social debate."