Hello World,
It’s supposed to be the “most wonderful time of the year,” a time when built-up grievances melt under the glow of multicolored Christmas lights and warm Christmas music, families flung far across the country corral themselves to remember their roots and strangers smile at one another for no other reason than to demonstrate “peace and goodwill to all men.” But this Christmas season of 2016, despite all of the light displays and songs, planned family pilgrimages and spontaneous smiles, the parasites of racism are still attached to America’s underbelly and will not release its host even for the reprieve of Christmas…
While I celebrate Jesus and not Santa Claus at Christmas, the image of Santa Claus, though not real, has always brought comfort and joy! A jolly man awarding nice not naughty children with gifts, who swoops down, with the help of reindeer led by Rudolph and his red nose, on homes across America every Christmas – what’s not to love? In the broader culture, yes, Santa Claus is typically white, but here in Atlanta, the birthplace of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I remember black Santas malls in black neighborhoods when I was growing up. Though I may be wrong, I don’t remember there being any controversy regarding being black Santas in some neighborhoods.
But I guess the first black Santa at the Minnesota’s Mall of America, no less, is too much! At least for some Americans…According to rawstory.com article “Santa is WHITE. BOYCOTT Mall of America’: Online racists are Having a Meltdown Over Mall’s Black Santa,” Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s editorial editor had to shut down comments on its black Santa article because of offensive comments. How disturbing particularly since Santa Claus is not even real! And Santa Claus is based on Saint Nicholas, who according to New Testament and early Christianity expert Harvard Professor Laura Nasrallah was ” born into a family that probably considered itself to be ethnically Greek but in an area of the world that we now call Turkey.” She further noted that, “Historically, you can’t import a category like ‘white’ into fourth century Asia minor,’ according to the politico.com article “Scholar: Santa Race Claim Nonsense” which was written after Fox’s Megyn Kelly said Santa Claus and Jesus were white in 2013.
Last year, I wrote the post “Why is the ‘Real Face’ of Jesus Controversial? The Real Christmas Story” about the medical artist Richard Neave’s rendering of the real face of Jesus going viral. I expressed confusion because “although my earliest recollections of portraits of Jesus featured a man with blonde hair and blue eyes which I probably learned about in Sunday School and or the private Christian school I attended as a child, I stopped believing those depictions were accurate once I understood the Christmas story even as a child. That was probably around the time that I read ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ and began to study world history. My deductive reasoning led me to believe that Jesus, while in human form, must have been of a darker hue and looked similar to those who live in the Middle East.”
All of this to say, a black Santa, or an Asian Santa, or a Hispanic Santa, etc. shouldn’t be offensive to anyone born in America (or elsewhere for that matter), which is promised to be the melting pot of all cultures and countries…
And then juxtapose that display of racism with the display of racism that is unfolding in Charleston, South Carolina where Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shooter Dylan Roof is on trial for killing nine black churchgoers following a Wednesday evening Bible Study in 2015. In an FBI video, Roof said of his murderous acts, “Somebody had to do it.” According to the CNN article “Mass Shooter Dylann Roof, With a Laugh, Confesses,’I did it'” he also said, “Black people are killing white people everyday… What I did is so minuscule compared to what they do to white people every day.” He specifically targeted the church because it is a historic black church. “It’s historic, too, you know. I think at one time it had the highest ratio of blacks to white during slavery, and AME is a historic church. I researched black churches.” Maybe it’s no coincidence that this church is named after the name of Jesus Christ that we use at Christmas time and that this trial is unfolding during the Christmas season. The Jesus Christ I believe in and know to be real wants all of His children to be treated as human beings. Anything less than that demonstrates that America still needs healing despite how far we have come.
Just miles away from me in Carrollton, Georgia, another display of racism at Christmas time happened last week. Gerald Byrd, who is black and Carrollton’s Mayor Pro Tem, was collecting pine cones in a local park for an art project, when he was approached and threatened by a white man after the man questioned him about why he was in a state park. “Then he said, ‘My wife is coming and she has something for you, too.’ Up comes his wife with a German shepherd and I’m too far from my car to run and I’m petrified,” Byrd said,” according to a wsbtv.com story. Byrd posted a video about the incident at the park shortly afterward on Facebook and has received death threats since then!
These are just three incidents that demonstrate how deeply America has been and is still infected by racism. At this time of the year, I would like to pretend that racism doesn’t exist and even just for a month (the last month of President Obama’s presidency,) we can all get along but sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case…
Any thoughts?
P.S. This some came out in 1973…
4.”Doubt and Shame in ‘The Mothers’: An Interview with Brit Bennett” by Morgan Jerkins