Racial Absurdity in America: One More Chance to Divide the Nation by Color

I initially hesitated to comment on Aisha Harris’ December 10, 2013 article in Slate entitled "Santa Claus Should Not Be a White Man Anymore," since, on the surface, it is so inane.  But race in America is, in fact, inane and the ideas contained within the piece lie at the very heart of our racial dysfunction.   

Miss Harris’ language reveals how she uses Santa Claus as a foil to ventilate her anti-white racial animus.   In the essay, she refers to the “pale seasonal visitor” and the “melanin-deficient Santa.”  In so doing, she equates white with sickly and/or impaired.  The comments are especially telling because American high-profile authors and speakers regularly contrast and praise “people of color’ with white people and, in so doing, they consciously and/or unconsciously conspire to make Caucasians into deficient aliens.  Everyone on earth is a person of color except white people who are colorless. 

And Harris does not rest with merely denigrating white skin color; she is equally facile in promoting the stereotype that “old white men” should be ignored or ridiculed.   The image of Santa Claus permits her to mock the “fat-old-white-man” and to have a good laugh in the process. 

To appreciate the significance of the confluence of old, white, and male, one must understand that high profile media and political types regularly use the expression “old white” as if it were a slur.  There are thousands of examples of this usage but I will limit myself to one.

Oprah Winfrey, the black person who arguably has profited more financially from white support than any single person in world history, traveled to the United Kingdom in November, 2013 to promote her race-based film, The Butler.   Thus, from the start, her propaganda mission was to underscore race and to glorify blacks.  At a BBC interview with Will Gompertz, Winfrey asserted, "There are still generations of people, older people, who were born and bred and marinated in it, in that prejudice and racism, and they just have to die."  Of course, Oprah was referring to “old white” people as if “old black” people have nary a racist bone in their bodies.  And the inimitable, holier-than-thou Oprah prefers that whites "just die."

Within the still extant racially-divisive tradition, then, Aisha Harris uses Santa Claus to promote a racist agenda by using well-worn racist language and references.  But, since she is black, Harris is immune from accusations of racism.  She rationalizes her protest by suggesting, “Of course, since we created Santa, we can certainly change him however we’d like…”  Aisha, although not melanin-deficient, apparently has her own deficiencies.  I refer her to stnicholascenter.org, a site dedicated to “discovering the truth about Santa Claus.”  There, as in thousands of other sources, Ms. Harris will discover that she was not among those who created Santa, that Santa was created hundreds of years ago by white people who “discovered,” explored, and settled America.  The myth is not hers to change; it is a shared European fantasy.  Aisha Harris can embrace or reject Santa Claus as she chooses but she has no right change the version that Americans have enjoyed for generations. 

Regarding Ms. Harris' authority to dictate what we should and should not believe, I must conclude by noting that at the very end of her Slate article is the following:  “Correction, Dec. 10, 2013: This article originally misidentified penguins as mammals. They are birds.”  Apparently, the lady obsessed with the Santa Claus fantasy is not sufficiently well versed in reality to know that penguins are birds.